Salesforce Service Cloud vs. ServiceNow Customer Service Management

This cloud is a good option for attracting large numbers of customers for mid-scale and large-scale organizations. However, it’s not suitable for small companies or startups due to its high cost. For use cases where real-time input from customers is taken and then processed on the cloud to give them output, this platform is a must.

Incentivized

As a very technical company we get a variety of resources assigned to answer different questions. We currently use [ServiceNow Customer Service Management] to help us have an prioritization for all of these now. We use the service now across a variety of departments that all deal with complex technical questions that need to spread out across different individuals. There are so many expertise needed for each individual question so having it routed to the right resource in an timely manner is vital to the success of our business.

Incentivized

• Super fast set-up of the service from design through to production.
• Robust method of release management from sandbox, to test, to production.
• User access controls can be fine grain, which is great for GDPR requirements, limiting access to only necessary data.
• Simple api integrations with other third party systems
• Broad range of features and functionality
• Einstein search features provides faster information mining for our agents as they help to resolve customer requests.

Incentivized

• Allows for clear communication between help desk and end users.
• Provides a clean inventory option for both hardware items and software licenses.
• Navigation is very intuitive and user friendly.
• Many reporting features for all levels of the company.

Incentivized

• A free trial would be extremely valuable to customers who are not able to commit to a full plan.
• The pricing of this program is not priced competitively with other similar services.
• Can be quite time consuming to maintain.
• Not user friendly if you aren’t tech savvy/familiar with software.

Incentivized

• Need a aid on how to use the system.
• Functionality to scroll down should not be too sensitive.
• Adding user helpful tools to help navigate.

Incentivized

Professional edition works best for a small company with lower call volumes and is very useful but as you grow exponetially I think it has limited ability to do all the things we want to - SLA management, defect, release management to name a few. Reports and dashboards being available in real time.

I love that the Salesforce Service cloud provides all of the functionality that I need when implementing business processes for our customer support representatives. It even has enough functions and features that allow us to customize and expand upon our current processes, giving us the ability to go above and beyond what we've thought we could ever do. Using cases coupled with Salesforce's automation tools help ease the workload and keeps our data integrity intact.

Incentivized

ServiceNow Customer Service Management tool gives a clear visibility on the KPI's and trends of issues being raised by customers. Proper and timely updates are received at both agents and customers end. Also, communication between the two has become more efficient. As they tool supports customisation, which has improved the overall process and growth.

Incentivized

Salesforce's Trust Center clearly communicates occasional issues to anyone who subscribes, down to an organization's cloud instance. Bundled sandboxes ease updates, and seasonal upgrades are seamless, scheduled well in advance with plenty of information about what's coming. Support agents have noticed intermittent Omni-Channel disconnects due to internet connections, and these are clearly notified.

Load times can be slow, but this is also based on how much customization you have done. We added a lot of custom fields which could cause additional slowness in loading. This was never anything that affected our overall efficiency. I did not notice that Service Cloud slowed down any of the systems we had it integrated with

Incentivized

Salesforce offers support, although it generally gets routed to overseas support teams first, and once they are unable to help, it gets escalated up the chain to higher tiers. Frequently, the answer back from support is that there is no native solution, and we either have to turn to the AppExchange for some solution provided by another developer, or custom build our own solution.

Support has been very good. Any time there has been a real issue, the team has responded very quickly and identified the issue without a lot of repetitive questions that I've seen from other services. There is a great external community and internal knowledge base that covers pretty much anything you need.

Incentivized

Our in-person training was provided by our implementation partner and it was quite good. This was in part because we were already working with them and so it naturally leant itself to a good training relationship. And because they were building our customizations and configuring things, they could then provide training on those things naturally.

Incentivized

Trailheads are great but it was often unclear what actually applied to our organization. This made it difficult to get a whole lot out of it. Part of it is that because the basic Salesforce features didn't quite work for us, we had to add customizations, which then nullified a lot of the training.

Incentivized

I would go through an implementation very differently knowing what I know now. It was difficult coming from systems we liked in post-sales service and having to adapt to the clunky and underwhelming feature set in Salesforce. I would trim back our expectations

Incentivized

I honestly prefer Zendesk to Salesforce Service Cloud. I find that Zendesk is easier to manage both on the support ticket side, as well as the knowledge center side. It looks and feels easier to use than Salesforce Service Cloud. Salesforce Service Cloud is fine, but it is expensive as well.

Incentivized

Connectwise targets small to medium enterprises and kept things simple for cross-organizational communications. On the other hand, ServiceNow with users with more than 500 at least, tends to create lag and tension when all are using the app at the same time, especially getting reports in a timely manner.

The product has scaled up with our company growth just fine. No issues here other than slowness in clicking around and running reports

Incentivized

• We have cut our service team in half over the past 5 years due to the efficiency of the tool
• The amount of direct inquiries to our technical team is less than 10% compared to the number support tickets that get entered in the system for them to work in a more organized manner
• Responses are 100% more timely because tickets can be responded to by any individual in the queue or on the team, as opposed to direct emails to just one person

Incentivized

• ServiceNow Customer Service Management has a made a positive impact on our customer success management
• ServiceNow Customer Service Management has made internal agreements easier when we interact with different internal teams like IT
• ServiceNow Customer Service Management had to replace our legacy systems for customer management but that did not happen completely hence that is negative impact on our business

Incentivized