OREANDA-NEWS. June 08, 2016. Keith Pearce is VP of Marketing for Service Cloud at Salesforce. An industry veteran who got his start close to 20 years ago at Siemens, he’s a firm believer in the transformative value of great customer service — both to companies and to their customers. Recently, we caught up with Keith to get his thoughts on the future of service, and what that means for businesses of all shapes and sizes.

Customer service isn’t always considered sexy. Why are you so excited about it?

I’ve always loved the industry and the space. Humans have an innate desire to help people, and at the end of the day that’s what service is about and why I like it so much. If companies can tap into that authentic force of goodwill in their employees, their customers will be more loyal, buy more, and be promoters of those companies.

What’s the opportunity today?

For a business operating in a competitive market, their advantage is no longer purely about product innovation, or price promotion -- those advantages are short-lived. The only sustainable advantage a company can have over its lifespan is service. There’s an enormous opportunity for companies to invest in service the way they invest in product innovation or real estate or talent. In the past, customer service has been about doing it as cheaply as possible, hiding your phone number to keep people from calling, or forcing self-service and automation at the expense of the customer experience. There has been an abysmal underinvestment in the most valuable thing a company has: service. This is the time to make a strategic investment in service.

Where do you see service going in the future?

You hear a lot about artificial intelligence. To some people, this is scary — they worry about robots taking their jobs. But I think AI actually elevates the role of humans in service. The nirvana that everyone is chasing right now is what I call anticipatory service. It’s the service you never had to have because the company is anticipating what you need, and it will entirely re-define what we think about when we think about service.  It's just a natural extension of the relationship we have with a company, and the ones that get it right will get more from their customers and create an incredible advantage for themselves.

As customers, we’ve been conditioned to invoking service when something’s gone wrong. And companies have built customer service operations to deal with problems: when they’re answering a 1-800 call or a tweet, it’s often because something’s broken or someone’s upset. With anticipatory service, companies can think 2-3 steps ahead of the customer, map out his or her journey, and anticipate what a particular customer will need taking into account all of the channels the customers is using and what they are trying to do. What makes this all possible is when we can aggregate that information in the cloud, and start to make smart decisions about the customer as a result -- providing connected service. In the near future, The Internet of Things gives companies the ability to understand not only customer behavior but also the products their customers are using that are connected and supplying relevant information that would inform a service action -- which is what anticipatory service is about.

From a consumer perspective, that sounds wonderful — but how do companies actually do it?

By starting with what they may think is mundane. One of the most practical ways to implement this is with self-service channels. They’re pervasive at every company as a way to identify who people are and route them to the right place. Today these are essentially dumb menus — you get the same options, in the same order, regardless of who you are — but it’s not hard to make them smart. One way is by looking at what interactions that customer has had with the company in the last 30 days — not just service interactions, but purchases, billing, everything that’s captured in Service Cloud — and use that information to make the service smarter, more connected. For example, you got a bill last week, and now you’re calling.  It's logical this interaction is about billing, so the self-service channels should change as a result. And the person you deal with if you need assistance should be a billing expert not someone who simply verifies who you are a second time and transfers you to someone else.  Automation has the opportunity to take away the mundane interactions that have put service workers in the position of having to ask dumb questions — not because they want to, but because they have to, because they don’t have the information they need.

Where does Salesforce fit into all this?

The transformation in customer service is coming from Salesforce, not from the mainstay companies that are providing customer service infrastructure technology. Many of these companies technology is very hard to change, and it doesn’t meet the expectations of how customers want to communicate with companies today. The call center’s over 30 years old, and a lot of the legacy technology hasn’t changed much over time -- which is why customers are so frustrated! The innovation Salesforce is leading with Service Cloud, providing Connected Service is what will transform the industry, and elevate both how companies embrace service but also the service worker in the process.  

Which companies do you think are doing service well?

Really the companies that are icons, household names for great service experiences like: Starbucks, Nordstorm, Apple, USAA, to name a few. The common thread you get with these is that they pay people well, they invest in employees, and they view service as a strategic job, not an entry-level job. They’re tapping into that innate desire to humans have to help one another, and customers come and buy because of those individual acts of service. It's in the ethos and culture of those companies. In short, service is cool at these places! I think it’s time to elevate the service worker — and what’s great about Salesforce is that we’re giving service workers tools that make them look like rockstars, and bringing customer service departments into the age of the customer.

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