Hi Everyone - For those that don't have a dedicated CS Software tool and use SFDC, I'd love to hear

Hey @Petra Makaremi, spoke with Silvia already but definitely happy to connect.  Reach out on LinkedIn and we can schedule.  Same goes for others on this thread!

hi @Alex Farmer, I just joined a young startup that uses both SFDC and Hubspot and am trying to decide where to build our CS processes - would love to chat and check out how you've build yours if you're willing. Perhaps we could all connect with @Silvia Yancheva if I'm not too late?

Please do @Shari Srebnick! @Silvia Yancheva happy to chat about how we set up our processes!

Thanks for starting this discussion @Shari Srebnick and for the reply @Alex Farmer!

I am currently finding myself in that exact situation. We recently switched from Pipedrive to Salesforce and currently trying to figure out how exactly to utilize SF for the CSM team (this was a major upgrade for us, regardless of the CSM limitations in Salesforce, since Pipedrive was much more limited and was no longer suitable for our size and needs). 

I am personally desperate for proactive notifications and I would love to hear more about your experience with reports and dashboards @Alex Farmer . I know that we won't get the ultimate CSM experience from Salesforce but any tips and tricks on how to setup the dashboards would be very much appreciated! 

Thanks, Alex!  I may at some point have to take you up on that.

We're still going through the evaluation process, and to be honest I am strongly advocating keeping our CS software.  I am not interested in trading it out just for the sake of more reporting for more people.  In my opinion, that doesn't help me, my team, or our global CS teams be proactive - and it takes away the health scoring and playbook automation built from it.  That's Visibility I'm not willing to give up ... if I can help it.  

Thank you again and if we end up with SFDC I will definitely reach out!

I've built and owned customer success objects in salesforce and didn't have a CS software solution over and above that.  Its ticked the box for a basic CS tool, but where it lacks is in proactive notifications that prompt CSMs to engage to save customers - it requires more manual upkeep and manual review of data in reports and dashboards.  The benefit is that the data is easily visible by all stakeholders with salesforce access - CS is part of the exec dashboard suite and not sequestered in some other system.  Happy to share more info about how we set this up with custom objects, reports, dashboards, etc!

Hey @Matt Vadala Agree 100%.  There is a reason SFDC has been so successful, you can pretty much run your entire operation through the application or complimentary apps.  I am a big fan but agree that it is almost always underutilized.  Unless you are fortunate to have a dedicated SFDC admin(s) or consultants - there isn't a way to know how much you are missing out on.

@Laura Lakhwara appreciate you listing that out.  I am trying to transition all of my spreadsheet work into hubspot, but it's a big overhaul.  Glad you are able to do all those things. 

@Ronald Krisak I've built everything in Hubspot using workflows. I have a love <> hate relationship with it. I use the following:

• Fields/Dates to trigger internal reminders
• Assign CSMs to companies and deals
• Workflows for automated client coms (Templates)
• Meeting Management (Clients can book with us like Calendarly)
• Surveys for CSat and NPS
• Dashboarding for New, Upsell, Renewal Deals
• Working on Health Score now
• Knowledge Base
• Some Ticketing
• Forms for data collection

There is a lot to be desired, but it's what I have access to today and can manipulate really quickly. We also have SFDC, but it's globally owned, and I can't customize it today. I test and launch very quickly, and determine if it's succeeding or failing as a process and then delete, which is what I like about Hubspot. 

Hi Anna - 

This is really helpful.  If you're willing, I'd love to learn more about the Health Score and how you're building it with Power BI.  We use that as well, and if we do switch to SFDC, I'd want to try and build this out as well.  Ideally each CSM has a view into the health of their customer base so they can take the necessary actions.

One last question:  can you automate playbooks in and workflows built on certain triggers in SFDC?

We use Salesforce for just about everything at my company. We have faced challenges with the Health Score and getting more proactive data triggers/insights to allow us to earlier identify potential customers in poor health. However, in recent months, we've been building out a Health Score using Salesforce data as well as data from our products in terms of usage, etc. and linking them all together via Power BI tools. We're hoping this will achieve similar results to tools inherently in CS software. 

We also capture product enhancements from our customers directly in Salesforce as well. I"ll have to check out MixPanel and Amplitude on the product usage side of the house @Jay Nathan 

OK, thanks @Shari Srebnick 

@Ronald Krisak I have not heard of anyone using/doing that with Hubspot.  I know they have a fantastic knowledge base, but not sure if that will help you with the CS part of things.

Coming from places where our job was to help people maintain data, Salesforce, I have found, tends to be underutilized. I am currently working through their Trailhead training program and, besides my professional experiences, I have seen many varying ways the service can contort to needs. Further, there is an available AppExchange to help users and admins meet needs that the software cannot unless a developer is brought on to build out tools and functionality for your org. 

@Brian Hartley @Shari Srebnick I'm curious to your thoughts on the above, and if this approach was ever explored in your respective paths. 

@Jay Nathan the product teams at my old place used MP as well, sounds like an industry standard. I believe there are great integrations for MP for platforms like Slack so dev and product people can collaborate on what they need. Salesforce probably isn't a place they need to be much, anyway haha

@Shari Srebnick, at my last company, I reported into the CRO (whose title was ultimately changed to CCO - Chief Commercial Officer, not Chief Customer Officer).

He thought he was an expert in all areas - Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success. Oh well...2 out of 3 isn't bad if you know what I mean. I get side-tracked....

Here's the problem I dealt with....the vast majority of his comp was based on new logo revenue. That meant his actions were focused solely in those areas - for Sales, that meant funnel management, Sales Ops, and closing deals. For Marketing, that meant lead generation and filling the pipeline.

Each time I talked with our CEO, I found out the CRO only talked about prospects in executive meetings. He rarely talked about existing customers - challenges, goals, objectives, future success, etc. Until I made headway, the Executive Team was completely out of touch with what was going on with customers.

My approach: I made customer-focus the main issue within our company. I pitched the CEO (directly) on attending executive client meetings with me to hear, first-hand, what I was hearing. He was truly enlightened. The eventual outcome: a new CS platform, Customer Journey Map, new VoC program, ownership of commercial items (revenue growth and renewals), new Client Advisory Board, and new Executive Sponsor Program.

The only place I felt our CEO fell short was to not create a Chief Customer Officer role so the customer had a voice in C-suite meetings.

@Shari Srebnick  hi, have you heard of anyone trying to do the same, but with hubspot?  Basically, using hubspot for all CS activities.  I am tying to do that for my customer set.

That is true @Shari Srebnick,  but I believe it's vastly underutilized (and quite capable) of serving the needs of customer engagement and management. 

On your other question, yes. We should start another thread. I think that would be a popular one!

Thank you both!  This is helpful, and highlights what I have been thinking:  that SFDC is geared mainly towards sales and is missing key metrics that CS needs, i.e. Health scores and product engagement.  

One more question, one that may deserve an entirely different thread or even be discussed as a topic in Office Hours:  If your CS team reports into the CRO, do you find that there are inherent challenges to getting them to understand CS?  Do you find that they are so Sales-minded, that they try to manage CS teams the same way they manage Sales, and therefore CS teams face unnecessary challenges?  If so, how do you work through those?

I'm curious to hear how others are incorporating product activity data into Salesforce as well. In my experience, there are only a few metrics that really matter when it comes to product utilization, so they can be aggregated and updated in Salesforce on a daily or weekly basis. 

Then product analytics tools can be used for more exploratory efforts. I've used MixPanel separately for these. We are currently trying to use Amplitude for a long-tail, digital touch program we are working on. 

Hey @Shari Srebnick !  At my previous job(s) we only used SFDC and didn't have a CS tool.  

Pros:

• Everything was literally centralized into one tool, aside from any product tracking metrics
  • This included contracts, time tracking, sales, marketing, opps, etc.
  • Made it easy to dashboard and report 

Cons

• We struggled to build and maintain a health score in SFDC to help us asses risk
• Didn't have any of the product engagement metrics (i.e. ChurnZero or GainsightPX,etc)