Salesforce is a lot. It's a whole lot of tool. It has to be, of course, because it manages a lot of data and functionalities. We’d have an awful lot of extra work that we’d be doing if it weren’t for Salesforce, so we think we speak for us all when we say we love Salesforce, and we’re glad it’s here doing its thing...
(You never know when Salesforce is listening)
We’re just kidding… It’s always listening. But it is a huge tool, and to that point, there is a lot to it that you might not know about, or may be underutilizing! Features that could be helping your organization, and strengthening it. Of course, you can wander around the seemingly infinite labyrinth of features that Salesforce has to offer and discover all the hidden goodies for yourself, or pay a little bit of money and take a few online classes. Both are valid options, and we’re not here to tell you where your life’s journey should take you, but how about this: We give you a few Salesforce features you might not be fully aware of in the form of a handy-dandy list! Obviously this won’t cover everything, but everything needs a starting point, right? A painting needs the first brush stroke, a novel needs a ‘once upon a time’, and a strong Salesforce strategy needs just one person endeavoring to learn more about Salesforce itself.
So let’s get into it. Here are 4 Salesforce features that you may be undervaluing:
Einstein Search
A personalized AI search tool that goes above and beyond! Available in almost every edition of Salesforce for free, Einstein Search basically learns your individual search behavior, and then adjusts itself to bring you the information you are seeking.
The results can be personalized by industry, location, or any other factors that you deem to be the most important. It also supports what are called “natural language queries” which means that you can type your search like a normal human would type (as opposed to optimising your words to try and get the results you’re looking for), and the AI is going to read it, find the points of information you’re looking for, and return results. You’re able to type “My customers in Los Angeles”, and the robot brain inside of Salesforce will be able to parse that query into an easy to read list. Crazy, right?! Einstein search is also actionable from the search bar itself, so instead of navigating to entirely new pages, you’ll be able to do things like view related lists, or create a new opportunity. It’s a lot, but once an admin enables it, you’ll wonder how you ever got along without it!
Omni-Channel
Prioritization is key when it comes to the success of your organization. You know it, and we know it. We can also agree that being able to streamline prioritization without any kind of set plan in place can be a bit intense, and can lead to a lot of wires getting crossed if you’re not careful.
Salesforce makes this much easier with Omni-Channel. It’s a flexible feature with no coding knowledge required, which is nice. It can manage the priority levels of your different work items, and makes sure they’re given to the right team members at the right times. It also makes sure that your associates aren’t overwhelmed by their workload, so you don’t have too much work going to people with a full plate. Once set up, it kind of works like a digital supervisor dealing out tasks. Pretty cool right? If you want more information on set up, there are videos available that will walk you through the process. Take a look and see if you think it would be handy for your organization to implement!
Sandbox
Most Salesforce developers already know about this guy, but for those who don’t and make updates and changes to their live Salesforce environments, this one is for you.
Obviously, you’re going to make changes as needed in order to improve your setup, and your natural instinct is to implement those changes as quickly as possible in order to start getting the results you desire. We get that. No one likes playing the waiting game. But patience is a virtue for a reason, friends. Jump in too quickly, and you risk disrupting other processes and actually making more work for yourself in the long run. Slow down! Play in the sandbox before you go swinging for the fences. It allows you to implement and test your changes in a controlled environment before sending them to the live environment. Does it take longer? Sure it does. Is it better to spend a little extra time making sure things are done right so you don’t have to do a lot of damage control later? Yes, it is.
Dashboards
We looked into this, and while this feels like an obvious one, we came across people that have been using Salesforce for some time, and somehow haven’t taken advantage of the dashboards. Are you one of those people?
Don’t be one of those people. The dashboards in Salesforce are an extremely powerful tool that help you better visualize your data, therefore giving you and your organization a clearer path forward. There are some many different chart types, and so many ways the data can be arranged that there’s almost certainly a configuration that you’ll find helpful. Don’t do that thing where you just look at the numbers and try to make sense of them in your own mind. Who has the time? Let the lovely graphics of Salesforce take care of the heavy lifting for you.
