SalesForce Training

 No matter what they are called, these important team members interact with customers. Therefore it’s wise to have a shared set of guidelines for how to most effectively, graciously serve customers.

 For the best customer experience, focus your customer service training for employees on both hard and soft skills. Hard skills include product knowledge, technology, and tools. Soft skills include interpersonal abilities, such as emotional intelligence, and work habits.

 It’s frustrating for customers when service agents aren’t able to answer questions about your products or services. A well-informed team is the foundation for an excellent customer service experience.

 But how do you best teach your service team members? Many people find learning about a new product or service to be a boring and time-consuming task. On top of that, team members may have different work backgrounds and learning styles. So work hard to make learning more engaging for everyone.

 Quiz employees on new offerings, as well as basic products and services. Provide study materials and offer incentives to promote product knowledge throughout the company.

 Get creative. Make learning a game, or a fun team competition, to motivate your team to share knowledge and create accountability. Invent awards, or even a rotating trophy, to reward those who demonstrate the greatest product knowledge.

 Knowledge-centered service (KCS) is a method to improve customer experience, and reduce agent training time and attrition. This approach centralizes support around the evolving information agents access and collect. As patterns emerge, service managers surface the knowledge to relevant departments for action.

 To learn more about KCS and its potential, try Trailhead, our free online learning platform. The KCS module uses the story of a service case involving a leaky roof after a solar water heater installation. During the call, the agent creates an article on how to resolve the issue and attaches it to the case.

 Over time, managers notice that many customers contact support about the same issue. When management pulls case history data, it shows that a certain type of heater, roof, and long installation screw are always involved. They recommend that installers switch to a shorter screw, and the leak problems stop.

 This example demonstrates the power of creating knowledge articles and attaching them to a case. Because the first agent captured the information, others then used that information to fix the next issue. Because management looked at data, the organization fixed potential issues before they occurred.

 It’s one thing to create an article to help solve cases. It’s next-level service to catch issues before they happen. Use KCS to improve customer experience and the business at the same time.

 Nowadays, every service organization uses technology to get the job done. Some use artificial intelligence (AI) to create even better customer and agent experiences.

 Some agents will pick up these new tools, while others will need more skills training. Help your team learn by giving them hands-on access to explore and ask questions in real time

 The ability to communicate is important for any customer service team member. As mentioned, customer service agents need to know the product — and just as critical is the ability to explain it clearly and well. Customer service communication training should be a key part of your program.

 If agents bluff or seem in over their heads, this creates distrust in customers, which leads to eroded trust in your company. Trust is something that many companies are struggling to gain. In fact, 99% of customers believe companies need to improve their trustworthiness.

 In customer support, great communication means breaking complex concepts down into easy-to-understand parts. Training employees to be able to do this takes patience.

 Helping a customer solve a problem is, in some ways, similar to programming a simple robot. You can’t tell the robot, “Go to the door and open it.”

 Instead, you must tell it exactly how far to go, when to stop, and what to do next. Extend right arm, open hand, rotate 45 degrees, push down on handle lever, and so on. The same goes for service: You need to explain each step to your customers.

 Use the robot example as an exercise during a meeting or training session. In two-person teams, one agent pretends to be the robot, while one is the programmer. Keep it lighthearted and be supportive if anyone gets flustered. The idea is to create an “aha” moment and flex a new muscle.

SalesForce Training

 Emotional intelligence includes the ability to regulate emotions and put yourself in another’s shoes. For a support representative, patience goes a long way. As part of your training, be sure to encourage customer support teams to empathize with confused or frustrated customers.

 In order to train customer service employees to be patient, you also need to help them learn to effectively prioritize. After all, it can be quite difficult to be patient when you are helping someone with an issue. Especially when you feel the pressure to keep the conversation very short. Instead of rushing, agents must patiently listen and ask the right questions to find a helpful solution.

 Use the robot example as an exercise during a meeting or training session. In two-person teams, one agent pretends to be the robot, while one is the programmer. Keep it lighthearted and be supportive if anyone gets flustered. The idea is to create an “aha” moment and flex a new muscle.

 To increase your chance of long-term success, be sure to align your metrics and goals. Are your KPIs around average handle time and first call resolution in sync? It’s hard to be patient and provide the best experience for the customer when clocks drive interactions.

 66% of customers expect companies to understand their unique needs and expectations, but only 34% say companies generally treat customers as unique individuals

 It’s a cliche, but time really is money. So decrease hassles for your customers by getting rid of poor website navigation, uninformative help articles, and clunky chat experiences. These customer support obstacles often leave people feeling frustrated and unsatisfied.

 We’ve all had experiences of trying to get help from a company, only to be placed on hold. Or wait days for an email reply. From the customer service organization perspective, think about how much time agents spend filing many support tickets for the same issue. Compare that experience to a single, effective call to resolve the problem.

 We’ve all had experiences of trying to get help from a company, only to be placed on hold. Or wait days for an email reply. From the customer service organization perspective, think about how much time agents spend filing many support tickets for the same issue. Compare that experience to a single, effective call to resolve the problem.

 Be careful however, not to sacrifice effectiveness to beat the clock. Consider these ways to be more effective:

 On top of product knowledge, teach agents to expect issues, and to prepare solutions — even when they don’t have all the facts. (A knowledge-centered service approach helps.)

 Each customer has unique needs, and many customers experience problems that have no obvious solutions. A true problem solver is able to identify solutions amid seemingly unimportant details.

 Attention to detail in customer service involves carefully tracking the details of the conversation, because they are clues that point to the appropriate solution. Make sure your training program includes ways to develop a detail-oriented mindset.

 One way to help agents become more detail-oriented is to review cases with missed details, and encourage agents to find them. Another way to support detail-orientation is by creating automated processes that ensure agents follow all the required steps. For example, is your system allowing forms to go through without a zip code? Case management flows and automated forms guide agents to collect every necessary detail.

 Smiling team members gather in front of a laptop. They see a calendar notification for an upcoming peer training.

 Electronic Performance Support Systems (EPSS) are technology systems integrated with websites and online applications that allow users to guide themselves through processes. These systems are often used for technical training. They may offer pop-ups and icons that help agents learn and explore the material being covered.

 EPSS technology puts users in the driver seat by empowering them to perform tasks, find information in databases, or present information. The information the EPSS serves up may appear in a variety of formats, such as videos, text, images, or data.

 E-learning is on-demand and accessible anywhere with an internet connection, and can include learning management systems and digital training manuals. Beware of passive or read-only programs without opportunities for interaction, though. Generally, users don’t recall information as well as when they actively participate.

 Though many of the forum threads are developer-focused, you can sort by topic to look for sales-related questions or general concerns about using the platform.

 Pricing: The forum is free to access, but you need to sign in with your Salesforce ID to post or answer questions.

 Key benefit: Your team can get specific, direct answers to their problems instead of sorting through general self-help materials or product documentation.

 Consider offering your team multiple types of Salesforce training, including videos, structured courses, and text-based supplemental reading. That way, you can appeal to different learning styles, and every person will be able to figure out what method works best for them.

 Learning to use new technology, especially a platform as nuanced and multi-faceted as Salesforce, can be frustrating. Make the process more fun with gamification. Several of the training resources discussed above have gamification elements built-in. Salesforce Trails, for example, has levels and badges team members can earn.

 You can also motivate your team and create an air of friendly competition by displaying individual progress and achievements on a leaderboard dashboard.

 Salesforce has been the most popular CRM for the last eight years, and it’s currently running in 150,000+ organizations. It’s a massive sales platform with dozens of products and third-party integrations.

 As a large, enterprise CRM platform, it also offers endless customization and functionality than other options. As with complex solutions, the platform is also complex – meaning difficult application onboarding and training, as well as the need for continuous end-user support.

 Organizations implementing Salesforce should prioritize an individualized training approach by providing a plethora of learning options and resources, tailored to various users and departments, to ensure employees have support for their unique needs.

 A robust Salesforce training program will help set your team up for success, drive CRM adoption across your reps, and empower your entire sales organization to get the most out of your new Salesforce CRM investment.

 Because each organization will have a unique CRM that will likely be a combination of Salesforce products, third-party integrations, and possibly custom-built features, the skills your employees will need to learn will be unique to your organization.

 The level of customization available when using Salesforce makes it impossible to simply set your employees up with standard training and call it good. You’ll need to build a detailed plan that identifies all the information and skills employees will need to use the particular CRM you’ve designed for your organization.

 It’s not enough to say you want certain departments to learn Salesforce. You need to dig down and figure out what, exactly, each team needs to know in order to get the most out of your unique platform. Start by reaching out to department heads and asking them for a detailed list of what they’ll be using Salesforce for.

 Determine how many employees will need training and what they’ll need to learn. Encourage them to get specific. The better you understand how employees will be using Salesforce and how much experience they have with the platform, the better the training you’ll be able to give them.

 Obviously, you can’t implement training without funding to pay for it, so one of your earliest tasks will be to secure resources from leadership.

 Now that you know exactly what skills and knowledge each team needs, you can determine the costs. While Salesforce’s Trailhead training program is free, instructor-led classes can run anywhere from $300 per half-day for an online class to $2,900 per employee for a week-long, onsite training.

 You’ll need to decide which types of training fit your employees’ needs in order to build an accurate cost estimate. For instance, employees who will need to do simple tasks in the CRM may only need a half-day online course, but for those who will be spending a good portion of their workday in the platform, you’ll need a longer training that goes into more detail. Once you’ve decided which kind of training is right for your employees’ needs, you can add up the estimated costs and build a budget proposal.

 With Salesforce instances being highly unique for different organizations, exactly how long it takes to train employees isn’t standardized either. Add to that, people are all different and absorb the information at their own pace.

 If your CRM is fairly simple with few customizations and your employees have available time every day to devote to training, you’ll probably be able to get staff up and running in a couple of weeks. More complicated CRMs with lots of customization will take longer. It’s not uncommon for Salesforce training to take months or even longer.

SalesForce Training

 Many organizations roll out Salesforce implementations gradually instead of throwing a number of new tools and processes at employees at the same time. In those cases, it’s wise to also roll out training gradually as well.

 If you are using an implementation partner, they can help you create a realistic timeline based on their knowledge of your system and their experience with Salesforce implementations. Many implementation partners even offer training as one of their services.

 Remember there will be updates and changes made to your CRM over time and new employees will be added to the team, so training won’t be something employees go through just once. Whenever you update your Salesforce products and processes, make sure you train employees on all the changes.

 A major factor in the success of any project is how it’s communicated to the organization. If your employees don’t know what kind of training will be available to them, how they go about accessing it, and when they can expect to get started, they’re likely to feel frustrated and left out.

 Plan to start communicating about the training as early as possible. There will likely be things you don’t know yet because you’re actively working on how best to proceed. That’s okay — just be honest with employees about it.

 Create a documented training timeline for employees to reference. When that’s in place, hold a kickoff meeting to go through the process and answer questions from your team. Ongoing announcements and updates through internal communication channels, like Slack and email, are also helpful.

 Building an effective feedback system is important to the success of your Salesforce training. Your employees’ unique experiences and insights will be critical to preventing stumbling blocks and improving training over time.

 Building an effective feedback system is important to the success of your Salesforce training. Your employees’ unique experiences and insights will be critical to preventing stumbling blocks and improving training over time.

 A simple survey (whether it’s a Slack poll, Survey Monkey survey, Google form, or another option) can tell you a lot about how to best support your employees throughout their training with just a few questions on employee preferences.

 The key is to not sit around and wait for employees to come to you with their opinions and ideas. You have to reach out to them. And not just once while you’re building your training plan, but on an ongoing and frequent basis. Your employees are experts on their own experiences and full of helpful insights. Listen to what they have to say and act on it to your best ability.

 It’s important to also run a post-training feedback survey to help gather insights into your Salesforce training program – helping you to improve your content and lessons when onboarding new hires into the application.

 Before your training is even up and running, set training goals and plan how you will measure results. Clear goals are a critical asset to improving your training, ensuring high engagement, and finding success with Salesforce.

 Go beyond counting how many employees make it through the training and consider using innovative ways to measure your training, like using surveys, 1:1 meetings, and xAPIs. Be curious about your employees’ experience in the training and be on the lookout for new ways to understand their experience.

 Above: You can use Whatfix to solicit and gather feedback on your Salesforce training content, in the flow of work.

 Think of your training as a constant work in progress. You’re always aiming to make it better with each employee who goes through it.

 Since there will always be new employees who will need training, employees who need to upskill, and new products and functionality to learn, training will be an ongoing part of running Salesforce.

 There are many different approaches you can take when it comes to training. Instead of trying to choose a single option, offer as many different ways to learn as possible.