Salesforce’s latest offering, Salesforce IoT Insights for Field Service Lightning, is designed to help companies automate requests to dispatch customer service representatives. PCMag describes how Field Service Lightning can be used to troubleshoot mechanical problems in the field before technicians arrive on site.
Having IoT data on hand lets companies know who to send and what they’ll need to tackle the job. In conjunction with data from a customer relationship management (CRM) platform like Sales Cloud Lightning Professional, companies now can personalize service calls and improve customer experience.
Speaking to PCMag, Paolo Bergamo, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Field Service Lightning, describes this real-time location information of customer service reps in Field Service Lightning as similar to Uber’s tracking functionality.
"It could be as complex as a simple break-and-fix, all the way to building something really complex with people who need to show up at a different time of the day or a specific situation like construction or oil and gas."
"It could be as complex as a simple break-and-fix, all the way to building something really complex with people who need to show up at a different time of the day or a specific situation like construction or oil and gas," Bergamo told PCMag.
Salesforce reveals that Jacuzzi uses Field Service Lightning to monitor the filters of hot tubs. "Salesforce IoT will essentially give Jacuzzi the possibility to capture the data and bind it to the data in the CRM," Bergamo said. "Before, Jacuzzi did not really know when to try to sell their filter replacement. Now that they have data on usage, they can be a lot better at offering the right solution with the right placement component at the right time."
Meanwhile, the town of Cary, North Carolina tracks the status of its traffic lights using IoT. "Since they have connected all the traffic lights to Salesforce IoT, they can dispatch technicians right away to fix the problem," Bergamo said. "That's really important so that it minimizes the problem for their citizens.
The most promising aspect of this technology is that it makes IoT data more actionable, according to Nucleus Research analyst Rebecca Wettemann. "This [Salesforce platform] actually puts the data into the hands of the people that need it in a way that helps them be productive," she said. "This is about the power of the Salesforce UI and really making IoT data usable."
