Salesforce Omni-Channel Overview

Posted on September 28, 2017 by Sunil Sharma, Vishnu Kaushal

Omnichannel—a new buzzword in business world—means to seamlessly deliver customer services/support on multiple channels. Omni-Channel is a Salesforce feature which comes under the “Service Cloud Module” released as a Beta in Summer ‘15 and was then improved in Summer and Winter ‘16 release. Salesforce continues to improve the Omni-Channel functionality with each release. Omni-Channel is an important part of Customer Service Solution that facilitate a Call Center to route any type of incoming work item including Cases, Chats, or Leads—to the most qualified, available agents in the Call Center. Omni-Channel integrates seamlessly into the Salesforce Sales Or Service console.

Omni-Channel once enabled and configured for the Call Centre, it automatically pushes/assign work to the users in real time. Some good examples are as follows:
  • One can configure routing rules to assign cases to agents through Omni-Channel.
  • Configure routing rules to assign leads to Sales people.

Features/Advantages

  1. No More Manual Routing : Agents no longer have to pick/choose work assignments manually from a queue, which saves everyone in your call center time, effort, and brainpower.
  2. Prioritising Work Items : Call Center stakeholders manage the priority of work items, which makes to route important work items to agents quickly
  3. Efficient utilisation of Agents Capacity/Work Management : Agents can easily handle multiple conversations at the same time, which supercharges productivity—and call center ROI. Manage your agents capacity to take on work items so that they’re given only the number of assignments that they can handle as per their Office/Business Hours. You can also define which agents can work on different types of assignments. For example, you can create one specific group of agents to respond to leads and sales inquiries, and another group that helps customers with support queries.
  4. Omni-Channel Supervisor gives call center supervisors real-time operational intelligence.

Technical Facts on Omni-Channel

  1. Objects which support Omni-Channel Routing: You can set up Omni-Routing for Cases, Chats, SOS Calls, Social Posts, Orders, Leads, and Custom Objects that don’t have a master object.(Salesforce Reference: https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=service_presence_supported_objects.htm&type=0)
  2. Apex Customization or coding required for setting up: No code is required to get started with Omni-Channel as most of the Omni Channel setup can be done with the configurations settings. However, in some scenarios or use cases we may need to write some code like implementing Round Robin. For e.g Round Robin Assignment on Cases using Apex Triggers- Cases are assigned to Agents according to the Round Robin algorithm i.e. Cases are assigned to active Agents one by one without any priority set to it in a circular order.
  3. Importance of Queue in Omni-Channel: The Queues are a classic element of Salesforce that help your teams manage leads, cases, and custom objects. Omni-Channel supercharges your queues to be able to route work items to your agents in real time. Agents don’t have to select work items manually from queues because Omni-Channel routes work items to agents automatically and in real time. You can also create multiple queues to handle the different types of work items. For example, you might create one queue for incoming cases and another queue for incoming leads. For routing to work correctly, assign each of your agents to the queue from which they are receiving work items. More Specific examples are as follows:
    • a. Case queues: Case queues helps you to manage your support differentiate cases and workload based on support levels. With the help of queues, you can ensure that cases are resolved quickly, even if a specific user is on vacation. You can put the cases in different queues, either automatically or manually via a case assignment rule as cases are generated from the Web or created manually.
    • b. Lead queues: Lead queues help you to manage the distribution of the leads. Create a lead queue with members who are salespeople assigned to a specific sales territory.

Astrea’s Omnichannel Expertise

Astrea IT Services has implemented the Omnichannel for many of its clients and recently completed a project for a big gaming company that involved Omnichannel setup for routing of the Cases created from the Email(Email to Case) and Website(Web to Case) explained in the diagram below.

Omnichannel Expertise Image

Astrea is a leading Salesforce certified partner and focused on transforming businesses through the adoption of the Salesforce platform. Our clients/partners are based across different locations and varied industries and we can help you in understanding how Omnichannel can work for you.

For any query on Salesforce Omni-Channel, contact support@astreait.com