Salesforce Launches ‘Service Cloud’

Building on technologies it announced in November, Salesforce.com Wednesday released Service Cloud, its next-generation customer service solution.

The Service Cloud, built on Salesforce’s (NYSE: CRM) Force.com application platform, benefits from the SaaS provider’s partnerships with Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), Facebook and Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN).

It will let Salesforce customers leverage all capabilities of the partnerships, Alex Dayon, Salesforce’s senior vice president for CRM (customer relationship management) customer service and support, told InternetNews.com.

“This is the future of customer service, it lets customers build businesses in the cloud,” Dayon said. Salesforce has a media event slated for Thursday where it’s expected to discuss the announcement in more detail.

The Service Cloud will let users create an online customer community with unlimited usage for up to 250 customers, set up a contact center with up to five agents, connect with sites like Facebook and Google, and invite up to five partners to participate in the cloud, Salesforce.com said in a statement.

Also, Service Cloud will not be restricted to Salesforce’s existing partners. “We will be working with other companies in the future, but for this particular announcement these are the three partners we are connecting to,” Dayon said. “Others like Yahoo and LinkedIn are also important to us but, right now, we’re leveraging the technology as it comes.”

Business customers will be able to use Service Cloud to capture online conversations and leverage community experts.

The release follows statements by Salesforce chairman and CEO Marc Benioff at a news event in New York in December that the company would connect all the different cloud computing services.

At the event, he also said customers will be able to create media-friendly packages that can be shared with groups, dragging and dropping slide presentations and adding videos and PDF documents into presentation packages.

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