Joel is the head of customer support at a leading cybersecurity software provider company and he manages a team of over 400 service reps. His team is one of the best performing teams within the company. This, however, was not the case a year ago as Joel and his team was under the scrutiny of the management.
Last year, the company noticed that its revenue was waning. After rigorous analysis, it came out that lost customers were the driving force behind the waning revenue. In the last six months, the company had lost almost 12% of its customers, which was alarming.
To find a solution, the company decided to ask its customers why they decided to leave. Two out of three customers listed ‘slow customer service’ as their reason. They reported that the service team takes too long to resolve their queries and cases, and sometimes the support folks don’t even respond for days. Therefore, the management summoned Joel.
Joel discussed with his team the possible reasons behind the delay and how they can improve it. In most cases, the reason behind the delay was a lack of collaboration between support and engineering & product teams, which caused a delay in providing a resolution to customer cases.
Joel conveyed the same to the management and he was given the task to revolutionize their customer service in order to provide customers instantaneous and personalized service experience.
Joel’s team uses Salesforce Service Cloud for their day-to-day task management and the engineering and product teams use Jira. Joel knew that integration of Salesforce Service Cloud and Jira can enable seamless collaboration amongst teams.
After meticulous research, Joel came to know about two possible ways to integrate Salesforce & Jira:
- Via custom integration
- Via a connector
This is the situation that many people like Joel face. This blog post explains everything that you need to know about the different ways to integrate tools like Salesforce and Jira.
1. Via custom integration
In the custom way, a code is developed to integrate both the instances (Salesforce & Jira). This code is developed in such a way that allows a one-way or two-way flow of information between both the instances.
Why should one prefer custom integration over a connector?
If your aim is just to enable the flow of information from Salesforce to Jira, Jira to Salesforce, or bidirectional, you should go with custom coding. Salesforce and Jira integration, if done the custom coding way, is a one-time solution that will enable the data/information flow between both the instances.
Cons:
This way of integrating Salesforce and Jira is a short-term solution and is rigid. Once the integration is done, there’s nothing much you can do in case you plan to add some more functionalities to it. It will do nothing beyond just enabling information flow between both the instances.
Other than that, integrating via custom coding takes more time than a connector.
2. Via a connector
Salesforce and Jira integration can also be done using a connector.
A connector, however, is a more preferred option over custom integration. A connector, as the name suggests, uses the APIs of both the platforms to connect both the tools. It is usually an app that can do much more than a custom integration.
Why should one prefer a connector over custom integration?
It all depends on the business requirements and the use cases one wants. As we stated earlier, a connector is an app that can do more than a custom integration. If your motive is to enable a bidirectional flow of information along with a set of workflows to manage tasks, a connector is what you need.
Other reasons to choose a connector over custom integration include:
- A connector is a long-term solution
- More scalable
- Offers more use cases, functionalities
- Easy to set up
- Can be customized based on business requirements
Cons:
- Costlier than custom integration
- Use cases you might not want
That should be enough to decide what option to go for. Joel went for the latter: A connector.
Joel looked up for options for a connector and chose Sinergify. He was inspired by the story of Jason and how Sinergify helped Jason transform support operations.
Reference: https://www.sinergify.com/