Tips for Salesforce Success: Reducing customer effort

Developed by certified Salesforce consultants for experienced and consultants-to-be from around the globe, Supermums hosted the first ever Consultancy Dreamin’ event earlier this July. 

Our very own founder and principal consultant, Paul Harris joined the ‘Experience Tract’ line up to share his 18 year’s worth of Salesforce ecosystem experiences on the ten things you might not expect as a Salesforce consultant. Over the next few weeks, Coacto will present the tips suggested in Paul’s session in more detail so you can learn everything there is to know and focus on what to expect as a consultant.

Tip #1. Reducing customer efforts

It may come as a surprise that some customers don’t always have the time to focus fully on their implementation project – but it is often a reality when offering up your consulting services to businesses who require assistance with their systems.

In Coacto’s experience, we have found this to often be the single most common reason for project delivery expectations coming under pressure. We recognise that the customer doesn’t have the specific resources, or often sufficient time to do their day job and complete all of the tasks assigned to them as part of a Salesforce development project – that’s why they bring in the experts like us!

To provide an example of this, our team is currently working on an implementation project, where the planned go live date has been delayed for over four months. 

What are the reasons for this? They’ve had members of staff move on to other opportunities so they’ve had no choice but to recruit new staff, which presents a whole set of other challenges with onboarding and the time this takes, not to mention the development of a new system. What’s more is the business has now entered into their very high season – which means they are at their busiest period. Taking these factors into consideration, getting users to engage and get the system user acceptance tested has taken much longer than anticipated.

Setting objectives and expectations

By offering our consulting services, there are aspects we always consider when preparing for a new customer project including:

• Recognising that customers always have their day jobs to contend with  – as a result we need to focus on reducing their effort throughout the implementation project by leveraging all of the resources assigned throughout the planning process. In some cases customers want to take on tasks as a way of keeping costs lower.
• Ensuring that all requirements are communicated effectively and that expectations are set on what is required from the customer’s staff in order to meet the objectives in advance.
• Planning sufficient time into the project plan so that we and our customers have a clear view on what resources are required, for how much time and when. 
• Outline the process, such as our Coacto project process that the project will follow and out in place a plan that communicates what will happen at each stage of the process

Need advice from a Salesforce Consultant?

When working with a customer on an implementation project, it is important to remember that the business wheels have to keep turning and day to day responsibilities will take priority, even over an exciting new project with shiny outcomes! As a registered Salesforce consulting partner, we make every effort to recognise these constraints when working with our customers and work towards positive outcomes for everyone involved.

Does your business need to develop an existing Salesforce implementation or are you interested in discovering how it can benefit your team’s workload and general processes? Our registered Salesforce partner team is available to provide as much or as little support that you may need. Contact us on 033 0233 0229 or get in touch for a FREE Salesforce Consultation.