ACCELERATING SALESFORCE ADOPTIONWITH INTERACTIVE WALKTHROUGHS

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Preface - 10,000 Hours to Master Salesforce

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Most Radical Solution For Salesforce Adoption

Learning While Doing with Interactive Walkthroughs

How to Create Interactive Walkthroughs on Salesforce

How to Leverage Interactive Walkthroughs for Salesforce Adoption

A Step Closer to Salesforce Mastery

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Preface - 10,000 Hours to Master Salesforce!

“80% of senior executives say their biggest CRM challenge is getting their staff to use their software.”

Being good at Salesforce requires a strong mix of technical expertise, business savviness and people skills. It is not something you learn, but something you acquire by working continuously on the platform.

So simply said, what you expect out of your employees, may not be inline with what you get from them. Especially, if they are not operationally comfortable with the platform. The main reason being, there are gaps in the way you train your employees to adopt Salesforce. This is the challenge that you need to deal with, smartly.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Outliers, says that, “It can take about 10,000 hours of effort, hard work, perseverance and practice to master a skill. “

Mastering a sophisticated CRM like Salesforce is no less than a skill that you acquire. Say for example, there are approximately 2,000 working hours in an year. Then the ideal time you will take for mastering Salesforce like the back of your hand (in the traditional way) would be about 3-5 years.

The golden question here would be, is it possible to cut the mastery shorter than those 10,000 hours, while meeting the expected goal for your workforce?

Truth be told, it is possible. The computation of 2,000 hours per year might make perfect sense, but it is entirely subjective. Especially beacuse, “Training is not one size fits all.” And as a corollary, if training is done right, user adoption, which is the critical driver of platforms like Salesforce will exceedingly improve.

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Purpose of this Ebook:

The main intent of this Ebook is to help you fill the gaps in your Salesforce adoption with an emerging technology in the enterprise

software space called the real-time Interactive walkthroughs.

It is imperative that you align the usage of Salesforce and your product with your organisation’s business and IT strategy. And for

that, adopting smarter technologies is definitely the wiser move. Through this ebook I will guide you through everything that you

need to know about Interactive walkthroughs. It will help you resolve the issues on the major touch points in your Salesforce

adoption, primarily User Onboarding, Employee Training and Self serving support.

I’ll also explain how we at Whatfix , enable businesses to accelerate their Salesforce adoption and user performance with this tech

and our capabilities as a enterprise performance support solution.

Without further ado, let’s take the step towards Salesforce mastery, beginning with understanding the probable solutions for your

Salesforce adoption woes.

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The Most Radical Solution For Salesforce Adoption

Implementing a CRM such as Salesforce in an organization is more of a cultural change

than a technological change. The employees must first become natural with the new

change and then should embrace it for the better. Resistance to such a change is

nothing new. It’s pretty much embedded in the human psyche. But, the win-win

situation is when employees develop the culture of accountability as they learn

and get trained on the CRM.

Most of the Enterprises using Salesforce sooner or later realise that

their platform is complex. However, the hope that their employees

will get accustomed to Salesforce with proper functional and

operational training is that which pacifies their expectations.

But then, think of this scenario in your employees shoes.

Once they are onboard the platform, they are likely to get

startled by the number of options they get on Salesforce.

Traditionally, they might be inducted through a dedicated

Salesforce workshop or extensive hands-on training and

demonstrations. As an add-on they might also receive lengthy

static content, tutorial videos, and maybe even the recordings of

the prior training sessions.

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Are these methods effective? Well, probably YES. Especially since it’s being religiously followed year after year by companies around the globe.

But, are they the best way to go about Salesforce adoption? Well, that is a definite NO.

These methods, not only have a high time to productivity for your employees but are also expensive in terms of the man hours and measurable effectiveness.

Also, there is another significant issue with their learning aspects. Most of these methods are a one-time effort and is assumed that after the onboarding and training program, the user would be comfortable with the platform. But the learning curve is never the same for all the users. There may be some who are well versed with tech and get accustomed quickly whereas some might need continuous help and support to make it through each day using Salesforce.

The most radical solution in such a case would be to make the existing platform as simple as possible. And the best way to go about it is experiential learning, or in simpler words, help your employees learn while doing.

“ For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” - Aristotle

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Learning While Doing with Interactive Walkthroughs

There is an age old Chinese proverb, “I hear and I forget , I see and remembe r, I do and I understand.”

Interactive walkthroughs is a technology that acts on the lines

of this proverb. It helps users learn complex platforms like CRMs,

ITSMs, ERPs, etc, by working on it in real-time.

The methodology is quite simple. It guides the users through an

application, helps them navigate through its multiple touchpoints

and prompts them to take actions on them. This is done using

tooltips, which hover over the elements on the

applications, suggesting the action.

Such is its popularity that Salesforce

with its Summer ‘15 Release, brought

in walkthroughs as one of their own

support features. Although it is an

inbuilt feature that cannot be edited,

walkthroughs have been efficiently

helping users with some of the

frequently asked questions on the

platform.

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“Don’t be afraid to sail your content ship into uncharted waters— you’ve got nothing to lose and possibly, everything to gain.”

Setting aside Salesforce’s walkthroughs, Interactive walkthroughs are commonly used as an add-on to the CRM’s UI. It is initiated as

soon as users login to the application, welcoming and showing them in and around the application, much like a personal tour guide.

It can also be tailored to highlight particular elements on the application and prompt the users to take actions for a given task.

The basic idea behind this interactive in-app guidance is to explain to the employee/users the business value behind what they are

doing, while they are doing.

Considered as an effective methodology to streamline onboarding, training and customer support, interactive walkthroughs can be

applied in multiple scenarios, wherever the user inputs data and utilizes the available features.

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How to Create Interactive Walkthroughs on Salesforce?Most of the interactive walkthroughs available in the market are in the form of

tooltips or balloon pop-ups that attract the user’s attention to a particular

element on the web platform.

Built to identify the HTML elements on web platforms like Salesforce,

these tooltips have an underlying algorithm that identifies the unique

set of attributes of the elements on a web page. Depending on

the set of attributes, the tooltips suggest the action to be

taken. For eg., if the chosen element is a button, the tooltip

action would be to click, or if the element is a textbox, then

the tooltip action would be to type the text.

As for the visual modifications, there are user interface

configurations that allow the user set the appearance via

CSS. Many companies also provide smart configurations

that help you pick and choose the color, text, size and

other attributes.

There are many open source alternatives available for

developers to implement this solution. But, considering

the time to productivity and ease of implementation,

the safe bet is to get a product that is completely built

and serves the purpose quickly and efficiently.

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Whatfix is a great example when it comes to providing users with interactive walkthroughs with easy implementation.

Here’s a snippet of how Whatfix works on Salesforce.

Whatfix helps Salesforce users, to easily navigate the sophisticated platform and to learn while performing each tasks. The multiple interactive widgets and formats of Whatfix, makes it easy for the users to access interactive walkthroughs in the time of need. It is not only helpful to the users on Salesforce, but also to the companies that package custom CRM’s built on Salesforce’s Force.com platform.

To read the Case Study of how BMC, a global leader in innovative software solutions use Whatfix Interactive Guides, click here.

Click on the “New” button to start creating Salesforce lead

Step 1 of 3

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How to Leverage Interactive Walkthroughs for Salesforce Adoption

For companies who invest heavily on Salesforce adoption, one of the biggest problem is that users get confused as they get

onboard the platform. The same goes for existing users who don’t grasp the potential of a product in its entirety.

An interactive walkthrough is designed to intentionally reveal the functionalities to the user, that could be challenging. Which

makes it an effective approach to curb user confusion, helping them cope with the complexities of web applications.

Here are some of the prominent use cases where interactive walkthroughs can be used to streamline your Salesforce adoption.

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“70% expect a company’s website to include a self-service application.”

1- Smart Employee Training

Training employees is an ongoing process. The traditional way for enterprises using Salesforce is to follow a stepped approach that

walks the employee through all the options that are available on the platform. Once the training sessions are complete, the user is

expected to understand the platform and customize the experience themselves as needed. The bottleneck of this approach is that

novice users would find it difficult to get accustomed quickly. And that would ultimately result in, elevated number of support

requests and also increase in human errors.

The best way to go about it is to provide them a self-serving system like interactive walkthroughs, that can be used to learn the

processes in the application in real-time. This could help the users learn as well as get trained, simultaneously.

Salesforce Training via LMS

Integrating interactive walkthroughs with Learning Management Systems (LMS) is another effective way to train. It will help em-

ployees learn comprehensively with better understanding of Salesforce, real-time practice, and self-assessment.

- Source

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2- In-app Help, Support and Knowledge Base

Help and support costs are soaring high across all the web-based industries. And the only way to keep it on a leash is by automating

the process and reducing the manual effort. Interactive walkthroughs can be used to solve this pain point easily.

- Source

“89% of customers get frustrated because they need to repeat their issues to multiple representatives.”

In-app help and support

It’s highly likely that users will face difficulties and might need help with certain functionalities on Salesforce. Traditionally they

would prefer reaching out to the support team, the SFDC community or reading through their Knowledge base (like Desk.com,

Zendesk, etc.) or watch videos that explain the same. With in-app interactive help, users can be provided with quick access list of

interactive walkthroughs that could help them with their confusion, instantly. This will be self-serving as well as can help in

resolving users queries as it occurs.

Interactive Knowledge Base

Another prominent use case of interactive walkthroughs is making Knowledge bases interactive.

Users who seek help on Knowledge bases usually have to go through the lengthy instructions available and reciprocate the same on

the platform to perform a task successfully. But with interactive walkthroughs on these help sections, they can be taken directly to

the task and can be hand-held in real-time till its successful completion.

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3 - User OnboardingOnboarding new users to a web application is analogous to meeting someone for the first time. The priority is to make a good first

impression and keep the hope of further conversations, alive. And once the user is onboard, the priority changes to engaging them

and converting them to a habitual user. The same goes for new users onboard Salesforce.

Salesforce admins and consultants in charge of training can create the ideal User onboarding experience for the users while

educating them about how to use the product via interactive walkthroughs. This one-time effort can do wonders for increasing

your workforce’s productivity as it will help you automate onboarding while keeping a check on how much the new users have

learned. It also helps with levelling the new users satisfaction and understanding of Salesforce.

Interactive Product Tour

A major subset to User Onboarding via interactive walkthrough is a Product tour. Adopted widely by many businesses, Product tour

is used to explain the capabilities and usability of all the key elements and the distinct features available on a platform to new users.

Additionally, Product tours are also used to highlight new features. extensively. If done correctly, interactive product tours could

elevate the user’s excitement to use the application.

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A Step Closer to Salesforce Mastery

The idea behind all Salesforce adoption strategies is to implement a methodology that is better, faster, more comprehensive,

productive and all the more easily learnable. But the big issue is, as your use cases vary, so does your strategies to tackle each of

them. And without a rock-solid strategy, you will not get the seamless transition you are hoping for. There will be frustration,

dissatisfaction, technical issues, and general pandemonium.

So, regardless of your method of rolling out Salesforce to your team, you will have to pre-plan a solution that can assuredly work

for you.

A vast majority of users who use interactive walkthroughs testify that it makes discovering web applications like Salesforce easy,

efficient and enjoyable.

With its ability to help businesses for user onboarding, training and support, interactive walkthroughs has already proven that it can

be value add to any organization. It is expected that with the boom in this in-app interactive guidance we see today, the scope of

this technology will rise immensely in the near future.

Salesforce being one of the sophisticated softwares that exist today, need such guidance platforms for making the most out of it.

The only thing that remains to be done is that you help your workforce master Salesforce to a point where they don’t need

confidence nor motivation to do what they do. All they would need to do is take action as effortlessly as you breathe and blink.

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About WhatfixWhatfix is a next-gen performance support platform that helps businesses guide and engage users, customers, employees and

partners across any web application or website at the time of need.

At Whatfix, we believe in empowering our customers to self-serve. With our in-app guidance we have been helping businesses

across different verticals ease user onboarding, improve training and reduce support. Our main objective is to curb the user c

onfusion on the web through step-by-step guided instructions, raising their efficiency, reducing the time to train and improving the

overall productivity.

If you are looking for an interactive walkthrough solution to streamline your User Onboarding, Employee Training and/or Support,

then we urge you to try out our solution.

Contact: +1 800-459-7098

Email: sales@whatfix.com

Website: whatfix.com

Blogs: academy.whatfix.com

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About The Author

Gokul Suresh

Mahendra Bhakar

Gokul leads the Content, Inbound and Social Media efforts at Whatfix. A techie by education and a

marketer by choice, he loves consuming new ideas and experimenting with new tools. He's an expert in

B2B content, who eats CRMs for breakfast, ITSMs for lunch and leftovers from Product Hunt for dinner!

Feel free to reach out to him at gokul@whatfix.com or tweet out to him.

He enjoys constructive criticism.

Mahendra is responsible for all UI and design related tasks at Whatfix.

An artist by attitude and cyclist by passion, he loves doodling on anything that he gets when he is not on

his favourite design apps. He also plays a pivotal role in designing all the features that makes Whatfix

loveable. Feel free to reach out to him on mahendra@whatfix.com

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