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Service

There’s a Better Way to Solve Tough

Customer Service Issues — It’s Called
Service Swarming

Service swarming — also known as Intelligent Swarming — is a collaborative approach to customer service.
[Getty Images]

It’s time to stop escalating and start collaborating. Help your service
team become more efficient and bring expertise to customers faster
with an Intelligent Swarming support model.

Nausheen Najib
August 7, 2023 • 5 min read

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1/9/24, 12:33 PM What is Service Swarming? | Salesforce

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When a customer reaches out with a complex problem, it’s a moment of truth. Does the
agent escalate or collaborate? If the answer is always to escalate, imagine this scenario
instead: a team of experts quickly comes together to support your agent as they work
through the resolution. This is service swarming.

The idea is that service agents share resources to solve complicated customer requests
faster. It takes the guesswork out of customer service.

Let’s take a closer look at what service swarming is and the ways it benefits your customers
and your agents.

10 essential skills for your service agents

It takes both hard and soft skills to excel in customer service. Technical expertise,
ability to work with AI, great listening, and empathy are all important. Our
comprehensive guide identifies the 10 skills agents need to succeed.

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What is service swarming?

Service swarming — also known as Intelligent Swarming — is a collaborative approach to
customer service. Your agents bring in a team of skilled experts from across your
organization to help solve complex service cases or larger incidents. These can be experts

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in finance, legal, operations, sales, engineering, development operations (DevOps),

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security, or other departments, depending on the problem.
This enables the right team members to use their expertise and work together on
complicated issues as soon as they emerge. During the service swarming process, experts
share background knowledge and resources with agents. Once a resolution emerges, the
team documents the steps in a knowledge base article to help other agents with similar
issues in the future. Generative AI for customer service makes the whole process faster and
more efficient.

Swarming is useful for addressing complex issues affecting a single customer, such as a
security breach to a personal account. It can also be scaled to address major incidents that
impact many customers, like a power outage. In both cases, a collaborative approach
across multiple teams, departments, and even external partners is key to delivering a
resolution. For example, if a business customer reaches out to a consumer goods company
about missing products that show as delivered, the agent can bring in a third-party
fulfillment partner to help.

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The benefits of service swarming in customer support

In a traditional, tiered customer support model, agents solve complex cases on their own.
They search your knowledge base and ask various colleagues for help. As more time
passes, the customer’s patience starts to thin. The agent escalates the case to the next-
tiered agent or to a different department entirely, which frustrates the customer.

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A swarming support model flips this entire scenario on its head. Agents not only reach a
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resolution faster because they’re working with a team, they also become more efficient and
knowledgeable, all while reaping cost savings for your business. This leads to:

Personalized customer engagement: Our research shows that 83% of customers

expect to solve complex problems by talking to one person. Service swarming reduces
the complexity because the agent is their single point of contact throughout the case.
This allows the agent to become a trusted contact and creates a one-on-one relationship
that builds loyalty.

Accelerated skills development: In a tiered support model, knowledge isn’t shared as

broadly as it could be. If an agent passes off a case because it’s too challenging, they lose
out on a valuable learning experience. When agents bring in experts to swarm, they learn
new customer service skills on the job. This type of expertise would otherwise take years
to build.

Scaled automation: We found that 78% of agents say it’s difficult to balance speed and
quality support, yet that’s exactly what customers want. Eliminating repetitive tasks
through automation saves time and lowers costs while increasing team efficiency at
scale. Service teams are then free to focus on strengthening customer relationships.

Teams working together: In a well-run service organization, no one is on their own.

Agents can instantly identify and gain access to a built-in support network of experts. In
fact, agents are incentivized to offer a helping hand because the data shows
performance and participation levels. When a case resolves, managers recognize those
involved, which encourages future participation.

Evolved success metrics: Performance measurements like average handle time and first-
contact resolutions are always important. However, those metrics don’t always apply in
service swarming scenarios. Instead, lower escalation rates and case handoffs take
priority. Using these indicators, contact center managers can track improvements in
agent productivity, satisfaction, and retention.

Swarming makes you think differently about your service team. This is because the
dynamic changes between your agents, your experts, and your customers. Camaraderie
becomes central to customer service; no one is an island.

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Get hands-on with case

swarming
Learn how to resolve customer service
cases faster and more easily with this
lesson on Trailhead, Salesforce’s free
online learning program.

Show me how

A swarming support model requires a unified platform

With a unified platform, you can bring together automation and AI for better productivity
and efficiency. And while your teams do more with less, you can focus on the important
things — like providing personalized customer service. Ultimately, communicating solutions
in real time, across all impacted customers, leads to greater customer trust.

Service, sales, and marketing teams should be able to quickly access relevant case,
incident, and customer data. They also need to communicate and make decisions to keep
everyone looped. This helps to reduce the number of handoffs to customers. A shared
virtual workspace makes this easy and efficient to do.

To implement service swarming in your organization, invest in customer service

technology. Give your agents a unified platform for team success, personalize every
customer experience, and effectively scale with automation. Work together from anywhere
with productivity tools like chat, video, and collaboration documents.

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When the need for service swarming arises, rely on the technology that will help your
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teams solve cases and incidents seamlessly. With collaboration tools, you can streamline
incident resolution by bringing together cross-functional swarm members, easily switch
between messaging, voice, or video to increase accessibility, and build customer trust by
keeping customers informed in real time.

Once the case or incident resolves, your support team is empowered with new knowledge
and they’re ready to move on to the next case — together.

Collaborate better with service

swarming
See how to give your customers an all-digital,
end-to-end experience they will love.

Let's get started

Intelligent Swarming is a service mark of the Consortium for Service Innovation.

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Nausheen Najib
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Product Marketing Manager

Nausheen Najib is on the Service Cloud product marketing team based in the Bay Area.
When she’s not building customer-centric marketing programs, you can find her traveling to
new places or baking something extra sweet.

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