- Importance of management involvement
It is crucial for management to sponsor the project. I have definitely seen higher successes when management sees the value of Salesforce, logs in constantly, also uses data points in real time from the report and dashboards.
- UAT
During the discovery and implementation phase, key users/super users would have been identified to test out the system and make crucial change requests if any. It is crucial for these users to be vocal and understand the current system’s limitation and process well. Key users can also be the trainers to help onboard their team mates on going life. By then, they would have seen multiple iterations and used the system a couple of times.
- Getting the users ready
It will be good to keep all affected users in the loop of the progress of the project. Constant feeding of information from emails to videos, or even having hands on look at what’s coming keeps users informed and ready when go live happens. Many companies also designed t-shirts for their key users/trainers so anyone can call out for advice or help in a timely fashion.
- Celebration
A small celebration to kickstart the going live of a project has proven to keep users motivated. Provided lunches for example allows users to spend more time in the office as they try to get used to the new system. Management’s support to reiterate why and how the move to Service Cloud would be beneficial to the company, allows everyone to understand the roles they play to helping the company grow.
- Carrot and stick
Competitions such as who can get through the enablement module fastest, prize for highest points received on quiz can be good considerations to implement to motivate all users.
Depending on the culture of the companies, there might also be a wall of shame or more time to be spent on enablement “punishment” if criteria is not met. Reports should be set up in Salesforce before implementation of the sticks so the criteria is clear and everyone can try to keep up before they get the nudge in the right direction.
- Feedback loop
It is crucial to set up and communicate the ways of giving back feedback through the first couple of months of usage. This allows the kinks to be ironed out early and for users to know their voices is being heard.
Definitely consider these pointers when you are going live on Salesforce!
