Salesforce Introduces New Field Service Capabilities

Salesforce today unveiled the next generation of Salesforce Field Service, with new appointment scheduling and optimization capabilities, artificial intelligence-driven guidance for dispatchers, asset performance insights, and automated customer communications.

Salesforce Field Service innovations include the following:

• Dynamic Priority scheduling and optimization capabilities that automatically prioritize jobs based on the service level agreement or how critical the work is.
• Einstein Recommendation Builder, which enables organizations to deploy machine learning models to enhance service, including AI-powered recommendations to ensure mobile workers always have the right parts for the job. Einstein will scan past work orders for previous similar jobs to identify which parts will be needed for the current one.
• Asset 360, a set of asset management capabilities that ServiceMax is building with Salesforce to provide companies visibility into their install base, service contracts, and asset performance.
• Appointment Assistant, which uses live status updates and GPS to automatically update customers on the technician's arrival time.

"Our customers tell us that it is more crucial now than ever for their field technicians to have the right information and tools to maximize equipment uptime and first-time fix rates," Mark Cattini, senior vice president of field service management at Salesforce, wrote in a blog post earlier today. "Decades of industry expertise and innovation have gone into building our next-generation field service management product, and organizations across industries are deploying it to keep their equipment working, businesses running, technicians productive, and end customers safe."

The latest updates to Salesforce Field Service come as a result of last year's acquisition of ClickSoftware, according to Cattini, who noted that "with the combined power of Salesforce and ClickSoftware, we are delivering a complete field service product with all of the capabilities leading service organizations require."

Dynamic Priority will be generally available in October. Einstein Recommendation Builder will be in beta in October. Asset 360 will be generally available in November. Appointment Assistant will be available in closed pilot in October.