Tag Archives: Chatter

What is the best way to drive Chatter adoption in Enterprises?


This week at Dreamforce we’ve seen quite a bit about Chatter – Salesforce’s enterprise collaboration tool.  Two years since its launch and some people are asking whether adoption in companies is as high as it could be.

To me it seems clear that the key to driving adoption of Chatter is Executive engagement.  If the Execs of a company use Chatter consistently then other members of your team will follow.  If they do not, then employees feel it is not core to their job and they remain on email leaving your corporate dialogue in their inboxes.

Here are three tips I’ve heard to help drive Chatter adoption in your business.

Reverse mentors

This was mentioned in the Partner Keynote on Tuesday.  The idea is to take a handful of your social-savvy employees that understand what a hashtag is and what types of content to post, and to have them mentor a specific exec.

Remember that it doesn’t matter how senior you are, no-one likes to feel that they don’t know how something works, and reverse mentors can help bridge that gap for Execs, giving them the confidence to embrace Chatter even if they haven’t been regular tweeters.

Use Chatter consistently – “Chatter Me”

This tip I picked up in a Chatter session at Dreamforce last year.  The CIO of a large company said that he just stopped answering emails and only responded to Chatter.  Within days employees realised that if they wanted a response, they should Chatter him.  Your team members will communicate with Execs on the channels they use, so if you can encourage your Execs to be consistent and to ask team members to “Chatter Me” the company will follow.

Use Chatter on objects

For me this is the most powerful thing about Chatter.  A social network where you can talk about your day or ask for help is great, but asking for information about a specific opportunity, or following the story of a recent case – that is really cool.  Execs need to use Chatter on objects to ask about the status of an opportunity, or congratulate someone on servicing a customer.  This pulls in the rest of the team to Chatter and actually drives up adoption of the whole Salesforce platform giving you a better return on your investment.

Those are my three quick tips I’ve picked up.  I’d love to hear any other ways that you have been driving Chatter adoption in your business!

Inside Out: A new way of using Salesforce Chatter Customer Groups


From the day Salesforce released Chatter (their secure private social network for businesses) there were calls to open up the network to customers.  It was fantastic having your team collaborating on an opportunity or a project, but often with larger deals or partnerships there were external people who needed to be included.

In the Winter’12 release Salesforce introduced Chatter Customer Groups – a feature that enables you to invite third parties to specific Chatter groups in your org.  Your customers (who could be prospects or partners!) can only see the groups you have invited them to so there is no risk of secure data finding it’s way into their hands.

Now the downside – in order to maintain this security, your customers will receive invites and logins to your Salesforce org.  Their login might look like firstname.lastname@guest.yourcompany.com.  If they are not already Salesforce users then this might not be a problem, but if they are, you are putting the responsibility on your customer to maintain two Salesforce logins.  If your objective is to collaborate with your customer or partner then you might be missing a trick.

Before you set up a Chatter Customer Group ask your Customer/Prospect/Partner if they already use Salesforce.  If they do then ask them to set up a Chatter Customer Group in their own org and invite you and your colleagues in as ‘the Customers’.

This way your customer/partner doesn’t need to do anything differently.  Any users in their org can search and join the group and your posts will be visible in the feed they already use – a much easier way to drive adoption.

Now you have the job of managing multiple orgs instead of your customer – but it’s simple if you use Chatter Desktop.

Firstly, open Chatter Desktop, click on the cog at the bottom and select Settings.  Here you are able to add in a new connection to your customer’s org.  Remember that your login will be the new one and not your usual login and password.

Set up new Chatter Connection

Once set up, its simple to flip between your orgs by selecting “Switch Connection”.  I tend to use Chatter Desktop for customer and partner orgs and web access to Salesforce for our own org.

Chatter - Switch Connections

I hope this idea proves useful for you.  I’d love to know if you have any innovative ways of using Chatter Customer Groups.

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The Cloud Vendor’s Dilemma: Feature Enhancement or New Product


One of the great things for customers of cloud services is that you are on the receiving end of a constant stream of innovation, and all you need to do to get it is refresh your browser.

I ask people to imagine buying a new car.  Four week’s later you see a billboard poster for the latest model that’s just about to be launched.  But it’s OK, when you get home there is a letter from the car dealer telling you when you can go and pick up the new model.  Imagine doing that hundreds of times a year for no extra cost.  Cloud rocks.

The Cloud Vendor’s Dilemma

The Cloud Vendor's Dilemma

Feature or new Product?

But this gives cloud vendors a dilemma.  As they constantly innovate and drive their business forward into new technologies and new markets – when is a new bit of code a feature enhancement, and when is it an entirely new product that should be charged separately.

This week there have been some lively discussions around two new Salesforce products.  Analytics Edition is being released with Spring’12 in February, and is a more robust Business Intelligence service than the current Reports and Dashboards offering.  Salesforce have taken the decision to offer this as a separate chargeable licence on the basis that it is replacing other systems that a customer might be paying for, and that only a proportion of their customers would require this type of in-depth analysis.

Desk.com was also released yesterday, a re-brand of Assistly which Salesforce acquired in 2011.  Desk.com provides a social and mobile help desk solution, really targetted at SMB’s who might otherwise have felt Service Cloud was a bit over-engineered for their needs.  Again, Desk.com is chargeable as a separate product that customers will need to pay for on top of any Salesforce licences.

Is Salesforce changing the cloud model?

I don’t think so.  They have a history of delivering huge enhancements as part of the licence fee.  The Spring’12 release notes contain 179 pages of new features – many requested by users, and delivered at no extra cost.  Chatter was released in 2010, for no extra cost.  Do.com was released in 2011 at no cost to users.

I think it is fair that where a new development requires significant investment to create, and is likely to be used by a smaller percentage of the customer base then it can be treated as a separate product.

However, where Salesforce need to be careful is in not making their offering overly complex.  Marc Benioff has always said “Why can’t enterprise software be as easy as Amazon?”  The risk of moving away from a relatively simple set of Editions with a monthly price, to a base edition plus a host of bolt ons is that customers get confused, Account Executives find it hard to keep up, and the simplicity of the cloud is disrupted.

Cloud vendors should do all they can to get their new code into their base platform, delivering increased value to their entire user base.  New products can confuse customers, and leave them feeling un-valued as the ideas they’ve put forward end up in separate chargeable products.

UPDATE:

Since posting this earlier today Salesforce have announced they have changed their position and Analytics Edition will be free for Enterprise and Unlimited Edition users.  This is due to the overwhelming feedback from their 100,000 customers (and probably not due to my blog post!).  Fantastic to see a business listening to their community and acting swiftly.

What do yo think about the new editions?  Are you happier that those that want them pay for them, or should the price for the base edition go up for everyone?

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Cloud in Action: Salesforce Chatter Customer Groups


I’m a Chatter advocate. In our business I’m renowned for answering most questions with the answer…”Chatter it”

As an internal, private, secure social network it trumps isolated systems because it is deeply embedded in to the Salesforce platform – every object is social – Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities. It enables trackable conversations to happen around the records you want to discuss.

In the Winter’12 release in November a new feature was delivered – Chatter Customer Groups.

Many users had requested the ability to add in their customers to Chatter Groups so that the customer could get involved in the conversation. I’ve been using Chatter Customer Groups for a couple of months and I’d love to share my thoughts with you.

Customer Collaboration is amazing

As a sales person you are constantly trying to understand your customer better, to empathise with their situation and to help them solve their problem (hopefully your solution does this best). You are working hard to sit alongside your customer and collaborate with them rather than be sat opposite them as an adversary.

Creating a Chatter Customer Group is a fantastic way of making this happen. Firstly, you create your group, selecting the box that enables customers to be invited. You are then able to invite your customers who will receive an email giving them the details of how to log-in.

Once in the customer has the ability to see who else is in the group, can post comments, files and links, and respond to other comments in the group. Suddenly you are starting to work together – on a network diagram, a design, a budget planner. The customer sees you as someone that is providing them with tools to help them and not just a sales person trying to sell to them.

Cross Functional Groups come together quickly

In most industries a sales person is just one part of the puzzle. A deal is won with significant input from product, implementation, billing, legal, and support teams. Chatter Customer Groups enable you to quickly add in all of the relevant people from your company up front so they can see and comment on the conversation as it progresses – there are no surprises. As you uncover the opposite numbers in your customer then invite them as well and use @mentions to introduce and build bridges.

Suddenly, what used to be kept in one to one discreet email conversations is all surfaced in a single community – Finance can pick up on questions around implementation dates, and Sales can hear concerns around contractuals early on.

Email Updates – your customer is in control

In my role I am often managing large cross-functional groups across our internal team and our partners and customers. Every day there can be activity happening that adds to the conversation but probably doesn’t warrant a big group email. As a customer in a Chatter Customer Group you have the ability to define the frequency of your email updates. The default is to have them set at daily, and every morning you get a nice update of all the interaction in the group.

I know therefore that all I need to is to add posts, links that a relevant, or perhaps a new slide deck to the group, and everyone will receive an email notification according to their own preferences.

My suggestions

1 page introduction to Chatter

When your customers sign in for the first time they will get a short video introduction to Chatter. I think they need a little more, so I have a one pager that I’ve put together about how we use Chatter Customer Groups, with guidance on @mentions and hashtags. This is added into the group as a file and I can point new members to it.

Get started!

Speak to your Salesforce Administrator to confirm that your org is enabled for Chatter Customer Groups and then set up your first group. Pick a customer or prospect that you get on well with, and walk them through the initial process. Once you are collaborating you’ll be in a position unlike most other suppliers in the market – you’ll be on their side of the desk and not opposite them.

Have you used Chatter Customer Groups? What are you using them for?

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What can we learn about communication from great drama?


Romeo at Juliet's deathbed

Romeo at Juliet's deathbed

At the end of a great day, having then helped my wife bath and read stories to three (nearly four) kids, I love nothing better than cooking some food and watching some great telly.  We’re very lucky here in the UK as we get some awesome television on the BBC – whether it is in the form of soap operas like Eastenders, or gripping drama series like Spooks or Luther.

One of the keys to writing great drama is the use of (or lack of) communication – and its not a recent innovation.  In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet takes a sleeping drug and sends a messenger to Romeo to advise him of the plan.  The messenger never gets through and thinking that Juliet is dead, Romeo poisons himself, with Juliet then awaking and stabbing herself.

The drama results from the viewer knowing what is going on whilst the characters do not.  Why hasn’t the messenger got through? Will they find out in time?  As a viewer you almost want to shout out “She’s not dead! She’s just sleeping!”

In many modern dramas and soap operas you’ll find an absence of mobile phones and a plethora of assumptions.  Instead of asking someone where they were, or what they were discussing, the drama allows the characters to make assumptions.  We the viewer know exactly what was said, and revel in watching the wrong decisions being made as harmless situations such as a friendly chat between friends is misconstrued and escalates into a great story line.

Don’t let your business become a soap opera

In business the same scenario can play out.  Lack of communication compensated with assumptions.  It’s all to easy to assume what another team’s plan is, to assume that they know what yours is.  It’s all to easy to forget to communicate with your fellow employees and just focus on your own work.

You cannot over communicate.  It’s not possible.  If you are big enough you should have a Chief Communication Officer.  Here are some suggestions of tactics they might implement and manage.

Corporate Social Network. Whether its Chatter, Yammer, Jive or any other service – get a social network in place and drive its use from the top of the business down.  Communicate with your teams about forecasts, campaigns, competition, customer wins through this medium.  Get people talking.  Get people working as a team.

Quarterly All Hands Meeting. These are so powerful for your teams.  Don’t just schedule them out into the future and pitch up on the day with some stats.  Give your teams something unique, new, something they couldn’t get anywhere else.  Tell them why your company is going to blow the competition away.  This is your rock concert, your opportunity to hype and motivate your team.

Exec Blog/Newsletter. How many companies have said “Welcome to the first edition of our CEO’s newsletter”? Lots.  How many have said that about a second or third edition?  Very few.  If you are going to write communications then make it regular (not necessarily often, but regular) and give unique exciting news.  All of that stuff you discuss in the Board Meeting that is way too important for the team?  That is the stuff to put in it. Think about the terrible newsletters you receive in your inbox and delete.  Don’t write one of them.

Volunteering.  Companies spend a fortune on team building days attempting to build bridges between departments.  Why don’t you go and build some real bridges with a wildlife trust, or knock down some real walls at a social redevelopment?  You will give your teams great stories to talk about back in the office, having done some real team building and great work at the same time.

I hope some of these ideas inspire you to communicate more.  The next time you are watching a great drama, and seeing a situation spiral out of control because of poor communication, commit to yourself that you won’t let that happen in your business.

Have you ever misconstrued something within your business?  How have you improved the way your teams communicate?  I’d love to know your stories of poor (and great) communication in the comments section below!

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Salesforce Chatter – a bit like moving up to Big School


Anyone that knows me understands that I am passionate about Salesforce’s Chatter product and the huge benefits that a team can get by using Chatter to collaborate and follow each other’s activities.  However, many individuals that I speak to at all levels of business, from new starters up to Directors and VP’s can struggle understanding how to get the best out of Chatter – or even what it’s purpose is.

This story from my school days may help you to explain to other members of your team why Chatter can be so valuable.

School Assembly

I remember being at my preparatory school.  This would have been from the ages of 8 to 13.  It was a fairly small school with only 100 or so pupils.  Every day we would have assembly in the sports hall – with all the boys lined up cross-legged on the floor.

School Assembly

Is your company using "assembly" to get messages out?

Assembly consisted of a series of notices being read out.  This is who is playing in the football team this afternoon.  The play rehearsal has been postponed until tomorrow.  French lessons will be moving from Room 1 to Room 4.  Fairly standard stuff of which perhaps 15% was relavent to any one person.

One day I remember the head master saying that when we moved up to secondary school that we wouldn’t be spoon-fed this information.  There would be notice boards.  And it would be your responsibility to seek out and find the right information rather than having it blasted out to everyone every day.  If you turned up to the play rehearsal a day early, or went to the wrong room for your French class then that would be your fault.

So think for a minute about how your company communicates.  Do they treat you like primary school students and spoon-feed you updates, or do they treat you like secondary school students and give you the opportunity to find the right information yourselves.

Before private social networks like Chatter every business would use the ultimate “assembly” – the all@mycompany.com email address.  In addition, each department would probably have a “mini-assembly” – marketing@mycompany.com or operations@mycompany.com.

Just like at primary school, knowing that most messages are not relavent to you specifically, you drown them out and start day-dreaming about running around outside with a stick.

Chatter treats you like an adult

Chatter treats employees like adults.  Chatter is a series of noticeboards enabling you to keep tabs on subjects that interest you.

Imagine a long corridor with:

  • A noticeboard for each individual in your company
  • A public noticeboard for each department or team
  • A private noticeboard for your own team
  • A noticeboard for each Account (client, partner, prospect)
  • A noticeboard for each Opportunity
  • A noticeboard for each Support Case
  • A noticeboard for the Christmas party

If you want to find out what is going on with the ACME deal as it progresses – follow the noticeboard.

If you want to know what is happening with the XYZ Support case that is escalated – follow the noticeboard.

Conversely, if you DON’T want to know about the latest sales wins, DON’T follow the Sales Team noticeboard.

If you DON’T want to know what the CEO is planning on for next FY, DON’T follow the CEO’s notice board.

Action Points

Noticeboard

Is your notice board empty?

1. Make sure your own noticeboard (Chatter Profile) is up to date, with contact details, a quality photo and bio including your specialities and the questions you can answer.  Update it with the work you are doing, and give others a reason to follow you.

2. Make sure the Exec in your business post to their noticeboards, or to the Company noticeboards instead of resorting to the all@mycompanydomain.com.  This is a culture shift and it needs to be led from the top.

3. Make sure each team has a Private and Public Group.  The Private Group is a noticeboard for you to discuss confidentially with your team, the Public Group is both for you to publish items for other teams to read, but also for other teams to pose questions and share information with you.

4. If you have a question and you are just about to fire off an email to 10 people – wait.  Think about which noticeboard would be best placed to help you.  Could the followers of the Sales Director help?  Could the Product Management team get you an answer.  You may find your question gets answered by someone you’ve never heard of before who happens to follow that person or group.  Delete that email and post your question to Chatter.

5. If you dare, remove the all@mycompany.com email group, as well as the department wide email groups.  This is the ultimate test of moving to big school.  By removing “assembly” you give your team the trust and respect that they can now find the information themselves.

The question is – will they turn up to the right room for French class?!

Have you implemented a business social network like Chatter, or Yammer?  Have you found it easy or difficult driving adoption? I’d love to know your thoughts in the comments below.

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Is gamification a buzzword or a valid business strategy?


I came across a new App on the Salesforce Appexchange last week – The Chatter Game.  In order to drive adoption of the business networking tool companies can award points for behaviour that they wish to promote – such as adding a Chatter post, liking someone else’s post, or sharing a useful link with the team.

Your team can then use Dashboards to monitor their success and at the end of the game period winners can get real-world prizes presented by the business.

Rugby Ball

We all love games!

This is a great example of the phrase of the moment – gamification – the idea of using game-play to drive behaviour in people (consumers, partners or employees might all be suitable candidates).

If you read the Wikipedia article on gamification you’d be forgiven for thinking that this is a recent development.  It considers early examples of gamification as Facebook Places, or Foursquare where users are rewarded with points for engaging with the application.

However, I’ve spent my entire career working in sales teams, and I can confirm that gamification has been alive and well ever since I started.  Typical examples in a high growth sales team might be:

Whiteboards – All around the office you will find whiteboards with everyone’s progress through the month (yes – these should be Salesforce Dashboards on a plasma!).  This helps to raise awareness of what the target is, how close each salesperson is to achieving it, and how long there is left to go.  Everyone wants to be at the top and hit their target first.

Monthly Awards – Every month you’ll have a Sales Meeting.  A review of the previous month and plan’s for the current month.  Typically you will have awards for Sales Person or the Month, Team of the Month, Deal of the Month.  These awards might be a bottle of champagne, or some vouchers, and a certificate signed by the CEO.  These help to pep up a team who are all back to zero after the end of the month and recognise the high achievers.

Quarterly or Annual Awards – Over and above the short term awards you will have medium and longer term awards.  Perhaps a prize for the most sales of a new product over a quarter, or the annual race to be on the President’s Club trip at the end of the financial year.  This might be a trip for the top 10% of Sales People to go to South Africa, Rio, or the Caribbean and the motivation as you get towards the end of the year to secure one of the places is intense.

The purpose of these rewards is to help sustain high levels of activity across short, medium and long timeframes, and you will find these kind of activities happen in Sales Teams regardless of vertical, horizontal or geography.  Sales Directors and CEO’s encourage them because they believe it drives behaviour and delivers a good return on investment.

Just for Sales?

So if it works for Sales why shouldn’t every department get in on the act?  I see no reason why similar gamification activities shouldn’t be in place across development, marketing, legal, finance, support to increase the pace, the motivation and the enjoyment of a day’s work.  Perhaps they already are, but to a lesser extent than Sales teams who have put it at the core of their strategy.

We are all humans.  We love playing games.  Put a football in front of someone and they will feel compelled to kick it.  We should bring this energy and competitiveness into the workplace as we’ll all benefit as individuals and organisations.

Action Points

Think of the behaviours you want to encourage

  • making suggestions
  • car sharing
  • attendance
  • challenging the status quo

and create a game around it, providing excellent real-world rewards for your winners.

Are you investigating gamification in your teams?  Do you think it is a new fad or an old technique?  I’d love to know your thoughts in the comments section below.

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Chatter – Oooh Aaah, the sexy launch of Salesforce.com’s productivity tool


A few weeks back I was one of thousands logged on to Salesforce.com’s launch of Chatter.  With a few hundred customers and journalists in New York, and almost 2000 viewers online what struck me was how this Company is on the money when it comes to engaging with prospects and customers.  The web interface was awesome – with live Twitter and Facebook streams down one side of the screen, you just logged in and started adding your thoughts.  The quality of the video for a web event was amazing - you felt like you were in the room.

As I logged on, I was greeted by a news reporter building the excitement from the back of the room – you felt like you were about to witness something spectacular.  Whether you believe that what comes next is spectacular or not is one thing – but the delivery is proof in itself that the web is changing the way we do business.  I would encourage you to view some of the past Salesforce.com events, and register for any of their upcoming launches.  Whilst small businesses can’t stretch to these kind of events, we can learn about presentation and delivery.  To quote Marc Benioff “The event is the message.”

Much of Marc’s current rhetoric is around Cloud 2 – the move from traditional websites such as Amazon, ebay and Google, to User Generated Content such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.  Users want to interact with the web and provide their own content and comment. 

Marc’s original question in 1996 was “Why can’t business software be like Amazon?” but he believes the question has now changed.  “Why can’t business software be like Facebook?”

Instead of software (even cloud software) providing ‘static’ data for users to analyse and work on, why couldn’t it bring together all of the separate interactions of all of the users and mould it into a live newsfeed, just as you get within Facebook?

The best way for you to get a feel for how Chatter achieves this within Salesforce.com, is to view the selection of videos that Salesforce.com post to their YouTube Channel (so few Companies are using this well). You will see how sales people, finance people, support people can all interact on an account, and see a timeline of activity.  Yes this works well for big Enterprise business, but the great thing about the Cloud, is that it is just as effective for a 10 user company – perhaps more so. 

Chatter is an important productivity tool that will be offered at no cost to all Salesforce.com clients.  Anticipated launch dates are by the end of 2010.  For me one of the greatest benefits is that Chatter will be integrated with all Apps developed on the Force.com platform – there are some great videos on the YouTube channel that explore the possibilities.

Footnote:

Marc Benioff recently guest posted on CNN Money.  The article was entitled The End of Microsoft – a door opens to a new cloud.  It is a quick insight into his thinking, and his view of the transformation of the technology industry to a cloud based environment.  More interesting for me though (and hopefully for you too), is the commentary war that breaks out below the post between loyal Microsoft users and the Cloud Cult.

The Cloud has got a long way to go.  But as we used to say in the SaaS Email Security market – “How many people are going in the other direction?”

Did you attend the Chatter launch?  Do you think this is an important change to the Cloud, or a gimick?

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