how to use salesforce

One way to improve customer service is to invest in customer relationship management software. A CRM is software for tracking customer interactions to enhance relationships. Today, one of the best CRMs in the market is Salesforce. Salesforce CRM can help you automate your sales pipelines, support marketing activities, and improve customer service. How do you get your users to adopt Salesforce? Read on to learn how to use Salesforce for new users.

What Is Salesforce?

Salesforce is a customer-focused cloud-based software. Using Salesforce for your business can help you increase leads, make more sales and improve user experience.

Many salesforce users identify the platform as a customer relationships management software. But Salesforce offers more. With it, you’re connecting more with your customers, and you can also create custom apps to support your CRM needs.

Salesforce features various cloud solutions that you can use to improve sales, marketing, and customer service. It’s a single platform with multiple features designed to help you develop a holistic customer relationships approach. 

Today, Salesforce supports millions of interactions between customers and companies. More than 31.9 million customer service interactions and 5 million sales occur daily in the app. 

If you want to increase your sales, you can’t go wrong using Salesforce. Strong customer relationships will set your business up for better industry opportunities. Let’s discuss how you can get more out of it as a beginner. 

How to Use Salesforce

The first step to effectively use Salesforce for your business is to set up the app and add your users. After that, you’ll want to know how to use Salesforce to improve customer relationships in your business. Here are some tips for beginners to guide you.

Centralize Customers Data

Customers use different touchpoints to interact with your business in the digital world. Gathering their data using analytics is one thing, and maximizing it is another. 

Your users must access all gathered data as quickly and conveniently as possible. The only way to make this possible is to centralize your database. And this is where Salesforce comes in.  

With Salesforce, you can store all gathered data in a single location. You can do this easily by integrating Salesforce with your primary marketing and communication tools.

Centralized data reduces the risk of duplication and provides users with a one-stop solution for all their data needs. Users can determine a customer’s journey on one page, which speeds up decision-making.

The Salesforce customer app provides a single data interface to give your users a complete overview of clients. The app gathers and shares data in real time, keeping your users updated with clients’ experience issues. 

Create a Uniform User-Experience 

Salesforce is priceless when you want to improve team communication and coordination. This is critical for keeping your entire team on the same page and maintaining consistent messaging throughout the sales funnel. 

Of course, the foundation of using Salesforce successfully depends on user adoption. Empowering more people to use the app in your company is the key to reaching your goals. 

A high adoption rate means every user is up to date about the current issues affecting your customer. Every authorized user can see customer data, making them more informed about customer relationship events. 

Generate Sales and Marketing Reports

Salesforce comes with an in-built report generation tool. Salesforce organizes stored data and helps users to make more sense of it through instant visual reporting. 

As a business owner, you need trustworthy insights to inform your decisions. You can use Salesforce to generate reports about leads, conversions, user behavior, trends, and so on. 

Salesforce reporting relies on data from all your customer touchpoints to build timely, accurate, and actionable reports. It takes any amount of data and sorts it to generate comprehensive customer reports in a few clicks. 

Take Your Business Everywhere, Anywhere

A big part of building a successful modern business involves making it accessible 24/7/365. Your customers expect an uninterrupted and consistent experience. So you must figure out how to meet their expectations.

You can rely on Salesforce as a cloud-based software to make your business more accessible. Users with unlimited access to your interface can work anytime, anywhere. They can continue working whether they’re traveling or working remotely.

Unlimited access to secure customer data on the cloud gives you immense power to grow your business. You no longer have to fear or worry about hacking. And you can collaborate and handle customer issues no matter where you are. 

Improve Customer Service

Improving customer service is the key to increasing sales. 89% of customers will likely do business with a company again after a positive customer service experience. 

Salesforce, customer service, and sales go together. Using Salesforce is one way to improve customer service and subsequently improve sales. How do you use Salesforce to improve customer service?

Salesforce gives you unlimited access to a large pool of customer data. You can exploit the data to learn more about your customers and uncover their preferences, wants, and needs.

Data is the key to understanding customer relationships with your business. Unlimited access to data allows you to serve your customers better. 

Increased access to your user’s data is also one of the secrets to unlocking your growth potential. You can discover your customers’ motives and leverage their feedback to attract new customers and boost sales. 

Improve Efficiency and Productivity

Any growing business has a higher chance of unlocking its potential if it leverages data. Data provides hindsight, informs decision-making, and improves forecasts. 

Salesforce automates data handling and analysis, providing users with ready-to-use reports. The outcome is increased accuracy, reduced workloads, and savings in time for an overall productivity improvement.

Employees who would otherwise be swamped with manual tasks can focus on meeting your client’s needs. They can offer a better service since they’re up to date with prevailing customer issues. 

The best part is automating data processes with Salesforce in one straightforward task. The process doesn’t involve any technical steps such as programming or coding. 

Track Customer Interactions

Customer retention is one of the most challenging tasks when growing a business. 54% of your customers will consider dropping you if you need to do more to engage them.

You can improve customer engagement if you know their pain points. And the only way to understand their pain points is by tracking their experience through your sales funnel.

Salesforce enables you to know how each customer interacts with your business. Looking at your analytics, you can tell how they’re faring in your sales funnel.

You can establish each customer’s interaction history with your business. For example, you can determine a client’s last activity on your app. If they have been inactive for several months, chances are they’ve dropped out.  

Using Salesforce means automating the tracking of each interaction which keeps you on your toes. If you receive weekly updates about each interaction, you can launch relevant offers to win back your customer. 

Using Salesforce: The Pros and Cons

Salesforce is the CRM of choice for many businesses. Once you know how to use it and leverage its capabilities, you will never look back. But like every software, it has its advantages and disadvantages. 

High Integration Capabilities

Salesforce can quickly become your user’s favorite CRM because of its ability to integrate with other apps. The platform works together with many other apps to give you a holistic view of your customers on one app.

Salesforce integration cuts combine multiple interfaces into a single interface which encourages productivity. It also allows for data unification from various collection points and easier analysis.

Integration supports other CRM processes that may not be available in Salesforce. For example, your sales may want to call or text clients without switching systems. Salesforce integration with Fastcall will ease reaching out to customers within one interface. 

Native Apps to Support CRM Functions

One unique advantage of using Salesforce is building and accessing native apps. If Salesforce doesn’t meet your core requirements, you can find help in these apps.

There are many benefits to using native salesforce apps. For one, native apps rely on the salesforce operating environment. They’re more dependable than non-native apps since you can bank on their functioning as long as Salesforce works. 

Native apps are likely to be more efficient and effective than non-native apps. They are built on salesforce infrastructure and custom designed to upgrade Salesforce. 

A perfect example of a native app is salesforce call routing software. A native Salesforce call routing software allows you to manage inbound and outbound calls within Salesforce. This feature allows you to speed up customer service and boost sales.  

A Proven CRM

Salesforce is one of the most popular CRM. More than 150,000 companies use it to automate and centralize data and improve customer relationships. 

According to a study, 73% of Salesforce users reported improved customer service speeds, and 70% saw a faster RO1. This data is proof of the immense potential awaiting if you leverage this CRM to unify data points and track customer interactions.

Salesforce has many modules supporting the automation of all three key CRM departments. These include marketing, sales, and customer service. With these modules, you can automate all the key lead generation and nurturing activities.

Complete Customer Tracking

Salesforce provides end-to-end tracking of interactions throughout a customer’s lifecycle in your business. Meaning you can get insights about your customer’s experience with your business regardless of their stage in your sales funnel.

End-to-end interaction tracking provides updated data to personalize the customer experience. You can tailor marketing messages to address your customer’s current pain points or respond to customer issues quickly.

At the top of your sales funnel, tracking shows you where you’re getting your customers. With the data, you can gauge the ROI of your marketing channels and inform upcoming campaigns. 

In the middle of your sales funnel, you can determine how customers respond to various marketing strategies. For example, if more leads originate from your website, it could indicate a strong brand or solid SEO strategy. 

A Steep Learning Curve

The main disadvantage of Salesforce is its learning curve. Many users attribute the platform’s complexity to the need to take introductory courses.

As a new user, you must master in-built features and various CRM functionalities. This is likely to take time. And if you have a large team, achieving 100% user adoption can take time and effort.  

Hiring a consultant is often the fastest way of fast-tracking user adoption. It becomes easier to make sense of the software’s features if users can see the big picture. 

Limited Marketing Management Capabilities

The fact that more apps might be necessary for maximizing Salesforce capabilities hints at problems. Additional apps, especially custom ones, may come with extra costs.

Plus, for a top CRM, you expect all the core functionalities to work synergistically to support your needs. This might be different if you have to build non-native apps for your CRM.  

Get More Sales With Salesforce

Learn about the ways that Salesforce can help produce more sales for your business.

Unify Data Collection 

Investing in Salesforce is the starting point for automating your CRM processes. A critical step is breaking the walls between sales, marketing, and customer service teams. 

Your sales, marketing, and customer service teams must read from the same page if you boost sales. The leading companies combine these departments to streamline customer relationships. 

Integrate Salesforce With Your Systems

Part of streamlining communication involves implementing salesforce integrations. A disconnect is highly probable with a high number of apps and systems. 

Salesforce integrations bridge the gap between crucial teams and improve communication leading to improved customer service. Users are more likely to get to the root of customer problems if they have access to complete information. 

Make More Use of Native Apps

Using salesforce native apps is a no-brainer. The right app allows you to maximize salesforce capabilities and improve ROIs from your marketing efforts.

Set Up Tracking Alerts and Notifications

Alerts and notifications are the ultimate way to keep your teams focused on customer needs. Users can receive updates about the latest events and stay in the loop of customer issues. 

Need Help With Salesforce? 

Knowing how to use Salesforce is key to setting up your business for success. Its mastery allows you to access and exploit customers’ data for streamlined CRM processes.

Salesforce is designed to support all your CRM needs. Yet, native apps like Fastcall are a great option when you want to enjoy more capabilities. 

Do you know how to use Salesforce for more sales? Contact us to talk to experts and discover more ways to exploit its potential.