01 Nov Data Visibility: In The Land Of The Blind, The One-Eyed Man Is King
It’s a fact, the person with the best data visibility – the easiest access to the most information – gives the best service (unless they are lazy). That said, it is very common to encounter Salesforce users or prospective customers that say it takes too much time and effort to capture data in Salesforce. But for many jobs, especially sales and service jobs, you can’t perform well without a lot of information, and you need data in order to create information. Think about it, information is required in order to provide service.
CUSTOMER SERVICE
On the services side, what happens when a call comes into a business? Whoever answers starts asking questions (you ask questions because you need information to provide service).
- Who is calling?
- What’s your relationship to our company?
- Are you a customer or prospect?
- What products do you use?
- Is there a problem or issue I can resolve?
- Where are you located?
Many times, people get the caller’s name, number and other basic information, then ask around the office to discover the additional information they need to provide the proper service. But what if all of this information was already stored in Salesforce so it could be accessed at any moment?
SALES
For sales, if you want to be proactive instead of just waiting for the phone to ring, you need relevant information.
- Where should I spend my time?
- Which accounts are producing?
- Which accounts have stopped responding or stopped ordering?
- Where have I submitted proposals in the past where we didn’t win?
- Which accounts or contacts have not been contacted lately?
- What are the characteristics of my best accounts?
- Which competitors are winning?
- Which accounts use competitor’s products/services?
- What products are selling?
- What are the physical locations of my customers and prospects so I can plan productive trips?
Whether they realize it or not, sales and service staff are paralyzed without data visibility. So yes, entering data into Salesforce does take time. But the good news? This cost is leveraged – you enter data once but you use it over and over again to produce information that makes you more efficient and effective (and one step ahead of your competition).