Kraig Swensrud, senior vice president of product marketing at Salesforce.com, was on hand to demonstrate the features of Chatter Mobile and how the social network application integrates with other Salesforce offerings such as Service Cloud 2 at the London Cloudforce user event 2010.

Chatter Mobile was shown running on the Apple, BlackBerry and Android platforms, allowing colleagues to exchange ideas, documents and pictures in real-time using a Facebook-esque interface.

Features included the ability to filter Chatter feeds to see specific team projects, customers or information on particular business dealings.

A multi-page document that had been posted in a user news feed was viewable by simply pinching to expand it on the iPhone, eliminating the need to search emails or download the document.

The overall impression given by Salesforce was that Chatter allows for more efficient and effective communication in the desktop and mobile forms. Watching the application in action, it was hard to disagree with this.

Salesforce showcased how Chatter integrates with other products such as Service Cloud 2, its customer service application.

Swensrud demonstrated how the software could aid a business in a customer service capacity by answering a simple query that a customer may make over the phone, such as: "How do I upgrade the memory on my laptop?"

All previous dealings with the customer were viewable and the customer adviser would then enter a new 'case'.

A search of the integrated knowledge base for the answer would be carried out, which would then be relayed back to the customer over the phone or emailed to them. All these steps were carried out using one application.

A complex customer query where the answer was not in the database was also demonstrated. This was dealt with using the integrated Chatter interface.

A question such as, "What is the correct output resolution that a mini projector needs to run?" would be posted on the enterprise Chatter feed, encouraging collaborations between frontline staff, engineers and product managers to find the answer. Once a solution was found it would then be shared and the appropriate knowledge base could be populated.

Swensrud acknowledged the importance of Twitter, stating that it is "the fastest growing social network". Customers are increasingly going to the "public network" to get answers to queries, he said.

Salesforce demonstrated the ability of Service Cloud 2 to monitor conservations on Twitter that mention products that a business supports. It is possible for businesses to tweet answers back to customers, delivering "modern customer service".

With people increasingly going to Google as the first port of call, Salesforce also said that the cloud allows businesses to make their knowledge database available to customers.

Marc Benioff, chairman and chief executive of Salesforce, had earlier stated the importance of social networks, calling Facebook a "paradigm" in usability.

08 Sep 2010