Drive Adoption

Drive Salesforce Adoption

Hey trailblazers, its been awhile. While we are hoping to share some awesome technical knowledge soon we couldn’t wait to get this article out there. Whether its for my work, chatting with colleagues or in the community I can’t seem to escape this question. How do I drive Salesforce adoption? As much as I’m happy to engage in those conversations one on one, I couldn’t help but want to make this available to those who might not get a chance to chat with me. So I’ll be sharing my tips and tricks to drive Salesforce adoption. 

What is Salesforce Adoption?

Before we get too far down our solutioning path it helps to identify what we mean by Salesforce adoption. There are a few buckets I have used in the past to help to get us started. 

  • I want my users to login to Salesforce
  • They login, but there is no activity
  • My users are content to use Salesforce, but not the tools I built for them
  • They don’t take full advantage of it

Getting an idea of what we would like to see users doing can help us dig up the best tools and resources to increase their experience. 

Change the Lens

Many times users and leadership don’t share the same view of Salesforce. Its not uncommon for the pain points users are facing to be under represented when it comes time for development. We first asked for the high level view of lack of Salesforce adoption, now its time to look at the day to day. A worst case scenario for a user is that Salesforce is: 

  • Only used for a single task
  • Constantly providing errors
  • Repeating actions
  • Causing unneeded work

Identifying how the users see Salesforce also helps us design a strategy to increase adoption. 

Getting to Work

Now that we have an idea of the goals for Salesforce and a better understanding of the pain points its time to start our strategy. Compare the adoption goal to the pain point(s) that may be causing it. For example, if users only perform one type of task in Salesforce they will likely put logging in on the back burner. Once we start mapping the pain points to the adoption goals it starts to help paint the picture of the strategy going forward. Running training classes to help familiarize employees without Salesforce probably won’t do much to increase adoption. Check out the scenarios and tools you might consider. 

Reporting

I want my users to login:

If a user is only logging in to obtain reporting data, schedule the reports to be sent to them. Tracking their login history won’t tell you much but it will be hard to ignore the data in their inbox. 

My Users Use Salesforce: 

If you have users in Salesforce the data is there at your users finger tips. Chances are they don’t know how to fully leverage it. To improve this: 

  1. Perform Lunch and Learn Sessions demonstrating reports they can use to answer their questions
  2. Refer them to Trailhead, bonus points for finding/buiding them a trailmix
  3. Provide guides on how to modify existing reports for personal use
  4. Surface frequently accessed reports more easily by adding them to dashboards or embedding report charts in pages
App Optimization

All Salesforce Users

Nothing kills adoption faster than users having to run all over Salesforce trying to find what they are looking for. Salesforce Apps (from the App Manager) are a fast way to fix this. Some tricks to keep in mind: 

1. Make sure users have permission to customize their App so they can add tabs for items they frequently visit

2. Create app hubs for data types/functions

3. Customize between console and classic depending on the app needs

Page Optimization

All Salesforce Users

Page layouts both classic and lightning are fast to upgrade and are where users feel the most pain. Consider the following: 

  • Customize layouts by app and user experience
  • There are many ways to store and show data with tabs and accordians, don’t be afraid to keep the initial page load light
  • Home pages and App Pages are very powerful and should be used as a quick access point to both data and job functions
  • Make record pages more interactive by displaying data for what is currently being done (paths and conditional visibility can do a lot)
  • Add messages/instructions/images with rich text to break up the text and make the layout more visual
  • Use quick actions to surface information from related records
  • Get feedback frequently on the layouts and include users in the flow of what they want to see to make work faster
Automation

All Salesforce Users

Salesforce has a robust declarative tool suite, use this to automate away work. 

  • Use quick actions to prepopulate data
  • Automatically updae values that can be bucketed into If Then scenarios. Example: If a lead of high value is converted flag the priority of its cases to high
  • Schedule follow ups using automation so its easy to know what to work on
Training and Communication

All Salesforce Users

Make sure users get the training they need. Provide multiple ways to learn the same material, hands on learning sessions, videos, written instructions. Take advantage of Trailhead to help users get comfortable with Salesforce terminology and fucntionality.  

Leverage embedded instructions in the pages themselves, use help text and captions to help keep Salesforce as intuitive as possible. 

Adoption Resistance

Much like my teenager, most users seem to dig their heels in when they are told repeatedly they HAVE to use Salesforce. It puts leadership and development teams in the position of having to convince them there is value in Salesforce. Let me make this clear, Salesforce is built to bring value fast, no convincing should be needed.

Inspire Instead of Enforcing

Lack of Salesforce adoption occurs when there is a breakdown in priorities between leadership, development and users. Fixing the communication sky rockets adoption. As you continue to evolve your Salesforce environment make sure users pain points are being addressed, even if they cannot be fixed. Make sure they are being shown the new functionality and call out the improvements being made based on their feedback. When communication start flowing users start to envision what their work could be like.

Salesforce adoption will continue to be a complex and diverse concern many companies encounter, but the more we communicate strategies, observations, tips and tricks the better prepared we will be to tackle it. You can help to by joining the conversation both here and in the Trailblazer community

Hope to hear from you trailblazers and we’ll see you on the trails.