This week on the Buttonclick Admin podcast, we are speaking with Alexander Salatzkat, Head of CRM at Carl Zeiss Vision about the process of implementing and integrating Salesforce CRM into your business and of course how the role of the Salesforce Administrator is essential to the success of such an implementation.….and we’re speaking in German!

Special Co-host: Rebecca Saar

Rebecca Saar, marketing programs manager at Salesforce. I work with the awesome admin evangelists and marketers to help educate, empower and inspire Salesforce Admins. 

Und auf deutsch: Mein name ist Rebecca Saar, ich bin marketing manager bei Salesforce auf einem Team das sich um Salesforce Administrators kummert damit sie unterstützt und erfolgreich sind... und zufälligerweise komme ich aus Deutschland! Ich bin nach Kalifornien gezogen als ich 11 jahre alt war - also wenn ihr ein akzent hört dann ist es wahrscheinlich amerikanisch.

What’s involved in undergoing a CRM implementation?

Alexander talks about three core parts of executing a successful CRM implementation: using the right technology, establishing the right processes, and including your stakeholders from the beginning.

Getting feedback, or what Alex calls doing anthropological studies, helps Admins see potential issues and end-user needs that can be built into the system from the beginning. It also helps Admins anticipate future needs so they can build now to scale later.

What does it mean to be a Salesforce Administrator?

As a Salesforce Administrator, your role is much bigger than button-clicking and administering the software application. It’s about being a strategic partner within your company, ready to help different departments and teams optimize their efforts.

As a manager of multiple Salesforce Admins around the world, Alexander urges his teammates to help and advise their respective departments and see how Salesforce can help them solve their problems. His goal is to have end-users ask ‘how can we solve this with Salesforce’?

Tips for Admins Just Getting Started

• Join the community
• Watch webinars
• Do Trailhead
• Get some quick wins! And, share them with your executives and other stakeholders to get everyone excited about the many possibilities and solutions you as an Admin can make possible

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In diesem podcast sprechen wir mit Alexander Salatzkat, Head of CRM by Carl Zeiss Vision über CRM, seine Bedeutung, wie man es implementiert und wer es am besten implementieren kann.

Wie kann man CRM am besten implementieren?

Alexander spricht über drei Kernteile eines CRM Projektes. Seiner Meinung nach braucht man 3 Dinge um ein CRM tool erfolgreich einzusetzen: die richtige Technologie, die richtigen Prozesse, und man muss von anfang die Benutzer/End-User mit einbeziehen.

Um CRM richtig einzusetzen, ist es auch wichtig, Feedback zu bekommen. Oder wie Alex es macht: anthropologische studien zu unternehmen um zu sehen wie End-users das System benutzen. Wenn man das macht, kann man das System von Anfang an richtig implementieren und so aufsetzen, dass es skalierbar ist.

Was bedeutet es ein Salesforce Administrator zu sein?

Die Rolle eines Administrator ist viel umfangreicher als die eines Datenanalysten. Als Administrator sind wir auch strategischer Partner. Wir helfen den verschiedenen Arbeitsgruppen ihr prozesse zu optimieren und ihre Kunden besser zu verstehen.

Alexander erinnert die anderen Salesforce Administrators weltweit, dass sie ihren Teams helfen und beraten sollen, wann immer sie können. Ziel ist es, dass die End-users immer erst fragen: “wie können wir das Problem mit Salesforce lösen?”

Tips fur Admins, die gerade anfangen

• Nehme teil an einer Salesforce Community,
• Schau die Webinars an,
• Lern mit Trailhead
• Vor allem aber ist es wichtig ein paar ‘quick wins’ zu haben. Wenn Management und andere Stakeholders diese quick wins sehen und wie alle davon profitieren und begeistert sind, zeigt das, was Admins möglich machen können.

Today on the ButtonClick Admin podcast, we’re speaking to Mark Tossell, a brand new admin based in Sydney, Australia. In May of 2016, Mark left his previous career where he didn’t have any CRM experience to take a job as a Salesforce admin. We’re very excited to share Mark’s inspirational story in our last episode of 2016.

More on Mark’s session: Join us as Mark shares his journey as a brand new admin. We’ll learn about some of the challenges he’s faced and how he’s overcome them with the help of Trailhead, Premiere Plus Support, and the Salesforce community.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Mark Tossell.

Make Trailhead your best friend.

“It seemed to be the right fit at the right time. I love technology; I love changing the way things work and solving problems,” says Mark when asked why he decided to take a position as a Salesforce admin.

To prepare, Mark says, “I spent a week furiously watching YouTube videos, many of which were from Dreamforce, until I met my new best friend which is Trailhead. I spend 40-50 hours a week going through Trailhead.”

Know how to visualize a process and implement it in the system.

When asked what his biggest challenge has been as a brand new admin, Mark says,

“Being able to accurately picture a process in the system that will work in the business.” You need to be able to imagine how the process can be done in Salesforce and then create it in the system.

“The second challenge for me has been the people side of things: convince people the benefits of the system, get them using it, get them active in the system, enforcing data integrity and all of those adoption issues,” says Mark.

Salesforce in a Day helps with adoption.

Adoption is something every admin struggles with. A Salesforce in a Day training session can help. “I put together a program which began with an overview of Salesforce: what it is, what it does, what it can do. Then I just touched on the basics: navigation, leads, context, reports, chatter,” says Mark.

“By the end of the day, I felt that people had a good overview of the system. I thought it was very helpful in our organization,” he says.

Use Trailhead and Premiere Plus Support to prepare for admin certification.

Since beginning work as an admin in June, Mark has received his Salesforce admin certification. “I took it for the first time on Saturday, and I’m really excited I passed!” he says.

When asked what helped him prepare, he says, “once again, Trailhead was a massive help. Also we have the Premiere Plus Support, so because of that, we have videos from the Salesforce University that are made available to us. Those were really helpful.”

Documentation is key.

If he could go back and do anything different, Mark says, “I would have better documentation, not only concerning changes I’ve made to the system but also documenting conversations I’ve had with staff and management concerning their requirements, responses to questions that I have asked because sometimes those things come back later on and it’s good to have a paper trail.”

Mark also says, “Salesforce can do so much, and there are so many aspects of it that sometimes I am trying to achieve ten objectives at once. Once thing I’m learning to do is become more focused and concentrate on one or two key objectives at a time. I believe if I had done that earlier on, I’d be further along in the project than I am now,” he says.

Harness the Power of Community.

The community has had a huge impact on his journey. “The broader Salesforce community has been a tremendous help and encouragement to me over the last six months. The local Salesforce community has been very supportive and helpful as well,” says Mark.

For more insights, make sure to follow Mark Tossell on Twitter (@MarkTossell).

Links:

• Mentorship Central with James Goerke
• True Facts About Baby Echidnas by ZeFrank
• Mary Scotton #BeLikeMary

#ButtonClickGuest

We want to get your suggestions for guests on the podcast, and we need your help! So tweet your guest suggestions, support, etc. using the hashtag #ButtonClickGuest to help us get more AwesomeAdmins on the podcast.

We want to remind you that if you love what you hear, or even if you don't head on over to iTunes and give us a review. It's super easy to do, and it helps more Admins find the podcast. Plus, we would really appreciate it.

This week on the podcast we are speaking to Senior User Researcher Mabel Chan and Principal User Researcher Alyssa Vincent-Hill—both on the UX Salesforce team. We’re diving deep into the world of personas and discussing how our research team uses personas to help us better understand our customers.

Join us as Mabel and Alyssa define personas and examine how admins can apply personas to better understand our users and supplement the transition to Lightning.

You should subscribe to the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Mabel and Alyssa.

What’s The Big Deal with Personas?

Personas help us to formalize our understanding of our Salesforce users across the various clouds. The research team at Salesforce has been surveying hundreds of thousands of Salesforce users (including admins) and taking that information by using behaviors that people have reported to them in order to craft categories of users. These categories help them to better understand what traits, needs, and attitudes tend to float together so that they may make a generalization to help them tailor their development as well as research and communication to better serve various types of users.

How Admins Can Understand The Personas Of Their Users

Admins don’t necessarily have to use surveys to develop personas for their users. Interviews can be extremely effective, too. You can take thirty to sixty minutes to sit down with various types of users one-on-one. During these interviews, you can ask users questions about their everyday goals and what activities and tools that they use to achieve those goals. You can also ask them how tech and Salesforce savvy they are. Some additional questions to ask include:

• What motivates you?
• What capabilities do you have?
• What does success mean to you?
• What is the best part of your job?

As Mabel says, “You can really scale down a huge survey into more easy to bite interviews and conversations with your users.”

Personas vs. Job Roles

A persona deals with a group of users and what they do outside the Salesforce platform. There is, however, definitely some overlap and at first, it may seem a bit confusing at first, Mabel admits. “Personas and profiles do overlap a little bit, but profiles may include more than one persona and personas are a tool that anyone can use.” She also explains that “profiles are a way to give the right settings and permissions for what different types of users can see and do in Salesforce.”

Job behavior is essential in crafting personas. You can understand personas better by looking at core job behaviors and talking to users about what they spend most of their time doing during the day. “Most of us have core tasks that we stick to and that are consistent with our role over time, so identifying those tasks are essential in identifying personas. Personas are a great user-centered design tool and are extremely beneficial in helping to optimize Salesforce. As Mabel describes it, “understanding personas will help admins better design Salesforce to make their company run better.”

Personas Assist in The Transition to Lightning

Understanding personas are critical when transitioning to Lightning. It’s about crafting the ideal profile and permission sets for each persona, which will help you understand the various pain points your users are facing. “It helps you sort of break it into chunks. We’re going to focus on this group first—we’re going to implement it for them and then get feedback from them on how the implementation is going.” Alyssa recommends that you make tweaks to your implementation process. “Use it as a pilot group, but a really focused pilot group that as an admin you’ve done some research with, have talked to current users, and have a good understanding which hopefully would help to set that up for success,” suggests Alyssa.

For more insights, make sure to follow Alyssa Vincent-Hill on Twitter @a_vincenthill.

Links:

• “Build better with UX” - User Research and Persona Trails on Trailhead
• Salesforce User Research Program

#ButtonClickGuest

We want to get your suggestions for guests on the podcast, and we need your help! So tweet your guest suggestions, support, etc. using the hashtag #ButtonClickGuest to help us get more AwesomeAdmins on the podcast.

We want to remind you that if you love what you hear, or even if you don’t, head on over to iTunes and give us a review. It’s super easy to do, and it really helps more Admins find the podcast. Plus, we would really appreciate it.

Love our podcasts?

Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!

This week on the podcast we’re speaking to Kathy Baxter, a Principal User Researcher and Kristen Muramoto, a Senior Product Designer. You may remember Kathy and Kristen from their amazing presentation on Social Customer Service at Dreamforce. They’re here to offer lots of relevant insights, best practices, and tips for marketers and admins alike.

More about Kathy and Kristen’s session: Join us as Kathy and Kristen share their insights and delve deep into the strategies they’ve designed for Social Customer Service. We’ll learn why customers are demanding SCS, why companies shy away from it, and what companies can do to bridge that gap.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Kathy Baxter and Kristen Muramoto.

Have a conversation.

“Social Customer service is about reaching out to your customers wherever they are, whether that’s Twitter, Facebook or another global network. It’s about making it easier for everyday communication that’s conversational rather than transactional via phone or email,” says Kristen.

Yet, many companies are slow to adopt SCS. “There’s a fear of change and lack of knowledge. This is why we’re trying to get our experience out there and let people know that it’s not as scary as it might seem,” says Kristen.

81 percent of millennials prefer social support.

Customers now demand and expect SCS. “Not only is social really popular amongst millennials, but also we’ve found that 26% of customers will turn to social when they can’t reach a representative otherwise,” says Kathy.

During the design process, Kristen says it’s important to ask, “how do I make it clear in the user experience so that agents can help their customers as fast as possible as I would expect as a millennial?”

Prepare your support network.

Kathy and Kristen have come up with 10 strategies for social customer service. The first step is to identify ownership on social media. “In many companies, the marketing department is already out there on social media, but customer support is coming later to the game,” says Kathy. Marketing and customer reps need to come together so they can decide who gets to respond to what issues and what the dividing line is.

“This area is moving so quickly,” says Kathy. To be successful at SCS, companies need to develop deep expertise, be where their customers are, develop a playbook and train their agents properly.

84% of social messages at companies are ignored.

If an admin wants their company to get on social, what can s/he do about it right now? Kathy suggests, “do a search social media and see who is @ mentioning your brand and products. Ask: is it meeting silence?”

“If it looks like you don’t have a social presence out there, go speak with the head of customer support and make a case as to why you need to be engaging in that conversation,” says Kathy. If they don’t have a plan to implement social, ask why.

Adapt strategies as needed.

Looking forward, “we want to work with our customers to make sure our strategies are working for them. We then apply them to their success metrics and monitor their changes so we can adjust our strategies as applicable,” says Kristen.

Lastly, share your insights. “We do our best to share out the research and the best practices that we’ve learned with our customers so that they can benefit from it. We don’t just keep it internally. We share it out to empower our customers to be the best they can be for their customers,” says Kathy.

Links:

• Understanding User Research with Mabel & Kathy
• Kathy Baxter & Kristen Muramoto’s Session at Dreamforce
• Designing Social Customer Support: How to Help Businesses Reach Their Customers

#ButtonClickGuest

We want to get your suggestions for guests on the podcast, and we need your help! So tweet your guest suggestions, support, etc. using the hashtag #ButtonClickGuest to help us get more AwesomeAdmins on the podcast.

We want to remind you that if you love what you hear, or even if you don’t head on over to iTunes and give us a review. It’s super easy to do, and it really helps more Admins find the podcast. Plus, we would really appreciate it.

Love our podcasts?

Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!