With many successful Service Cloud implementations, West Coast Consulting Group has developed a top 10 checklist for deploying the Service Cloud to global call center operations.

Service Cloud Launch Photo

Below are ten steps we suggest following, prior to ‘Go-Live’:

1. Single Point of Contact
When going live, the level of activity and emotion tends to run high and things can be chaotic if there are too many points of contact. Having a designated single point of contact from the customer team minimizes noise and confusion and makes the cut-over go much more smoothly.

2. Tier 1 Customer Support Readiness
Tier 1 Customer Support, every company’s first point of contact with customers, needs to be well prepared for the new system and should enter all cases in parallel one week prior to ‘go-live’. Be prepared for ‘Day 1’ and do not delay service for your customers by not entering cases or properly preparing your Tier 1 support prior to going live.

3. Email-To-Case Preparation
Test and ensure that Support Email is set up as system admin and associate it with Email2Case processes to ensure cases are routed correctly and responses from the customer are routed back to the cases. In order to do the test prior to ‘Go-Live’ make the switch a few hours prior to launch and test out this important functionality using the actual support email address from an external customer type email address.

4. Enable All Support Users One Week Early
Ensure all support users are operational one week prior to ‘go-live’ and all access issues are addressed.

5. Migrate Data on the Weekend prior to ‘Go-Live’
Data from existing system should always be migrated to the new system on a weekend.  In addition, test trials to load data should be completed prior to weekend cut-over to ensure that all data templates are in place and the data can be migrated into the destination fields.

6. Plan your Launch Activities
Logistics need to be in place prior to cut-over and seemingly mundane elements such as conference room availability, as well as weekend support, and testing, must be planned, once data is loaded.

7. Follow the Sun
A good practice is to “follow the sun” in a global roll-out and cut-over in different geographical locations as the day breaks in those areas.

8. Communicate With Stakeholders
Communication must be in place for internal teams including the Sales organization. For example, employees, as well as customers, need to be well aware when the new system is coming, and how they will be affected.

9. Support Your Escalation
Always ensure that management support and escalation processes are in place on Go-Live day. The key stakeholders from Support, Sales Ops, IT, Renewals and Finance should have clear escalation paths to address problems quickly and efficiently

10. After the Cut-Over
After the rollout, it is especially important to continue to gather suggestions from the support team and evaluate the suggestions to be incorporated into future releases for roll-out on an ongoing basis.

Our experience indicates that neglecting to follow these steps can lead to significant problems and disrupt an otherwise smooth transition to salesforce.com for global call center operators.

By Benafsha Irani, Managing Partner, West Coast Consulting Group

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