Tips

Tips

• 5 tips for creating customer journey maps from buyer personas

  Comprehensive customer personas are important tools in coping with the increasing complexity of customer journey mapping. Here are some tips on how to do it best.  Continue Reading

• 4 steps to create a digital marketing strategy

  This four-step approach will help organizations build a digital marketing strategy designed to increase their online presence and attract new customers.  Continue Reading

• Benefits and best approaches to B2B customer segmentation

  With the increasing focus on personalization in B2B marketing, customer segmentation is a more important strategy than ever for organizations that want to know customers better.  Continue Reading

• Compare pros and cons of live chat vs. phone support

  Customer experience is king, but it's up to businesses to decide what contact channels to use to deliver it. See how phone support and live chat stack up against each other.  Continue Reading

• 6 live chat benefits to consider in a CX strategy

  Live chat enables customers to solve problems quickly and agents to multitask, but it also can be difficult to implement well and requires synchronous communication.  Continue Reading

• What you need to know about Flow Designer vs. Flow Builder

  Salesforce Flow Designer is on the way out, Flow Builder is in -- sort of. The new update includes features that may not make a big difference for developers.  Continue Reading

• Prepare for California Consumer Privacy Act with these 5 questions

  At Oracle's Modern Customer Experience conference, a privacy professional shared tips on incorporating privacy into CX systems so businesses are ready for the CCPA.  Continue Reading

• How to use live chat for lead generation

  Live chat can successfully generate sales leads -- if done right. Here are four steps organizations can take to boost brand loyalty and close the deal.  Continue Reading

• 4 customer insights research techniques for your organization

  Organizations conduct customer research in order to understand customers, create new products and increase revenue, all of which can be overwhelming without a strategy in place.  Continue Reading

• Salesforce learning resources include free and paid options

  While Salesforce offers a number of free and paid customer success tools to users, nonusers can also benefit through the use of Trailhead and the Trailblazer Community.  Continue Reading

• 7 customer segmentation methods to help connect the dots

  Customer segmentation is essential to marketing, enabling businesses to provide the right people with the right products -- and is a move away from bulk appeals.  Continue Reading

• 5 things to know about Salesforce Customer 360

  Salesforce Customer 360 -- a tool that connects customer data stored in multiple silos -- is currently in beta and will be available to all users later this year.  Continue Reading

• Gaming company boosts call center employee engagement

  Gaming company Electronic Arts boosts customer experience by using a design thinking strategy to improve the employee experience in call centers.  Continue Reading

• 5 crucial ways to prepare for the CXO role

  Technophiles who have experience in sales and marketing, as well as social media awareness, may be best prepared for success in the role of chief experience officer.  Continue Reading

• 5 sales enablement best practices to drive growth

  Sales enablement consists of tools and processes that can help sales agents succeed in their roles, including training, resource availability and team involvement.  Continue Reading

• 6 reasons why self-service options fail

  Customer self-service platforms free up live agents for more complicated issues, but if this software is not kept up to date, users can become frustrated.  Continue Reading

• 6 tips for driving adoption of self-service platforms

  Self-service platforms should be visible to customers, emphasized across all channels of communication and well-promoted. These and more tips are discussed here.  Continue Reading

• Call center tips to ensure successful agents

  Once hiring managers find the right people for the job, contact center agents need both proper training and office tools to be successful in their roles.  Continue Reading

• Trusting marketing automation with CRM functions

  Marketing automation with CRM frees up resources and improves the efficiency and accuracy of campaigns and lead development, but it still requires a degree of oversight.  Continue Reading

• 6 customer intent metrics to prevent lead dropouts

  Learn about the key metrics marketing teams can use to analyze customer intent, detect leads in danger of dropping out and focus energy on nurturing those leads.  Continue Reading

• Is CRM with social media growing less trustworthy?

  Comments made on social media can sometimes give businesses a skewed perception of consumer sentiment. Learn how to correct the data to inform business decisions.  Continue Reading

• 8 tips for getting rich mystery shopping survey data

  Mystery shopping data is only as good as the overall strategy for collecting it and setting up realistic customer experiences. Here are eight tips for investing your resources wisely.  Continue Reading

• 5 tips for picking a call center customer experience platform

  Change comes to customer contact centers as cloud systems and the customer experience movement force IT leaders to rethink software stacks. Here's advice for choosing your next platform.  Continue Reading

• 3 call center improvement strategies that boost efficiency

  Call center agents must multitask like never before in this era of omnichannel service. How to increase efficiency with tech while relieving some of the load on the people.  Continue Reading

• Managers learn AI basics with Salesforce Einstein Discovery

  With many successes and failures, companies create their own AI apps with the use of Einstein Discovery. Users discuss their experiences along the way.  Continue Reading

• Salesforce Circles of Success help SMBs get up to speed

  Circles of Success participants connect with other Salesforce users to swap challenges, tips and tricks for rolling out the platform in their businesses.  Continue Reading

• 7 tips for improving marketing technology stacks

  Being deliberate about integrating a new tool into marketing technology stacks will help ensure they produce ROI and makes processes more efficient.  Continue Reading

• 8 tips for a successful Einstein artificial intelligence rollout

  You'll fail a few times before you succeed with Einstein, Salesforce customers said at Dreamforce. Once you dial it in, though, success can follow. Here are eight ways to get there.  Continue Reading

• Why sending personalized marketing emails is an effective strategy

  For some companies, personalizing email newsletter content still proves to be a highly effective marketing strategy for engaging customers and driving sales.  Continue Reading

• Tips to build a successful digital customer service strategy

  CRM pros from Wendy's, Chamberlain Group and DoorDash offer tips for integrating Salesforce AI and social media channels to create a successful digital CX strategy.  Continue Reading

• AI sales technology trends for 2019 and beyond

  AI automation tools for sales technology have the potential to lead sales teams toward certainty in their decision-making, grow pipelines and reduce risks.  Continue Reading

• How artificial intelligence in customer service improves CX

  AI in customer service enables products and services companies to respond to consumers before the customer experience breaks down and negatively affects retention.  Continue Reading

• 4 tips on getting up to speed with GDPR for U.S. companies

  When GDPR went into effect four months ago, some U.S. companies just shut down communications with EU customers, but compliance can benefit organizations and marketers.  Continue Reading

• Salesforce marketing automation tools close the data divide

  Marketing automation CEO offers tips on bringing together siloed data, spotting sales trends, analyzing sales funnels and allocating marketing campaign spending.  Continue Reading

• Assessing GDPR's data protection officer requirements

  The GDPR's data protection officer mandate gives the EU a point person for compliance complaints, but not all companies need one. See when DPOs are required and what they do.  Continue Reading

• Let customer acquisition costs steer marketing, service plans

  Customer acquisition and customer retention strategies start with people and marketing automation tools. How much you should invest in either area depends on a number of factors.  Continue Reading

• Designing chatbots with personality-plus and gift of gab

  Planning, patience, trial and error and a business-minded team approach are the keystones to developing chatbots with human-like qualities that seamlessly assist customers.  Continue Reading

• Sales Cloud implementation transforms sales tracking, analysis

  Salesforce Sales Cloud has made Thompson Pump's once manual, paper-backed tracking, analyzing and crediting processes fast and tidy, reducing order-processing time by about 20%.  Continue Reading

• Premium pay for technical CRM skills must reflect volatility

  Premium pay for skilled IT jobs remained largely unchanged heading into 2018, but workers will still be rewarded for CRM certification, according to Foote Partners' latest research.  Continue Reading

• Ten tips for honing social media customer service skills

  Navy Federal Credit Union ingrains customer service in social engagement, sometimes the only channel where sailors at sea can get critical questions answered. Here's how they do it.  Continue Reading

• GDPR call center compliance can be a sticky wicket

  GDPR compliance for call centers can be complex and require the collaboration of business execs, call center managers and outside lawyers to establish data protection policies.  Continue Reading

• Check off those GDPR call center requirements

  With GDPR about to go into full force, there are last-minute details and loose ends to tie up to ensure that your call center complies with the necessary regulations.  Continue Reading

• Don't forget agent training in your GDPR call center plan

  The General Data Protection Regulation will affect call center agents. A GDPR plan for call center agent training should cover the expanded definition of PII and more.  Continue Reading

• GDPR customer data compliance for service and support teams

  Getting your Salesforce-powered customer service and support staff ready for GDPR involves more than just the free Trailhead training module. But it's a start.  Continue Reading

• Ten tips to help Salesforce teams prepare for GDPR

  The General Data Protection Regulation implementation date is closing in. Salesforce experts have some advice for companies tasked with complying with the EU guideline.  Continue Reading

• Cohesive AI in CRM strategies requires a singular 360 view

  Implementing and upgrading AI CRM marketing and sales capabilities requires a holistic, multipronged strategy that encompasses all departments and customer engagement channels.  Continue Reading

• How Conversational Queries aims to ease using Einstein Analytics data

  A new AI conversational feature from Salesforce lets users enter sales, service and marketing questions about timely customer data and build charts on their own in less time.  Continue Reading

• How Salesforce teams will feel the impact of GDPR

  With less than a month until GDPR has to be implemented, both B2B and B2C sales teams must be prepared to properly protect or even dispense of customer data, according to experts.  Continue Reading

• MindTickle, Salesforce speed sales learning in merger

  Last year's Blue Coat-Symantec merger posed a dilemma: getting salespeople up to speed on the reshaped product line. MindTickle with Salesforce paid dividends in sales learning.  Continue Reading

• Salesforce GDPR marketing compliance involves rethinking lead gen

  The bigger -- and more complicated -- your marketing tech stack, the more complex your Salesforce GDPR compliance will be, vendors and experts say.  Continue Reading

• The importance of GDPR best practices for Salesforce customers

  The new EU General Data Protection Regulation has far-reaching consequences that extend beyond European nations, according to experts.  Continue Reading

• E-commerce GDPR for Salesforce: Watch what data you capture

  Making your Salesforce GDPR compliance strategy for e-commerce starts with monitoring the customer data you collect, starting with cookies -- and we don't mean the Keebler kind.  Continue Reading

• Helpshift offers five Salesforce GDPR tips for customer support

  How much does the service and support team affect GDPR privacy mandates? Turns out, more than a little. A chat app developer's compliance journey uncovers some compliance tips.  Continue Reading

• Salesforce Classic vs. Lightning: How the CRM versions stack up

  With migration becoming unavoidable, you should understand the different features available between Salesforce Classic vs. Lightning. Here is a chart to help you do just that.  Continue Reading

• Salesforce Pardot certification opens doors, boosts salaries

  Pardot consultant Stacey Cogswell talks about the opportunities and challenges when obtaining Salesforce certifications.  Continue Reading

• Comparing Salesforce Einstein AI across the clouds

  What do you get when you pay for Einstein features in the Salesforce Sales, Service and Marketing clouds? We put it all in one chart.  Continue Reading

• Ten tips for implementing virtual agent chatbots

  Think you're ready to turn over some of your customer service responsibilities to virtual agents? An expert offers 10 tips for implementing chatbots.  Continue Reading

• Salesforce Marketing Cloud certification helps Aussie make bank

  When considering which credentials in the Salesforce universe are the best investments, one marketing consultant makes the case for Salesforce Marketing Cloud certification.  Continue Reading

• Survey marketing leads to sales insights for outdoor association

  After decades of catering to the needs of known customers, outdoor retailers now see the light and are targeting old and new customers with data-driven marketing and sales initiatives.  Continue Reading

• Adding voice, text channels in CRM for apps

  When SpotHero wanted to create text and voice channels to enable agents to assist app users with parking their cars, Ujet was the ticket that made it work.  Continue Reading

• How to define Scrum team roles in a Salesforce world

  Organizations could find greater efficiencies and finish projects faster by assigning Scrum roles to members of their Salesforce teams, advises expert Geneva Stephens.  Continue Reading

• Natural language driving proliferation of FB Messenger

  Companies are incorporating chatbots with natural language capabilities to help improve customer experiences, and they are starting to reap the rewards.  Continue Reading

• In the cloud, tools for data integration gain importance

  Integration software has become a necessary tool for companies that use cloud-based software.  Continue Reading

• Salesforce Quip gets a facelift

  At Dreamforce, Salesforce launched a major update to its Quip collaboration environment that enables employees and users to customize the collaboration interface.  Continue Reading

• Einstein AI drills deeper into Salesforce clouds

  Einstein AI tools show great promise and are expanding deeper into the Salesforce clouds. Many smaller companies still need some convincing, but have high hopes for the future.  Continue Reading

• The four social media CRM best practices you should know

  As social media begins to play a larger role in customer interactions, social media CRM best practices are an increasing must-have for any organization trying to keep up.  Continue Reading

• Eight must-have call center systems for customer service

  It can be challenging to pick a call center technology, implement it and optimize it for the best results. Here are the top eight call center tools to deliver the best customer experience.  Continue Reading

• Benefits of predictive lead scoring: Where AI meets sales

  Adding artificial intelligence to lead scoring can help companies increase sales by better prioritizing customers and aligning sales messaging and resources with clients.  Continue Reading

• How to make your Dreamforce conference experience less overwhelming

  The annual Salesforce user event has grown from a small conference to overrunning San Francisco's city center. Expert Brent Leary has advice to get the most out of Dreamforce.  Continue Reading

• AI integration with CRM tools boosts lead scoring processes

  Integrating AI technologies into CRM platforms is beginning to pay off for sales teams as they start to see the benefits of predictive lead scoring.  Continue Reading

• Top four CRM platforms for your budget

  There are several factors that go into deciding where to spend your CRM budget. Here's a breakdown of the big four CRM platforms to help you better understand your choices.  Continue Reading

• Salesforce certification training can lead to well-rounded employees

  Daniel Peter believes Salesforce certification training helps him be a better all-around employee, a step he once again took most recently with a CPQ Specialist accreditation.  Continue Reading

• Six customer service channels you need to support

  The first step in determining which channels to use for customer service is to understand customer demands, and then supply those communications channels effectively.  Continue Reading

• The importance of integrating social CRM tools into a CRM strategy

  Customer engagement is no longer about simply handling a phone call or letter. Organizations must also be at the ready to address issues on social media.  Continue Reading

• The integration of CRM with cross-channel marketing breeds agility

  Leading enterprises searching for ways to bring agility to the market need look no further than cross-channel marketing.  Continue Reading

• Smartphones sound the death knell for outbound marketing strategies

  Telemarketing might not be dead, but the near-complete saturation of smartphones in the consumer market has landed some death blows to outbound marketing strategies.  Continue Reading

• How AI marketing can make the most of CRM data

  Find out how enterprises can use CRM data to move from customer journeys toward AI marketing and engagement strategies.  Continue Reading

• Combining DAM and DX for digital experience management

  Digital asset management systems predate the web. Cutting-edge digital experiences, however, depend on keeping DAM in order, with rich media served in a timely manner.  Continue Reading

• What's the right mix of people and marketing automation tools?

  Finding the right balance between marketing automation tools and personnel can be tricky, especially with so many options popping up. Here's how to do it correctly.  Continue Reading

• Salesforce consultant certification is the rainmaker for CRM workers

  Hamza Abib has 18 Salesforce certifications and is aiming to earn all 25. But his Salesforce consultant certification provides a foundation that informs all of his work.  Continue Reading

• How to calculate the true cost of a website

  The cost of a website can vary greatly. Knowing which website functions will help, not hinder, your organization can save you money.  Continue Reading

• The case for code in the Salesforce developer certification

  The Salesforce developer certification measures click skills or code skills. Here is a guide to knowing the code skills necessary to pass the Force.com Developer certification.  Continue Reading

• The benefits of CRM blockchain technology applications

  Blockchain supports Bitcoin, but speculation has started about blockchain technology applications someday improving CRM due to their security strengths. That integration will probably take time.  Continue Reading

• Your guide to contact center technology purchasing decisions

  Selecting the right contact center technology for an organization is essential to its success, but with so many options, how do you know which is the best fit?  Continue Reading

• What the Einstein-Watson merger means for Salesforce and IBM

  IBM is coming to Salesforce's aid, in a partnership to bolster the CRM giant's new AI Einstein bid with IBM's own Watson. Expert Scott Robinson takes a look at the partnership.  Continue Reading

• The case for click in Salesforce Developer Certification

  The Salesforce development certification measures click skills or code skills. Here is a guide to knowing the click skills necessary to pass the Force.com Developer Certification.  Continue Reading

• Advisor sees better jobs and pay after Salesforce administrator course

  Jenn Sanders illustrates how the Salesforce administrator course can boost a career. The consultant saw an increase in pay, client respect and a teaching opportunity.  Continue Reading

• Emotional analytics add layer of insight for call centers

  The emerging technology of emotional analytics is reinventing the way call centers will engage with customers in the future.  Continue Reading

• Everything you need to know about CRM for SMBs

  With all the choices of CRM for SMBs in today's market, picking the right one for your organization can be overwhelming. Here are some tips to help choose the one for you.  Continue Reading

• What to expect in the Salesforce Administrator certification exam

  Looking into what it takes to become a certified Salesforce Administrator? Prepare for the 60-question exam with insight into subjects covered during the 90-minute test.  Continue Reading

• Five contact center automation tools you should know about

  There are contact center automation tools that effectively create positive customer interactions and benefit contact center agents, but they can also produce challenges.  Continue Reading

• How customer service analytics enhances the customer experience

  Customer service is arguably as important as sales in the enterprise when it comes to maintaining and expanding the business; here's how analytics can help.  Continue Reading

• Salesforce acquisitions signal ongoing broad-based platform strategy

  In 2017, Salesforce plans to wield its collaborative culture and tools to integrate its 2016 acquisitions. How will its platform strategy fare?  Continue Reading

• Get started with Salesforce certification training

  As the Salesforce platform expands, getting your Salesforce certification training can increasingly make you an asset to your business.  Continue Reading

• How to safeguard Microsoft Dynamics CRM security

  Microsoft Dynamics CRM security can be onerous if you try and lock things down too much. Here is a rundown of features that can help you make Dynamics CRM 'usably secure.'  Continue Reading

• Amazon Go strives to put a stake in the e-commerce market

  Amazon is carving out new capabilities in the e-commerce market with its Amazon Go service -- which may have a profound impact on CRM, according to expert Jeff Kaplan.  Continue Reading

• Why you should care about Agile marketing

  For marketers, an accelerated pace of change is as inevitable as death and taxes. Get ahead of modern marketing strategies by choosing an experimental approach.  Continue Reading

• What to look for in marketing automation software

  If you're looking for marketing automation software, go beyond the basic features and consider new capabilities for mobile, location-based services, omnichannel and more.  Continue Reading

• What contact center software to buy in 2017

  If your contact center software needs updating, this tip will help you focus on some of the must-have technology to buy in 2017.  Continue Reading

• Seven ways Dynamics 365 stands out from every other ERP platform

  Microsoft promises Dynamics 365 will outshine every other ERP platform that will allow users to gain better customer insights and while keeping costs down.  Continue Reading