Today’s post continues my blog series, taking an in-depth look at two critical issues that occur post launching a product on the AppExchange:
- failure to play well with others
- failure to play well with customers
Any mature product development company expects user complaints and bugs from a newly released product. If you’re getting bugs, great! That means people are using your application and telling you about their experience. Any chance you can talk to a user is a plus, even if it’s because of a bug. How you manage that customer communication is critical. Are you “ignoring” your users and not even aware you’re doing it?
I’ve worked with a client whose application on the AppExchange is widely used and very successful. They have a large support team that actively engages every email and phone call to the best of their ability. Given their size, that’s a very daunting undertaking; their staff executes with speed and enthusiasm. That said, I’ve worked with some of their Salesforce customers, and have heard frustration with the support efforts.
Why?
Suppose your application has a bug. How do customers tell you? Likely, you have a “Contact Us” email address on your AppExchange listing, or you field issues raised on AppExchange reviews. Is that efficient? If a person has a problem with your application, do you really want their first response to be “Go to the AppExchange”? Furthermore, do you really want them to just email you? Or worse, call you?
What’s wrong with going to the AppExchange?
Let’s address the AppExchange first. You want users to do two things when they go to the AppExchange: download your app and leave a positive review. If they’re having issues with your application, sending them to the AppExchange when they’re in the wrong frame of mind will be dangerous to your App’s review. During the download of the application, direct users with concerns to a specific location. If possible, include links and comments within your app to direct questions to your operations team.
So what’s wrong with emails and calls?
Consider this. You have 1,000 users and you recently released a new version over the weekend creating problems with some of the orgs, affecting 10% of the users. That’s 100 emails or phone calls. How many people are you paying to field phone calls and emails? Sure, you built your application on time and under budget, but now you’re burning your gains on an inefficient support apparatus. Moreover, do you mass email all 1000 users, thereby letting the 900 others know about an issue that didn’t affect them? And what if the 100 affected don’t receive the email? I’ve seen all of this firsthand. It’s an ugly mess because you’re not playing well with your customers. Here’s how to avoid it: leverage force multipliers.
Force Multipliers
A force multiplier is anything that dramatically increases the efficiency and effectiveness of a group. Technology being the most generic understanding of a force multiplier, how are you leveraging technology to better support your engagement with your customers? I’d like to use this post to identify key solutions that can impact your results based on the culture Salesforce Users have come to expect.
Salesforce has taken the lead in building out many mechanisms to engage with customers, empowering the community of Salesforce users to intervene on issues on Salesforce’s behalf. That’s free customer support!
Just take a look at how Salesforce reaches out to its users:
- help.salesforce.com
- trust.salesforce.com
- ideas.salesforce.com
- support.salesforce.com
- salesforce.com/blog
- success.salesforce.com
These are just a few examples of the force multipliers Salesforce has leveraged, whereby they actively engage their community of users while maintaining a streamlined support staff that doesn’t have to grow exponentially as the business grows. A user with an issue, question, idea, or concern can access these locations and either start a new conversation with the Community, or join an existing conversation — knowing that a Salesforce representative is listening attentively.
This high-touch, highly distributed model has baked in a certain expectation from the Salesforce user community. Products like ideas.salesforce.com have literally given the community a place at the table when it comes to the product roadmap! Salesforce users can vote on ideas proposed by community-members, and those ideas might find their way onto Salesforce’s product roadmap.
In fact, the very success of this high-touch model is exactly why you are here today, considering (if not actively building) a product to release on the Salesforce AppExchange. Your success will be determined by how you interact with this community. Here are some considerations to magnify your support team’s exposure and reaction time.
Before you go live
Before you even submit your product for Security Review, have a plan in place to effectively manage your customer engagement. Have an engagement solution developed where you can leverage technology as a force multiplier to assist your customers. Here are some solutions to consider and expand upon as you get a better feel for your customers’ needs:
Create a Customer Community
Salesforce has an amazing product that they use everywhere, which means Salesforce users are already familiar with its application. Community Cloud allows you to access your customers directly, customized to your brand. Your success team and users can collaboratively address comments and concerns. Meaning, one success rep can discuss an issue with your entire customer base instead of speaking to each person via email or phone calls. In addition, customers can collaborate with each other to find the best solutions together. So those 100 emails/calls you managed earlier are now being fielded by both your internal staff and other customers, from start to resolution, with just a single post to your community — democratizing internal knowledge to make it available for all users.
Leverage Third Party Resources
If cost is a concern, or if you already have an existing platform you’re interest in leveraging a force multiplier against, then there are a variety of third party applications that can enhance your support and build your engagement.
In the Salesforce Clouds, both Service Cloud and Desk.com provide best of breed solutions to work with your customer. Both integrate natively into Community Cloud and provide incredible insight to your customers’ issues and your ability to serve them. You can track your progress and maintain stellar customer service while building brand evangelists. In terms of force multipliers, this is the best product for the job. Need more convincing? ISV Partners get free licenses to Desk.com to support their customers.
There are off platform options available as well: Intuit leverages a forum through GetSatisfaction, which also provides a dynamic FAQ, so common issues and concerns can be readily surfaced to your community. GetSatisfaction actually has an app on the AppExchange, where cases are created from the tickets in your GetSatisfaction community. Screensteps allows you to provide a knowledge base to your customers that is dynamically populated and easy to access and navigate.
Leverage Twitter
Including a hashtag for your product’s support is free. If you’ve a team of responsive support staff reading and replying to those tweets, you’ve effectively converted numerous phone calls into a single response to a community of users. In fact, Salesforce’s Service Cloud directly integrates with Twitter and allows to support users through that channel natively.
Leverage a Blog
If General Electric, the massive multinational conglomerate, is leveraging a blog to communicate to their customers and interact with them, addressing concerns and suggestions, then why aren’t you? It’s part of a high-touch customer service solution that has resulted in high customer service scores for GE (as tracked by ASCI).
Let your users know what’s coming down the line in your product roadmap, especially if they were responsible for it being added to your roadmap. Let them know of any current issues you’re addressing. Elicit feedback directly and engage with them!
These are just a few options, in a sea of choices, you can leverage to enhance your support solution and better integrate to the Salesforce community of users. Your customers will expect a similar experience to what they’ve received already from Salesforce, as your product will be viewed as an extension of their Salesforce experience.
Daisy-chaining these solution together is the true force multiplier. It allows you to reach your customers where they spend their time online and create customer success. Each channel provides another layer of connection and engagement that can lead your customers from frustration to success and have them vested in your success as well.
It’s worth your investment
Life after Security Review will have its ups and downs; but believe me, it’s worth it. You’re not only providing a new product, you’re enhancing a vibrant, dynamic culture. You’ll have bugs, but that only makes the adventure you’re about to embark on all the more worthwhile and create more opportunities to connect and wow your customers. Enjoy it! And most importantly, get to know your customers more — because that’s what this whole thing is all about! Next week, tune in for my final installment of this series where I’ll tie everything together with a bow. Thanks for reading!
