Telligent Connect for Salesforce.com™ empowers companies to elevate social customer service with social CRM 

DALLAS, TX and SAN FRANCISCO, CA (The Big Social and Salesforce Dreamforce) – September 19, 2012 – Telligent, one of the pioneers in social software for the enterprise, today announced Telligent Connect for Salesforce.com, social CRM integration that brings together industry-leading online community software from Telligent with essential customer relationship management software from Salesforce.com. The announcement comes on the heels of Telligent’s introduction of Telligent Community 7.0, its newest version of online community software designed to elevate customer experience through social customer service.

Telligent Community 7.0 gives companies the most comprehensive solution for social customer service that engages business decision makers before, during, and after the sale. The newest product release addresses the needs of customer care while creating opportunities for product development, sales and marketing, creating a 360-degree view into the customer experience. Telligent Connect for Salesforce.com integrates Telligent Community with Salesforce to support customers in the online channels they prefer while enabling support agents to work more effectively in the CRM tools they use on a daily basis.

“Customers are tapping into many social channels - Twitter, Facebook, online forums and communities – to get support,” said Patrick Brandt, CEO of Telligent. “The key is for companies to be where their customers are, while also making it easy for customer service agents to provide support across multiple channels. Telligent Connect for Salesforce.com bridges social customer service and social CRM in a way that benefits both customers and customer care.”

Telligent Community 7.0 was designed to help businesses increase customer satisfaction while at the same time boost their bottom lines. Key elements of Telligent’s new solution for social customer service include:

• Social self-service: Providing self-service through peer-to-peer support forums and online FAQs saves you money but it also saves your customers time. Telligent Community 7.0 dynamically scores community content and only surfaces the most relevant information, delivering your customers the right answers in real-time.

• Expert discovery: Current customers and potential buyers seek expertise to make business decisions. Telligent Community 7.0 recognizes and rewards people who contribute high quality content and showcases their expertise where others can find it with ease.
  
  
• Knowledge sharing: Online resources like discussion forums, product documentation and how-to videos help customers find solutions and solve problems. Telligent Community 7.0 makes it easy for people to discover and share interesting content with familiar social networking tools such as activity streams, #hashtags, likes and @mentions.

• Crowdsourcing new ideas: Online communities link customers, partners, potential buyers and your employees together. Telligent Community 7.0 makes it possible for you to source new ideas and get feedback for product improvements from the entire community through forums, ratings and reviews, polls and even private groups for trials and beta testing.

• Mobile community: Exceptional customer service knows no boundaries. Telligent Community 7.0 makes activity streams, documents, support forums, polls, videos and more accessible and from any mobile device.

• Empowering your sales force: With Telligent Community 7.0, your marketing and sales teams can listen and respond to community conversations to gain a better understanding of your customers’ business needs while at the same time gain access to qualified buyers.

• Leveraging your data: Community analytics for Telligent Community 7.0 are available directly within your online community as well as from a dashboard for role-based viewing by customer care, product management, sales and marketing team members. Key metrics deliver insights into community health and vitality, service responsiveness, content effectiveness and networking strength – the essential indicators that your social customer service community is achieving business objectives.

• Making social portable: Community isn’t just a destination; it’s a social engagement path that connects you with customers in the places that matter most to your business. With Telligent Community 7.0, you can add social engagement – ratings and reviews, comments, likes and @mentions – to your online content and create community wherever your customers are. 

• Scaling and managing reputation: One of Telligent’s most innovative and most important enhancements is the added reputation management system. It is a differentiator and game changer for social customer service communities. Reputation dynamically scores content, and the people who author content, so that community members gain quick access to only the highest quality, most relevant information. The system also highlights community members through recognition and rewards such as leaderboards and badges.

By delivering more efficient self-service and collaborative support, reputation helps reduce volume to expensive, agent-driven channels and builds brand loyalty that directly impacts customer lifetime value. 

Telligent Community 7.0 is available now. For more information, please visit http://telligent.com/landing-pages/p/telligent-community-7-0.aspx. Telligent Connect for Salesforce.com is scheduled for release later this fall.

About Telligent

Telligent powers online communities and enterprise social networks that are essential to business. Global brands including Cadbury, Dell, Investec, Microsoft, Oxfam, Rackspace, Sitecore and Susan G. Komen for the Cure trust Telligent to transform their business with social. Telligent software helps companies empower their customers, employees and partners with social collaboration tools that drive real business value: higher sales, lower costs and bigger ideas. Our commitment to customer excellence is matched only by our dedication to community service, a people-first philosophy that defines our brand promise. For more information, visit Telligent.com or connect with us on Twitter and Facebook.

Contact:

Tiffany Henry
thenry@telligent.com
(214) 420-1350

Product or service names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

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