As part of a much broader effort to make mobile computing the central theme for 2013, Salesforce.com this week rolled out a series of mobile extensions to its service management software.
According to Michael Peachey, senior director of solutions marketing for Salesforce.com, as end users increasingly rely on mobile computing devices, they are expecting to be able to resolve any and all support issues they might encounter. Regardless of the industry or application involved, organizations that can’t resolve service and support issues via mobile computing applications will appear to be increasingly antiquated, says Peachey.
Access to Enterprise Software from Mobile Devices Lagging
To address that issue, Salesforce.com rolled out a Service Cloud Mobile offering that includes:
- Co-browsing technology that allows an agent to deliver guided assistance to customers via a shared Web experience on mobile devices via any Web browser.
- Service Cloud Communities portals that are optimized for mobile devices.
- A Service Cloud mobile chat capability that is similar to SMS texting.
- Service Cloud Touch to allow service agents to resolve cases using mobile devices, which means they no longer need to be at a desk to address an issue.
Peachey says that customers should expect to see Salesforce greatly expand support for mobile computing across all its services in 2013. After all, as end users spend more time using mobile computing devices to access applications, the locus of where business decisions are being made is rapidly shifting from the PC to the mobile computing device. That doesn’t mean the PC is necessarily obsolete; it just means we’re living in a world where mobile devices are becoming the primary devices end users rely on to access information.
Ultimately, that will lead to the re-engineering of applications and business processes to reflect that new reality. Most enterprise applications, for example, are not really designed to support data-driven application paradigms that are commonly found on mobile computing applications. In the meantime, IT organizations should start getting used to the idea that the customer experience both inside and out of the enterprise is about to be transformed.
