Salesforce announced the release of Field Service Lightning, a new field operations solution designed to take advantage of the Internet of Things.

Built on the company’s Service Cloud, this platform will enable companies to deliver mobile, intelligent customer service from call centre to field agent.

According to Salesforce, mobile and IoT technologies can “reinvent the customer service experience” by reconnecting customers with the service organisation and improving field employee effectiveness.

Field Service Lightning can connect the entire service workforce on a single, centralised platform - from call centre agents, to dispatchers, to the field employees.

Field staff will have access to a customer’s full service and purchasing history on their mobile devices, providing them with greater insights on-site and potential upsell opportunities.

Scheduling and dispatching of field resources can be automated, with jobs being distributed based on field agent skill level, availability and location.

Rules can also be defined to automatically allocate more complex tasks to senior field employees, or to assign basic tasks to junior-level staff.

Dispatchers will have a real-time view of service operations and can make resource adjustments on-the-fly, such as sending another resource if one field agent is stuck in traffic, for example.

Field agents will be able to track and manage their jobs in real-time from their mobile device, and call centre agents will be able to view these updates and provide up-to-date information for customers more efficiently.

“We are just beginning to see what customer service can look like in the era of mobile and IoT,” Salesforce service cloud general manager Mike Milburn said.