The other day, I was in a conference call about contact center trends and how Salesforce fits into the picture. One of the items that was seen as a Leading component is the usage of a unified / Intelligent desktop.
Unified Desktop
A Unified Desktop, or Unified Agent Desktop, in a contact center environment, may be described as:
“The integration of the CRM system alongside multichannel communication, eg phone, e-mail, chat and mobile, on to a single user interface on the agent desktop”
The goal of a Unified Desktop is to allow agents to do all their work from within one system, instead of having to access different systems.
The idea of a Unified Desktop made me think back to the times where the implementation of omnichannel solutions was driven by the Unified Communication platforms – ie your PABX.
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Salesforce
The implementation of non-voice channels in Salesforce is going on already for years. While, the integration of voice channel has, until recently, been done via 3rd party solutions. Classic Communication Platform providers, or Cloud Contact Center solutions, provided a CTI integration (via AppExchange package) with Salesforce.
This split between voice and non-voice implementation often leads to the discussion of which platform should take the lead when it comes to true omnichannel implementation. Because, as an organisation, you prefer to have only one single application for your agents. And as most communication platforms also have a (fat) client application, would one use that application to call Salesforce data? Or would Salesforce be the better agent desktop application?
Service Cloud Voice
I mentioned above that, until recently, Salesforce relied on 3rd party integrations for Voice. 
With the implementation of Salesforce Service Cloud Voice, this has changed. While 3rd party solution providers will still integrate their platforms with Salesforce, Salesforce now takes more control over how that integration is done, and also billing of the voice integration now happens via Salesforce.
With Service Cloud Voice, ALL (inbound and outbound) interactions get handled via the Omnichannel widget in Salesforce. There is no distinction anymore between voice and non-voice channels. And so, the Unified Desktop question is drastically changed. When using Salesforce in your Sales and/or Service teams, and when you have Salesforce as your primary agent application in mind, then Service Cloud Voice is definitely worth looking at!
Do you use Salesforce and want to implement an omnichannel strategy? Or you need integration of incoming and/or outgoing calls in your Sales and/or Service teams? Then we are ready to help you with this. Fill in our contact form to setup an introduction call!
