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Tag: SMB’s

CEPTES > Blog > SMB’s
Salesforce Essentials
July 26, 20190

Salesforce Essentials Introduced new Social Media Integrations to help SMBs reach customers

Salesforce has announced its new enhancements in its small business solution Salesforce Essentials which will help SMBs to communicate and engage directly with their customers. The new features include integrations with social media channels like Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and YouTube as well as new chat and phone services. Salesforce introduced Salesforce Essentials in 2017 for small business, using which SMBs can accelerate their growth in the world’s #1 CRM platform with customized sales and service apps. 

Today’s business world is highly connected and social media channels are playing a pivotal role in it. Customers are into Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube like never before and prefer interacting with the service providers using various social platforms. What they expect are instant communication and personalized service. This is an opportunity for small businesses to reach & engage thousands of their potential customers and offer them personalized service. However, it is a challenge for SMBs to offer the best experience and personalized service across multiple social media platforms with their limited available resources. But, with these new additions in their Essentials platform, Salesforce enables SMBs the ability to engage with their customers across various social platforms.

Also Read: Why “Salesforce Essentials” is the best solution for small businesses

Using the recent features, Salesforce Essentials customers can offer enterprise-level sales and service experience to their customers. The new features include;

A seamless conversation across social channels – Facebook Messenger, Instagram, YouTube

Small businesses can now have real-time conversations with their customers over Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and YouTube. When a customer connects with a query with the service provider through Facebook Messenger, the message will automatically go to a service agent who can have a real-time conversation with the customer right within the Salesforce platform. Facebook Messenger and chat are generally available now. Every Salesforce Essentials organization includes 1 license. Additional licenses can be purchased at $15 per user, per month. In Instagram & YouTube, when a customer makes a comment, a sales rep or service agent will automatically get a notification. They can immediately act and respond from their Salesforce system. Instagram and YouTube are generally available now. Both are included in Salesforce Essentials at $25 per user, per month.

Real-time Chat 

Small businesses can now add a Salesforce chat widget to their website. Service agents can manage multiple customer chat conversations simultaneously right from their Salesforce system. Service agents can have a complete view of the customer including previous interactions, purchase history, sales opportunities, and other relevant information. This will help them offer personalized service so that they can close deals faster. 

Lightning Dialer

Now small business service agents can make and receive customer calls using Lightning Dialer for Essentials, which is an innovative call center solution built right within the Salesforce platform. When an agent makes or receives a customer call, a pop-up will immediately appear with all the customer information. This will help them offer personalized service quickly. Calls will be automatically logged-into the contact and account activity history of Salesforce which will eliminate manual data entry and save time without any customer information being missed. Lightning Dialer for Essentials is generally available today in the U.S. and Canada at $2 per 100 minutes.

Salesforce is offering its small business customers simple walkthroughs within the Salesforce Essentials product so that they can seamlessly set-up these features. The walkthroughs include guided overviews on key channels like Facebook Messenger, Real-time Chat and Lightning Dialer. Essentials coaches in the U.S. & Canada are also helping their customers with 90 days of support post-purchase with a 1:1 live chat for set-up. 

CEPTES has been a pioneer in offering Salesforce solutions across the world. With a team of Salesforce certified consultants, we offer end-to-end Salesforce Cloud implementation, integration, migration, consulting, and support services. Currently, we are working with many SMBs and helping them accelerate their growth in the Salesforce platform. Get in touch with us to know more about Salesforce Essentials and how it can help your small business thrive. 

Source: Salesforce

 

Also Read: How Small Businesses are moving faster with Salesforce Essentials

Salesforce Essentials
November 21, 20180

How Small Businesses are moving faster with Salesforce Essentials

During 2017 Dreamforce keynote, we heard the next generation of Salesforce’s Customer Success Platform will empower enterprises to make every customer interaction smarter and more personalized. A year after today, we are witnessing something similar happening as businesses have transformed the way they used to interact with their customers a year ago. All thanks to Salesforce CRM. Especially when we talk about small & medium scale businesses, Salesforce CRM has proved to be a savior.

In this blog post, we are going to have a look at one of the largest ESMB countries in the world – ‘India’. ESMB sector has employed over 50 million people in India and contributes approximately 30% to the GDP. Rightly called as the ‘engine of growth’, Indian ESMB sector is witnessing a significant wave of digital transformation with the increasing penetration of internet and smartphones. Though most of the small & medium business owners understand that technology can make their lives better, they face certain challenges which are not allowing them to implement technology in every business operations.

Salesforce Essentials

Salesforce introduced Salesforce Essentials which will enable every small business to embrace the power of Salesforce with apps for crucial business areas like sales and service that are user-friendly, easy to set up and maintain. In every four months, Salesforce keeps on adding new functionality to its platform, so small businesses don’t have to spend a huge additional time or cost in order to be aligned with the latest technologies. While Salesforce takes care of the business in the most efficient way, small businesses can focus on what matters the most- customers.

Small businesses can quicken their sales cycles and build a community of happier customers with the world’s #1 CRM in just $25 a month. *

With Salesforce Essentials can;

  • Start instantly with an easy set-up
  • Sell in a smart & quick way with built-in intelligence
  • Offer enterprise-level service to their customers
  • Grow with world’s most trusted platform

How Salesforce Essential is helping small businesses grow

See all customers details in one place

Automatically pull data from various channels like emails, calendar, spreadsheets and more to offer a single, 360-degree view of every customer and their info along with your entire business.

Easy to use

Salesforce Essential offers an easy option to interact with your customers by answering their queries in just minutes. There are in-app tutorials and guided setup so that you will never lose your way.

Faster sell

A comprehensive and highly customizable view helps you easily identify key contacts, easy lead follow-ups, and much more in Lightning view.

Time-saving

You can now track emails, calls, and meetings automatically with the help of Einstein Activity Capture. Small business owners can collect and sync key info right from their inbox. This will help you spend less time in spreadsheets and focus more on customers.

Accessibility

The speed, scalability, intelligence and customization of Salesforce platform is not limited to desktops. You can access and update your business data anytime with your Salesforce mobile app. You can now close deals faster on the go.

Seamless customer support for your business

Essentials allow you to collect and organize all your support channels and customer information and place it on a single page. This will help you to interact with your customers on all the channels.

Autopilot

You can enable autopilot mode in order to automate various repetitive tasks, route each question to the right agent, and earmark task based on agent expertise or availability.

As a Salesforce registered consulting partner, CEPTES helps small and medium scale companies leverage the Salesforce platform to offer smarter and more personalized customer service. Contact us today to learn more.

 

Source: Salesforce

Salesforce, SMBs
March 28, 20180

Why “Salesforce Essentials” is the best solution for small businesses

Salesforce Essentials 

Salesforce has offered various products and solutions geared towards SMB set up in the past. All these solutions were typically best-suited for medium-sized and large enterprises. In 2017, Salesforce has introduced Salesforce Essentials. Salesforce Essentials also called as Lightning Essentials is a business solution supports up to 10 users and is best suited for small businesses and start-ups.

Let’s have a look at how Salesforce Essentials plan differs from other Salesforce packages.

Implementation is quicker & easier

As per Salesforce’s 2017 SMB trends report, only 26% of the small businesses have one or more in-house IT support member. One of the prime reason for small businesses avoiding SaaS solutions is lack of implementation support. For a small business owner, it not realistic or feasible to spend weeks on negotiating with service providers, watching demos and going through booklets to set up a CRM system.

Keeping this in mind, Salesforce has simplified the implementation process in Salesforce Essentials by providing user access to Trailhead, a “free gamified online learning platform” which guides users for a quick and smooth set-up process. Since there is less number of features in this streamlined version of Salesforce CRM, there is less effort to put to run it and you can also do it in-house without any IT expert help.

Affordable Pricing

As this solution is for small businesses, Salesforce has priced it quite reasonably in order to entice small business owners. The reason behind this is, small business owners will sign up for Essentials and gradually upgrade to the higher versions of the solution. It is not difficult to upgrade in the later stage as Essentials is just a lower tier option of Salesforce’s Lightning line.

Just for $25 per user/per month, a small business user can get access to Sales Cloud Essentials and Service Cloud Essentials for up to 10 users (even though it says 5 users on the website). The next plan is $75 per user/per month if you are business is growing rapidly and you are expecting more than 10 users in the near future.

Features focused on small businesses 

Salesforce Essentials doesn’t offer all the functionalities of Lightning, but it offers several features as compared to the price. Below are few of the best features Salesforce Essentials offer to small business users.

Sales Cloud Essentials

Targeted for a small sales team, Sales Cloud Essentials offers a lot of useful features at a low price.

  • Account and contact management
  • Opportunity management
  • Customizable sales process
  • Task management, activity feed
  • Einstein activity capture
  • Configurable reports and dashboards
  • Collaboration tools
  • Case management
  • Lightning app builder and Appexchange

There are few obvious limitations, like limited analytics/forecasting, lack of workflows, lack of roles and permissions, and lack of built-in billing and price quoting features.

Service Cloud Essentials

Customer service is perhaps the most critical aspect for a small business. Salesforce’s Service Cloud Essentials is a great asset for basic service management. In order to get rich features like order management, and advanced reporting – you need to upgrade. But the current set of features are impressive.

  • Salesforce mobile app
  • Collaboration tools
  • Case auto-assignment
  • Email optimization (web and email case capture and auto-response)
  • Case escalation rules and queues
  • Lead-contact account management
  • Task management and activity tracking\
  • Lightning app builder
  • Custom profiles and page layouts

Bottom Line

Salesforce has given an opportunity to small businesses to use world’s #1 CRM at an affordable price. If you keep an eye on costs as your business grow, and stay within your data limits, Salesforce Essentials can be a really useful and productive solution for your business.

activities smbs dreamforce
Dreamforce, SMBs
October 6, 20170

4 Essential Activities for SMB’s at Dreamforce’17

Dreamforce 2017 is the most inspiring event of year and also the one talked about more these days. Companies of all sizes can actually look forward to a complete fun-filled week of innovation, ideas, some incredible speakers, valuable resources and good opportunity of knowledge to gear up their business for growth.

There will be more than 2,700+ sessions, various activities and events, along with many exciting announcements. However, CEPTES would like to throw light on the major takeaways that SMB’s could have from Dreamforce ’17. We want all the SMBs to get the most out of Dreamforce with this blog.

Let us have a look at the top 4 must-attend experiences.

1. Gearing Up for the growth of SMB’s

This is one of the must attend keynotes for all SMBs. CEPTES would like to share the latest innovations to assist find more potential customers. So, it’s time for you to join Dreamforce ’17 and hear from the top executives about the latest technologies from Salesforce. They will as well showcase the trending aspects of Salesforce, like Lightning and Einstein. Bookmark your presence as your first agenda.

2. Find the base at Dreamforce

Dreamforce is not a may be; it’s a must. Yes, if you fall under the category of SMB, then its high time that you must quickly grab a seat in it. This is the time for you to chart a life-changing course. Salesforce Rangers and Trail maps will guide you perfectly to a variety of learning opportunities, along with a demo jam to business consultation and cultivate passion.

3. Acknowledge the details of the pros at All-Star SMB sessions

Dreamforce 2017 has more than 100 sessions, which are dedicated to most of the small business topics. Whether you are targeting to improve your sales and marketing strategies or just want to hear the inspiring stories from the entrepreneurs and leaders; there is room for everyone.

Some of the topics to be discussed this year are the following:

  • Grow faster with AI
  • Coast to coast tips for success from founders across the US
  • Ways sales leaders can align their sales strategy to grow the business
  • Trends to be embraced
  • The marketing and sales strategies
  • Secrets to building and sustaining an effective startup
  • Customer growth strategies for SMB success

4. Getting the Right partners for expected growth

Salesforce, has always been trying to help all business types with their support for growth. They have partnered with various best-in-breed companies to support every SMB. The Small Business Essentials Station at Dreamforce will help you discover brands and get hands on with different solutions. The Small Business Essentials Station is hence, open to everyone.

salesforce for SMB's
Salesforce, SMBs
July 20, 20170

Importance of Salesforce in Small and Medium Business

Yes, it is so true that speed is the essence of the business world. The statement is true for nearly every aspect of any business, but it is especially valid for the genre of technology, and the speed with which we adopt any technological innovations is critical to the business success.

Around the world, various small and medium scale business, popularly known as SMBs have become the most important contributors to the GDP of the respective countries. In a developing country like India, the role of all such SMB in the overall growth of the economy is commendable. In India, we have as well witnessed that the SMB sector, is getting a superior growth rate in the last few years. This increase has been on a consistent basis. Such kind of steady growth has therefore led to an increased complexity of business operations for all the SMB players.

NASSCOM has indeed led us to the fact that, cloud services are the key element for SMBs. Year on year CAGR is almost at a rate of 15 percent, the IT spending nearly an amount of $ 18.5 billion by 2018.  The SaaS adoption by Indian SMBs is growing at a high incidence of CAGR of 25% and is as well expected to reach $ 370 million, which is about INR 2,220 crores, by 2018.

It’s incredible news!!

We can, therefore, witness some immense opportunity in the SMB sector, but then what is stopping this industry to adopt technology?
The answer is, the urgent need to accurately and authentically identify the technologies which are not an easy task and highly critical to their success. Once SMB’s have already done the identification of the correct technology, the next and the most crucial step would be to proceed with the implementation of the same.

Let us have a look at some of the many problems faced by the SMB sector:

  • Lack of in-house expertness
  • Lack of knowledge about the process of Cloud computing
  • Do not know the process to implement
  • The present way of working
  • Lack of Knowledge as well as Training

All of the mentioned problems can get eradicated with the help of Salesforce, which is a real-time boon for the SMB sector.

Salesforce indeed has many products such as; Sales Cloud, the Service Cloud, the Marketing Cloud,  the Community Cloud, Wave Analytics, Platform and all the Apps, together which caters to solve the problems of SMB’s.

Salesforce, at their annual Dreamforce Conference, had shown a dedicated keynote for all the SMB’s stating that even they are getting the same technology platform as the Enterprises. Hence, Salesforce with all its advancements allows customers to compete with the enterprises of their industry. Salesforce platform hence enables SMB’s to compete on a higher level, along with the competitive advantage being the combination of  Salesforce platform and how it can be tailored to support their business needs.

For SMB’s, success with Salesforce the best and the finest practices are leveraged, thereby ensuring configured business processes. The SMB sector is rapidly coming out of the stereo mindset when it comes to the usage of technology and IT adoption. The end-to-end implementation of the Salesforce solutions would greatly assist the SMB players to attain the next level of operational success.