Salesforce.com Launches Desk.com App Hub

Salesforce.com today launched the Desk.com App Hub, empowering fast-growing SMBs to leverage customer service to accelerate growth. The new App Hub is a one-stop shop for SMBs to access more than 50 partner apps that help them enhance the customer service experience and accelerate growth.

With the App Hub, SMBs now have a single location where they can deploy apps that enhance customer service, without the cost and hassle of building one-off integrations.

"Fast-growing small businesses that succeed today are the ones that place customer service at the heart of their business," said Leyla Seka, senior vice president and general manager of Salesforce Desk.com, in a statement. "The Desk.com App Hub will help SMBs jumpstart their growth and leverage customer service as a competitive advantage."

"Desk.com App Hub will help SMBs focus on growing the business rather than dealing with these integration hassles and the high IT costs to manage them," said Chris Chute, vice president of the SMB Cloud and Mobility Practice at IDC, in a statement.

New Canvas Technology within the Desk.com App Hub creates a window into third-party apps, displayed directly in the Desk.com agent console for a single, unified view of all customer data needed to resolve cases. This eliminates the need for agents to toggle between apps.

With the new Canvas Technology integration, apps from partners such as Harvest, JIRA, MailChimp, Olark, Shopify, and Twilio can now be accessed directly within Desk.com.

"The future of online customer service is already here. It's just not everywhere," said Ben Congleton, CEO and co-founder of Olark, in a statement. "We're proud to join Desk.com's App Hub on their mission to empower excellent online customer service. We champion a brighter future for live chat. Customers who've used Olark live chat fall in love with it because it connects them instantly to the people behind the Web site and that's when the magic happens. The customer and company move forward, happier together."

New telephony integrations deliver multichannel support. Now SMBs can complete the cycle of multichannel support by adding telephone support, leveraging new integrations from leading telephony vendors such as Five9, NewVoiceMedia, OneReach, RingCentral, and TalkDesk. Now incoming service calls appear directly in the Desk.com agent view, allowing customers to receive help in any format. Desk.com allows companies to deliver customer service on every channel, including chat, email, self-service, social media, Web, and now the phone.

"Consistent and personalized customer service is what's demanded by today's consumer, so businesses must evolve to meet these expectations," said Jonathan Gale, CEO of NewVoiceMedia, in a statement. "The combined power of Desk.com and NewVoiceMedia's ContactWorld solution delivers an enhanced level of customer engagement and personalization through Salesforce, enabling companies of all sizes to positively differentiate themselves through world-class customer service."

New Desk Connect completes the 360-degree view of the customer by syncing data from Desk.com support cases to Salesforce. As businesses grow and have more sophisticated customer service requirements, they now have an easy path to Salesforce Service Cloud from Desk.com with Desk Connect. In addition, App Hub partners can seamlessly integrate with Salesforce.

Salesforce Desk.com pricing starts at $30 per user per month. Desk Connect and telephony integrations are available in the Desk.com Plus plan, with pricing starting at $50 per agent per month. Canvas technology is expected to be available in early 2015, and pricing will be announced at the time of general availability.

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