I'm Katherine, and I'm here to talk to you
about customer adoption.
More specifically,
how to deliver personalized,
seamless adoption experiences
so that your customers can realize value
quickly with your products or service
and keep coming back for more.
I'll even share some tips
on how we've done it here at Salesforce
using our own technology.
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and IT businesses, with helpful “How to” tips
you can use for your business.
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Making sure that customers see real value
with your products
or services is at the heart of customer
success.
That's where adoption comes in.
It's about offering
the right resources at the right time
to help our customers resolve real world
challenges and achieve success now.
But how do you create those experiences?
Tip number one:
Personalize the onboarding experience.
Onboarding is how you help
your new customers
get started with your products
or services.
It's your golden opportunity to establish
a trusted relationship with each customer
and set them up for a long term
success from day one.
We've learned that the best customer
onboarding experiences are ones
that are tailored
to their specific business goals.
In fact, 73% of our customers
expect companies
to understand
their unique needs and expectations.
But these personalized moments aren't
possible without reliable customer data.
Think about all the customer data
your business captures
in the sales cycle, like
how do they intend to use your products?
What goals are they trying to achieve?
Onboarding is where you put your data
to work.
At Salesforce,
we use surveys and other feedback methods
to help us understand a customer's
business goals and preferences.
We take into account things
like industry, business size,
products they’re using, and more.
Once the data is collected,
we use it to create highly personalized
onboarding journeys,
meaning our customer's onboarding
experience could look totally different
from another's.
And we're working on getting all of this
information into our Salesforce data
cloud, which will give us a unified view
of each customer in real time
so that we can personalize and scale
our onboarding efforts even better.
Another action
that contributes to the success
of an onboarding program
is where a customer accesses it.
At Salesforce, we've noticed
that customers usually look for help
when they're in the product
trying to get something done
to help them
be more productive in those moments.
We deliver much of our onboarding guidance
directly in the app.
As a result, we've seen a 50% increase
in global usage for customers
who engage with in-app prompts
compared to those who do not.
In-App guidance is just one way
to meet customers where they are.
You can also use email, text or web.
Just make sure you're using data
and customer feedback
to guide your channel
communication strategy.
Tip number two:
Define customer health metrics.
You can only improve what you can measure.
So we approach adoption
by measuring customer health.
A customer who’s taking full advantage
of the products and features
They're considered healthy, a customer
with low use of their investment, less so.
So what goes into our customer
health score?
Well, we've been building
a trusted relationship with each customer
from day one,
so we rely on data we've collected
during the sales process, onboarding
and at other points in their journey.
We also take into account each customer's
goals,
their usage levels, and feedback
they've given us directly.
We use this health score to confirm
a customer
is hitting their goals and identify
where there are gaps or opportunities.
We then provide adoption resources
and recommendations
they can take to meet their goals.
For your own adoption metrics,
follow the data
and think about the core ideas behind
customer success.
Are they using your products or services?
How can you help them
get added value out of it?
customers face more unique challenges
on their adoption journey
you can learn how to
better help them along the way.
Remember, this is all about building
a trusted relationship
and focusing on customer success.
Tip number three:
Scale with automation.
No matter what size
your customer base might be, your adoption
experiences should be repeatable, dynamic
and require a minimal amount
That way, you have a great foundation to scale
without having to spend
more money and resources.
Automation. At Salesforce,
we use marketing Cloud
to make sure that each customer enjoys
a personalized adoption experience.
This allows us to set rules
for what communication a customer gets
We can also set up simple protections
that ensure positive experiences,
like allowing only one email
to go out in a given time period.
For us, using automation tools
like marketing cloud means
we don't have to sacrifice
customer satisfaction in order to scale.
Automated adoption programs
also boost customer success overall.
If your customers get
only what's relevant,
they start to get that connected
experience they're looking for.
So as you're building out
your own automated adoption program,
keep these two key principles in mind.
Scalability and the customer experience.
Make sure your experiences
are repeatable and scalable
so you can iterate quickly as you grow
and always consider the customer's need.
Using data and feedback to improve.
Tip number four:
Tailor offerings to customer needs.
time and time again that they want to help
drive adoption of their products,
but they want to choose
how much support they need.
Some customers want a self-service option
with clear step-by-step recommendation.
Others tell us they want a hands
on approach with the ability to call in
This is where our success plans
come into play.
At Salesforce, success is at the heart
of everything we do.
That's why every customer is on a success
plan that is designed to help them
realize value from their Salesforce
technology quickly.
Each plan offers
a different level of expert guidance
and support tailored to meet
the unique needs of every customer.
We follow a good, better,
and best model for our success plans.
The Standard success plan helps customers
adopt at their own pace, providing
self-guided and on demand resources
they can learn from.
Our Premier success plan
empowers customers with guided onboarding,
actionable insights from personalized
assessments, and expedited support.
And our Signature success plan delivers
a more proactive long-term
partnership with a designated
technical account manager,
who's there to help customers drive
adoption, efficiency, and cost savings.
a choice on the level of support
they need based on their goals.
We're helping them
define success on their own terms.
Four tips on how you can personalize
and scale adoption experiences
that empower customers to achieve long
term success, including examples
of how we've done it within our own
customer success organization.
Be sure to check out our
Salesforce 360 blog,
Trailhead, and other episodes
in this series to learn
how we use Salesforce products
to deliver amazing customer experiences.
Thanks, and we'll see you later.
