5 Proven Ways to Delight Your Users and Increase Salesforce ROI

Published by Dan Leibowitz at December 8, 2015

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I’ve been captivated by Salesforce and the cloud for four years now, so I’m always excited to hear about customers using the platform and realizing its potential in their organizations. However, in my years implementing Salesforce for nonprofits, and now in my role as an account executive, I’ve often been asked, “How can I get higher ROI on my Salesforce investment?”

With the average payback period for a Salesforce cloud investment being 13 months, it’s no wonder that increasing ROI is top of mind for many organizations. In my experience, one thing is clear: User adoption is crucial to increasing your Salesforce ROI. A user-first mentality is key to increasing adoption, because when you focus on creating positive experiences for your users, it makes them want to use the platform.

Here are five proven tips for delighting your users and encouraging them to use Salesforce.

Increase efficiency with fewer clicks. The more clicks a user has to deal with, the more their productivity, satisfaction with the interface, and ultimately, adoption decrease. For example, account executives like myself routinely add products to opportunities as part of the sales process, but this requires multiple clicks. To improve productivity, consider an app like Rapid Products. This app eliminates clicks and adds type-ahead search, real-time cost calculation, and drag-and-drop sorting so you can add products to opportunities and quotes faster.

Highlight how they can improve job performance. This is a simple but effective point. Users typically appreciate anything that will help them be more productive and improve their KPIs. When users experience improved productivity on the platform, adoption increases. For example, when you’re involved in customer service, every second counts. That’s why an app like Case Flags can lead to increased Salesforce adoption by empowering users to improve their response times to cases. Case Flags displays flag icons on list views and case records so you can see which cases need immediate attention.

Don’t make it all work and no play. Introducing some fun into your adoption strategy (for example, through gamification, competition, and/or team building) is an effective way to build excitement around the platform. A leaderboard for top sales or service performers is one of the most common use cases, but you can also gamify other aspects of the employee experience, like wellness. Here at Internet Creations, we started a fitness challenge and built out custom objects in Salesforce to track our progress. Users were excited to add their exercise hours in Salesforce1 right after leaving the gym!

Make collaboration and communication easier. Most employees have multiple ways of communicating (email, IM, etc.), but key communications often can be lost as a result. When all of your company’s communication takes place in Chatter, employees share information in context, save time, reduce noise, and break down departmental silos. With better collaboration and communication, it’s likely that user adoption will improve.

Lead by example. Where managers go, employees are likely to follow. This was a key takeaway from a recent implementation we successfully completed for a customer in the retail industry. Adoption significantly increased when the management team used Salesforce consistently. Managers who are active in Salesforce and encourage the same from their staff typically see higher user adoption.

Realizing high Salesforce ROI is critical to justifying your investment. If the focus is on delighting users first, you are well on your way. Your employees and customers (happy employees = happy customers) will thank you for it!

What are your tips for increasing user adoption? Share them in the comments!