For the third time since the begining of the month, Salesforce.com Inc. is rolling out new functionality for its customer management platform. Today’s update brings an entire standalone service designed to help the technicians and other specialists who work with an organization’s clientele out in the trenches to become more productive.

The cloud giant first hopes to reduce the amount of time that a user has to spend travelling among customer locations by automating the process of scheduling and distributing assignments. When a new request comes down the pipe, Field Service Lightning identifies the nearest available professional with the necessary skillset for the task and transmits work introductions to their mobile device. Its algorithms can also be configured to take factors like experience into account and prioritize a veteran technician over a rookie with the same credentials if a particularly complex problem is reported.

As the field worker heads out to the client site, their organization’s dispatching teams can make course adjustments to ensure the complaint is addressed as fast as possible. For instance, if a technician finds themselves stuck in a major traffic jam, then the operator on the other end of the line is able to have Salesforce.com’s service reassign their task to the nearest colleague. Whoever ends up meeting up with the customer after all is said and done can access the most-up-date work instructions through their smartphone.

According to the company, Field Service Lightning may be configured to not only provide information about the specific task at hand but also notify the user of ways they could potentially create additional business for their organization. A carrier, for instance, could set the service to display whether a subscriber inquired about buying a more expensive Internet package at some point in the past so that the technician sent out to replace their faulty router can bring up the topic again. The functionality should enable Salesforce.com to compete much more effectively against Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp. and other major rivals in the customer management space that already offer field service functionality. 

The new service also pits the company against partners like MapAnything Inc., which recently raised $7.2 million in funding to promote its third party field operations management extension for the Salesforce Sales Cloud. But while today’s launch may add some tension to the relationship, there will likely still remain room for third party alternatives given the vendor’s past efforts to ensure freedom of choice for customers.

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