Falling in Love...With Service Cloud

I fell in love with Salesforce Service Cloud nearly a decade ago in 2006. I was working at a startup managing an org as a Solo Admin with around 50 users, which were mostly from Sales and Marketing. There were a few departments within customer support: Service Center, Field Service and Engineering. Each of these departments had a shared Salesforce license they could use to login to see what the customer purchased or where they were in the sales process. However, these shared licenses only gave them read only access.

The Service Center Team sat in the office answering customer calls and emails. The Service Center was also responsible for handling escalated issues, meaning if they couldn’t resolve an issue through the phone or email and it needed to be escalated, they would make sure the question or issue was being resolved in a timely manner by Field Service or Engineering. Everything they were doing was tracked in spreadsheets or emails.

The Field Service Team was out in the field servicing our customers on site. The service visits were both routine visits and from service calls. Everything this team did was tracked in a separate set of spreadsheets. These also weren’t real-time so we had instances where two field service members would end up on the same property in the same day because data was only getting updated once a day.

My first few months at this startup company were really spent getting the Sales and Marketing teams up and running on Salesforce. I had to do major cleanup of roles, profiles, fields, objects and data. I also rebuilt all of their reports and dashboards and helped them define KPI’s. It was around that time that the company moved into a bigger office. Up until that time Sales and Marketing sat in one office and Customer Support and Engineering sat in another.

When we moved into our new office we were put into quads of desks. My quad mates were the Service Center Manager, the Field Service Manager and the Accounting Manager. On the third day of being in our new office, I walked into what seemed to be Customer Service chaos. Everyone seemed to be running around and upset. When I asked what was going on, I was told that the master spreadsheets that were saved on the shared drive with customer visit and call information had been corrupted. They had a few local saved versions, but they were a few days old, so they were trying to piece the data back together. The information contained in these spreadsheets contained critical data for these teams that tracked who had an open issue, who was attending to it and when a customer last had a service visit.

I offered up my services to help restore the data in the sheets based on emails and notes. As I was looking at the data in the spreadsheets something clicked in my head. This information belonged in Salesforce. These teams were working with the same customer data as Sales. Why should customer data be in all these separate places? I remembered something I heard about at a Salesforce event that finally made sense to me at that very moment, “A 360-degree View of Your Customers.” That is exactly what we needed to have and I was determined how to figure out how to use Salesforce to give us that 360-degree view.

Later that day as most of the chaos settled I started to do a bit of research on how customer service used Salesforce. I found some really good articles on the help section from Salesforce about Cases, Web to Case and a brand new feature called Email-to-Case. I had never used Cases before, but I thought, what the heck, why not try it out and see what the data would look like with a few of our customers.

I looked at the spreadsheet and configured their process right into cases. I was excited to see that cases operated like Leads, Accounts, Contacts, and Opportunities, which were the objects I was most familiar with at that time. I could add fields; have page layouts and record types. In a few hours I had a working prototype of what I thought would be a good solution for the Service Center team. I loaded cases from a few of the customers that called in frequently to see what the data looked like. I created a couple of reports so I could show them how they could look at the cases in a detail view or at a high level through a metric.

A few days later, when things seemed to be a bit calmer I approached the Service Center Manager and asked if I could show her something in Salesforce. I showed her what I built out with cases and explained the idea of web to case and email to case. I also showed her some documentation about CTI systems, Self-Service Portals and connecting Salesforce to them. The Service Center Manager loved everything I showed her. We spent an hour or two each day over the next week perfecting what I had built and showing a few other people on the team.

Since the Service Center Team was using a shared license that only had read only rights we needed to purchase 15 licenses to fully get them on board. Our plan was to build something out and “wow” the management team so they would sign off on this expense.

The following week, I sat with the Service Center Team manager in the CEO’s office along with the COO explaining to them everything we built and our proposed plan. Phase I was going to be getting cases up and running, a data migration of existing calls, setup of web to case and email to case. Phase II was going to be creating an escalation process and bringing on Field Service and Engineering Teams. Phase III was to look at doing a self-service portal and CTI integration. The CEO and COO loved everything we built so far and our phased project plan. We got sign off on the additional licenses for Phase I and Phases II and III would be put in the budget for the following year.

Building out Phase I took about two weeks including the data load. It was really exciting to see Service Center Team members entering cases while they were on the phone as well having the ability to see if a customer had any open cases with us right when they called. No guessing, no searching multiple spreadsheets. Everything was right there for them on the screen in Salesforce.

The changes we made for the Service Center also ended up having a very positive impact on Sales. In the past, Sales Reps would sit with Service Center Team members to understand if any of their clients were calling in or if any had issues that were up for renewal or a good candidate for a new product or upsell. Sales no longer had to do that. They had the information at their fingertips. It was immediately apparent to everyone in the company how efficient Salesforce was making our Service Center Team.

A few weeks after our go-live with Phase I, the CEO and COO met with me and told me to go ahead and purchase additional licenses for Field Service and Engineering and start work on Phase II and they would see about getting budget for a portal as well as a CTI phone system for Phase III. Phase I had proven to them that the spend now would save money in the long run due to the efficiency it brought the teams supporting our existing and expanding customer base.

It took just another few weeks to have Phase II rolled out which allowed us to have escalation process right on Salesforce as well as gave a unified system where Marketing, Sales, Service Center, Field Service, and Engineering were looking at the same customer data. It was an incredible experience for me to see the value of my work right in front of me.

About a month after we went live with all of the service teams on Salesforce we started building out monthly and weekly metrics. I used to do all of the reporting for the company so I knew that the average “Time to Solve” for Service Center was just over 2 business days. After having these teams on Salesforce for just over a month it was brought down to less than a day. The average “Time to Solve” was 6 hours, I did the numbers three different times, just to make sure. When I clicked “Run Report” and saw those numbers, that’s when I knew, I was in love. I had become the biggest fan of what was known in 2006 as “Salesforce for Service & Support”, now known as the very robust Service Cloud. The amount of efficiency I could bring to end-users was nothing short of incredible. Not only did I become a fan, so did my end-users. The customer service teams loved Salesforce and actually helped me get to my first Dreamforce in 2006, but that is a story for another day.

Eventually my career grew and a few years later I was bringing thousands of customer service users onto Salesforce at a billion dollar financial services firm, building out self service using portals and communities, integrating with entitlements systems and lots of other fun complexity. My favorite projects over the past 11 years of working on the Salesforce platform mostly involve Service Cloud.

I even rolled out Service Cloud for a team I was managing a few years ago where we were managing thousands of Salesforce Users. We used it to manage requests and our internal escalation process. Service Cloud can bring efficiency to teams doing any kind of support work, not just customer service.

Now, a question for you, the reader, when did you fall in love with Service Cloud? I would love to hear your story.

As always, thank you for reading. See you all at Dreamforce!!

My Awesome Admin Heart

My Awesome Admin Heart

This was originally posted on my Facebook last month while I was expressing some random thoughts. Some friends encouraged me to turn this into a blog post, I hope you like it.


I will forever and always be a Salesforce Admin. I do not care how far I move up in the world, my heart and soul will forever be with the awesome admin community.

I have been that person spending my Friday night figuring out a formula or validation rule that just was not working. Then, I was that person jumping for joy at my parents’ house, my apartment or even at my desk when I finally got my formula or validation rule to work!

I have been that person on the phone with end users at 9 PM helping them through a problem. Then, I was that person tearing up at my desk reading a thank you card from the user I helped. I not only helped them, I taught them.

I have been that person cleaning up data; making it pretty and designing validation rules to make it useful. Then, I was that person presenting my efforts in front of executives, getting nods and smiles for my dedication to clean data.

I have been that person almost in tears heading to a user group because I had a boss that was screaming at me to do something that I didn't know how to do; walking out of the meeting with renewed hope when someone helped me. Then, I was that person moving onto a job where I was appreciated for the knowledge I gained within the community.

I have been that person who built an amazing solution in an afternoon in the best platform in the world wowing end users. Then, I was that person that realized Salesforce was the only platform I ever wanted to work on.

I have been that person accepting an award from business users for my design and implementation of a large-scale solution. Then, I was that person presenting an award to others who have built even better solutions.

I have been the person who was yelled at when something I built didn't work as expected (oops should have tested it in sandbox first). Then, I was the person that learned from my mistakes and implemented a better process, admitting that I could have done better.

I have been that person taking a phone call from another admin in my local community helping them sort through a formula field they could not build. Then, I was that person who realized that serving those in my local Salesforce community was my calling and my duty.

I have been that person wiping away tears of a new admin at a user group who had Salesforce thrown upon them not knowing what to do next. Then, I was that person who realized I could help these new and next generation admins by sharing my knowledge and things I have learned over the past decade.

I have been that person who planned my whole weekend around a Salesforce release going live in sandboxes so I could play with the new features. Then, I was that person who found the Salesforce community on Twitter, realizing I was not alone in my plans.

I have been that person who begged my manager to send me to Dreamforce. Then, I was that person who brought back so many ideas that my boss became so excited about Dreamforce he allocated budget for both of us to attend the following year.

I have been that person who helped another admin just because. Then, I was that person that told them to pay it forward.

I have been that person who shook in fright before presenting at a user group meeting for the first time. Then, I was that person being asked to interview for positions solely based on my presentations at user groups.

I have been that person who realized that presenting at a user group was not so bad, so I decided to lead one. Then, I was that person who decided to lead three.

Through the good the bad and the ugly I have been a Salesforce Admin. Forever and always an Awesome Admin.


Thank you for reading.

Cheryl

PS - Here are my upcoming speaking engagements:

4/16 - 9:00 AM - NYC Salesforce.com User Group - Process Builder and other Awesome Admin Tools

4/23 - Salesforce World Tour Chicago - You can find me in the Admin Zone 

4/30 - 6:30 PM -  Financial Services Salesforce.com User Group - Householding/Spring '15 Features

Dear Salesforce Product Management...Thanks For The Wings!

Dear Salesforce Product Management,

Before you start reading, I want to let you know that this isn’t another post telling you all of the ideas you need to implement yesterday, this is a post to say thank you.  I sit here writing this post just after playing with Lightning Process Builder and re-building a fairly complex process we currently have in code.  I was able to re-build 90% of this process that updates cases and inserts new records when certain things happen on a case.  If I could reach out and hug you through my MacBook I would. 

After sitting here trying out my new process in a developer org I started to think, really started to think why I love Salesforce the company and the platform so much.  It’s because of tools like this.  It is because people like me, who have zero coding experience can easily build out a huge complex process in less than an hour.  I re-built most of this in 43 minutes.  Yes, I timed myself, because I was curious. 

This brought me back to why I first fell in love with the Salesforce platform and why I think the company has been so successful.  It is because Salesforce has made its platform configurable to a businessperson.  Someone who really understands his or her business can set the platform up pretty quickly and easily to meet business needs. 

My thoughts naturally turned to my own career path wondering what my career would have been like if Lightning Process Builder had come about seven or eight years ago.  Then, I started to think about the people I met at Dreamforce this past October who are just starting out their Salesforce Admin careers.  Some aren’t full time Salesforce Administrators; actually most of people I met after my sessions or in the Admin Zone were their company’s Salesforce Administrator plus something else (secretary, operations analyst, office manager, etc.).  I realized that this isn’t just a tool to help automate business process; this is a tool for career path.  I guarantee you there is someone sitting at their job right now, who isn’t happy, who catches on, gets certified and gets a better job; a higher paying job; a job that they love where people treat them with respect because they are the subject matter expert for a tool that that their company relies on to do business.

Each time you build something like this for Administrators and Developers to use, you aren’t just making the platform better, faster and easier to configure.  You are giving someone his or her wings.  Wings to a career path, wings to fly out of a job they maybe stuck in because they need to pay bills, take care of their families. 

I’ve had my wings for just over ten years now and my career is soaring at over thirty thousand feet.  If it weren’t for the Salesforce platform I may still be answering someone else’s phone.

If anyone in product management reads this, please take a moment to go into the community today and see what you have built, what you have really built.  Look at all of the ideas posted, the conversations happening in the various groups, and the people helping each other on Answers.  We exist because of you. 

Thank you,

Cheryl Feldman

Owner of Awesome Admin Wings

My Sessions at Dreamforce

I am so excited for Dreamforce 2014!  This is the first year I'm presenting and I'm presenting five times!  Here is the list of sessions where I'm presenting. 

Monday
Admins and Business Analysts: Agents of Change

1:00 PM - 1:30 PM

Moscone Center West, Admin Theater Zone 

Tuesday

So You're a Salesforce Admin..Now What?

10:15 AM - 10:35 AM

Moscone Center West, Admin Theater Zone 

Why Button Click Developers are the New MacGyvers

11:15 AM - 11:45 AM

Moscone Center West, Community Lounge 

Wednesday

 Kicking a Hole in the Glass Ceiling

11:00 AM - 11:40 AM

Hilton San Francisco Union Square, Plaza A 

Thursday

Hands-on Workshop: Introduction to Point-And-Click App Building on Force.com

8:30 AM - 11:00 AM

Moscone Center West, 2020

These are sessions that I will be attending and you should too!

Monday

Success Community Keynote

9:00 AM - 10:00 AM

San Francisco Marriott Marquis, Golden Gate A,B 

I'll be in the Admin Zone at Mascone West for most of the day, so come by and say hello, especially since it will be my Birthday :)

Tuesday

Welcome to the Customer Success Platform with Marc Benioff & Special Guests

1:30 PM - 3:30 PM

Moscone Center South, Main Keynote Room 

 Dreamforce Gala

6:30 PM - 10:00 PM

Civic Center, Civic Center Plaza 

Wednesday

Salesforce Admin Keynote

9:00 AM - 10:00 AM

Hilton San Francisco Union Square, Grand Ballroom B

 

Complete Customer Intelligence Driven By the Best 3rd Party Data

5:00 PM - 5:40 PM

San Francisco Marriott Marquis, Yerba Buena - Salons 10, 11, 12 

Thursday

Marc Benioff & Parker Harris Q&A

2:00 PM - 3:00 PM

Moscone Center West, Product Keynote Room

See you in less than a week!!

Cheryl

We Are Admins…Hear Us Roar

Dreamforce 2014 is going to be epic and not just because Bruno Mars is performing.  It’s going to be epic because history is going to be made right in front of our eyes.  For the first time ever, Admins are going to have a place to call our own; a place where you can grow as an admin, get your questions answered, get help on that formula field or validation rule, or think about what’s next in your career path; a place where Admins are appreciated and recognized for your achievements on the Salesforce platform, where you will realize that you aren't just a Salesforce Admin, but an Awesome Admin.

The place I’m referring to above is the Admin Zone.  If you are a Salesforce Admin, want to be a Salesforce Admin, or a Developer that is looking to do more with clicks you need to be in the Admin Zone as much as possible.  There are so many great sessions and things to take away from the Admin Zone that you will be able to learn everything from creating basic apps to being a MacGyver Admin.  

In addition to this history-making Admin Zone, we are going to have a Keynote!  Our very own Admin Keynote on Wednesday, October 15^th at 9 AM, this is when the real history will be made.  This is where all of us Admins will Roar together with one loud voice.

It doesn’t just stop there, the Admin Keynote will have surprise Guest Speakers, Salesforce swag, Awesome Admins that you know and love from the Salesforce Community.  I am telling you, as an Admin, this Keynote is not to be missed.  If you’re an Admin, this is where you need to be to show the world how awesome it is to be a Salesforce Admins and that we are the heartbeat of our Salesforce implementations. 

If all of that wasn’t awesome enough, what if I told you that you could be in the front row of the Admin Keynote?!  Be up close and personal with some of your favorite admins, including Mr. Button Click Admin himself, Mike Gerholdt!  I have the honor of giving away two front-row seats to the Admin Keynote! 

To enter the contest to win one of two front row seats you will need to do ALL of the following:

1. Make sure you’re registered for the Admin Keynote here
2. Comment on this blog post telling me you want to be in the front row of the Admin Keynote
3. Share this blog post on twitter or the community with the hashtag #AwesomeAdmin letting everyone know that you want to be in the front row of the Admin Keynote.

Winners will be selected at random on October 10^th, 2014.

Looking forward to seeing all of you at the Admin Keynote!  

As always, thank you for reading!

Cheryl

Packing for Dreamforce

Recently, I watched the Road to Dreamforce webcast on Admin Success and boy was it amazing.  They talked about everything from top five sessions for admins, the new admin zone and packing for Dreamforce.   If you haven’t checked this series out, you can watch all of the episodes here.  A new episode airs live every Tuesday at 11 AM PST.  While you are watching the episodes live you can tweet with the hash tag #RoadToDF14 and they will answer some questions live!  These live episodes have been so much fun, I really try to block out my calendar so I can watch them live, but if you can’t, they are recorded and available usually within a few hours of airing.

One of the exciting items announced during this episode is that they are having a “Pack your Bags” contest where you can win a Premium Dreamforce Pass!   Per the Dreamforce website a Premium Pass is “The Dreamforce Premium Pass is an upgraded pass available to any full conference Dreamforce registrant looking for exclusive VIP perks.”  All you have you to do is tweet your packing list or a picture of your bag you are packing for Dreamforce with the hashtag #DF14COS.  In case you’re curious, COS stands for Circle of Success, you can read more about Circle of Success here (see #3).

Dreamforce 2014 will be my sixth Dreamforce, and even though I’ve been before, I always struggle with what to pack.  I am definitely one of those people that if I could, I would pack my entire bedroom and bring it with me, but since I’m only allowing myself one checked bag this will not be possible.  I know, I know, first world problems!  What to pack had already been on my mind even before this Road to Dreamforce episode.  I was already tweeting asking people what types of shoes they were bringing and it if it was too early to shop for Dreamforce.  I guess I’m not alone in my thoughts, because others tweeted back that they were also already shopping and preparing.

In response to a few of my tweets, I had some people asking me some specific questions on what I was going to pack, as well as I had people tweeting me after this episode asking me what I was going to pack.  I figured I would use this contest as an opportunity to help some other people who haven’t been to Dreamforce before or those who are just struggling with what to pack.   

I am dividing this up into a few separate posts so you can get to different topics easily.

Clothes with some outfit ideas

Shoes

Makeup & Hair

My suitcase, accessories and other essentials

Electronics

As always, thank you for reading and I hope you find all of the related posts helpful!

Cheryl

Packing for Dreamforce - Clothes & Outfit Ideas

Before I get into what I’m packing clothes-wise and some outfit ideas I figured I would tell you about my style. I would describe my style as classic with some trendy mixed in. In addition to my style, I should probably tell you that I am plus sized, not that someone who isn’t won’t find this useful, but I thought I would put it out there.

When you are going through your closet to pack for Dreamforce, keep a few things in mind:

• Dress nice, but comfort is going to be key
• It’s San Francisco in October
• You will be walking a lot
• Temperature varies in session rooms/outside

The Staples

When I start to pack, I pull out what I call my staple pieces where I will build an outfit or outfits around. I like to have a few pieces that can mix or match with other things that can be re-used on different days so I don’t have to pack as much. Without further adieu, here are my staples:

A Blazer – last year I brought a standard black blazer

as well as a teal blazer. A blazer can be matched with a nice pair of black pants to create a more formal look or paired with jeans to dress up a more casual outfit. The other advantage of a blazer is it can also act as a jacket if it gets a little chilly walking between locations for sessions. It can also be taken off if it’s particularly warm in one of the sessions. Most importantly, blazers look good on pretty much everyone. You can see a picture to the right of an outfit idea showing my teal blazer, the same one I wore last year, with some dark jeans and a white top.  

Sweater Dress – Oh how I love thee oh comfortable

sweater dress. If this makes it into your bag, I would recommend bringing one that is short sleeved. Lesson learned last year, I brought two with me: the one pictured below, and a long sleeved one. I overheated in the long sleeved version. The sweater dress I’m showing I actually purchased just before Dreamforce ’12 and it’s seen much love since then and will be making its third appearance at a Dreamforce. I pair this with black leggings, a belt and black boots. You can also dress this up with a chunky necklace or a scarf, which is what I have done in the picture below. This is such a comfortable but cute outfit. I wore it all day at Dreamforce ‘12 and ’13 and even went straight to the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert with no issues.

A suit – I’m presenting this year, and I know for

some of the presentations I will want to wear a suit, others I may wear a blazer and nice pants. The suit pictured is from Lane Bryant (from last Fall), it’s a mix of brown and tan and I have paired it with a cranberry colored dress top that can be worn on its own should I want to take the blazer off. The suit I wore last year to an event was a charcoal, which I paired with a purple top underneath. I may bring both this year since I’m presenting a few times. Once I have my schedule ironed out I will know more.

Black pants – Black pants, they go with pretty much everything and you probably already have a favorite pair. I wore my black pants on two different days last year. I wore them the first time for the Girly Geeks event on Sunday and a second time on the last day of Dreamforce. I wore different tops with the pants, so it was like a whole new outfit, but I only had to bring an extra top.

Dark washed jeans – I have a pair of dark washed, extremely comfortable but nice jeans that I like to pair with blazers. Because the jeans are a dark wash you can get away with wearing them in a business casual setting. I actually wear these to work all the time with a blazer or a nice top.

A cardigan – As I mentioned above the temperatures can vary in session rooms. In the same day last year, I was in one session where it felt like it was 80 degrees and in another where I was freezing. It’s always good to have a sweater that you can easily fold up and put in your purse when you don’t need it, but also have it handy in case you are cold. Cardigans work perfectly for this scenario. I will be bringing a black cardigan with me since it will pretty much match everything.

After I have my staples picked out, I pick out other pieces such as tops and shoes that can coordinate with them. If you’re interested in seeing more details on some other pieces I will be bringing let me know, and I will write a follow up post.

I hope this post helps some of you and gives you some ideas on which items from your closet will make it into your Dreamforce bag. I would love to see what you are bringing, so write a post, take a picture or make a list and tweet it out with the hashtag #DF14COS so you can enter the contest too!

Looking forward to seeing you in October and as always, thank you for reading.

Cheryl