The 12 Days of Salesforce for 2024 (Day Twelve: Improvement Cycles)
TL;DR: Here is my list of things you should be considering as you reboot your business for 2024, focusing on Salesforce generally and Feedback and Improvement cycles specifically.
Here’s the first post in this series, centered around the idea that you can save $150K annually. https://medium.com/@kmcafeesf/the-12-days-of-salesforce-for-2024-day-one-dd8051e0adee
Day Twelve (of Twelve): Feedback and Improvement Mechanisms
What you should consider: Establish a system for gathering user feedback and continuously improving Salesforce processes, leading to increased efficiency.
What you should evaluate: Assess potential productivity gains through continuous process improvements. Consider the impact on issue resolution time.
Annualized cost savings (est. based on 30 users): $5,000.
How I would approach Day Twelve and Gathering Feedback:
While I’ve estimated the lowest ROI for this investment, that may be severely understated.
Consider the impact of listening to your users: Is there anything more powerful to demonstrate to them than that you’ve listened and responded?
From Employees
Internally, maybe a simple, anonymous message board? Maybe a classic “suggestion box”?
Here’s what you’ll have to face: disbelief. Is electronic anonymity a thing at a company where they track everything you do all the time? But virtual employees can’t put a note in the suggestion box from three states away, can they?
Salesforce has famously posted about their Airing of Grievances groups. They’ve been around for more than a decade, and they’re not anonymous. Employees post about things they dislike or want changed (if they’re feeling positive), and often the company takes heed.
The reality is that, as controversial as that group can be, it brings to light tough conversations (without retribution) that, when dealt with constructively, can change the game for everyone.
Serving employees like they’re your most important customers will:
- empower them to own and make change,
- create internal loyalty that feeds external loyalty, and
- build a culture that rewards honesty and integrity.
From Customers
Asking honestly for real feedback from customers can make you feel vulnerable. And that is why you need to do it.
Further, try to empower the customer to give you unsolicited feedback by taking solicited feedback and acting on it. Improve the way you do business with your current customers, and that will help you generate business. (Read: sell more!)
Yes, you can ask for feedback and then put it in the “round metal filing cabinet”, but — rest assured — your customers will eventually hold your feet in the fire, or more likely take their own feet and their business and leave.
The Bottom Line
You need feedback, even if you think you don’t. In fact, if you think you don’t, you’re exactly the a$$h4t who needs the feedback the most.
It’s not the feedback or the feelings, it’s what you do with the feedback that counts. Get over your feelings and hubris for your “perfect system” and change it.
This is a part of the 12 Days of Salesforce for 2024 series. Here are links to the other initiatives you should consider, and as always, please reach out to me if you’d like some counsel or my approach via my team at Rule Six Consulting LLC.
Day One: Automation of Repetitive Tasks
Day Two: Data Cleanup & Deduplication
Day Three: Analytics & Reporting
Day Six: User Training & Adoption
Day Seven: Mobile Optimization
Day Eight: Artifical Intelligence
Day Nine: Communities and Portals
Day Eleven: Security & Compliance
Day Twelve (Hooray!): Improvement Cycles & Feedback
I appreciate you spending some time thinking about these topics with me, and I welcome feedback and additions.
