Ultimate Guide On How To Use Salesforce for 2024

By: Published: June 23, 2021

A business dominates the market as long as its customers are content with its products and services. CRM ends up being fruitful for organizations since it generates and identifies new leads, helps increase referrals, improves services, administrations, and the general quality of work. 

CRM also takes up the task of continually taking feedback from your present customers about your products. Fair feedback from customers can go a long way in developing your business. Having a CRM module makes it simple for any employee in the organization to have seamless access to all the data of customers. One such popular CRM software is Salesforce. In this article, we will discuss how to use Salesforce in-depth. You will also learn how to use Salesforce services and products.

Table of Contents

Understanding CRM

CRM
Image Source: CIO

Customer Relationship Management in the modern era is the usage of technology to oversee and examine customer associations and information all through the customer lifecycle. The objective is to improve customer administration relationships and aid customer retention and drive Sales growth.

CRM systems store and analyze customer information across various stations, or resources, between the customer and the organization, like the organization’s website, phone, live chat info, emails, promotions, and social media, etc. CRM systems can likewise provide customer-care staff members data on customers’ buy history, purchase inclinations, and concerns.

Understanding the Different Features of CRM

  • Automated Marketing: CRM can facilitate the automation of tedious errands/repetitive Marketing tasks to improve Marketing efforts at various phases in the customer lifecycle. For instance, when a lead comes into the picture, the CRM software may naturally send Marketing content via email, to transform the lead into a valuable customer. 
  • Automated Sales: Sales automation features in CRMs interact and track customers’ interest in the products and automate certain menial business elements of the Sales Cycle that are important to follow leads, acquire new customers and gain customer’s trust. 
  • Automated Customer-care Service: This service takes care of replicating a customer care agent’s job but in a more efficient way. This may be achieved through pre-recorded messages that help and solve a customer’s problem resulting in a decrease in the length of calls and simplification of customer service. Chatbots are the most popular form of customer care service today.
  • Storing Demographic Data: CRM technologies can make geographic Marketing efforts depending on the customers’ addresses and location and in some cases, they coordinate with mainstream area-based GPS (worldwide situating framework) applications. Geolocation technology can be utilized to promote and discover Sales possibilities depending on the area. 
  • Automated Workflows: CRM systems assist organizations with improving operational efficiency by automating and streamlining everyday jobs and as a result empowering workers to use creativity and resources on challenging and high-level tasks.
  • Automated Lead Follow-ups: Sales leads can be followed through CRM, empowering Sales teams to store, follow-up, and analyze information for leads conversion.
  • Data Analytics: CRM software helps you make better data-driven decisions that lead to better customer conversion rates by dissecting client information and making designated Marketing efforts. 
  • Integration with other Applications: Numerous CRM systems can integrate with other applications, for example, Social Media, eMail applications, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, etc

Understanding Salesforce

Understanding Salesforce
Image Source: Sky Planner

Prior to Salesforce, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) arrangements were facilitated on an organization’s own server. The expenses, resources, and time(months or years) it took for organizations to have their own CRM arrangements were tremendous. Even subsequent to setting up everything On-premise, scaling was the primary concern to keep up with changing needs. 

What Made Salesforce An Instant Hit was Cloud Computing. Salesforce is a CRM software deployed On-Cloud that assists in bringing customer data transparency and handles all CRM activities. Automation of all CRM activities saves you a lot of time and resources.

So, regardless of which department (Marketing, Sales, business, administration, and IT) your employees are,  they share the same customer view. This holistic view of all your customers helps to decrease the time it takes for your company to resolve any customer issues, eliminating redundancies in your communications, and allows you to customize interactions(with the help of personal data) in order to grow relationships with your customers.

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Prerequisites

  • A normal or trial Salesforce account.

Understanding How to Use Salesforce

There are 5 major services that Salesforce Offers: 

You will learn how to use the Salesforce services mentioned above.

1. Understanding How to Use Salesforce Sales Cloud

How to Use Salesforce Sales Cloud
Image Source: Educba

Before trying to understand how to use Salesforce Sales Cloud let’s learn about Sales cloud and its features. Sales Cloud is a Cloud-based Sales Automation offering and is built explicitly to help the Sales division of any business. By using client data, data analytics, and seamless running of an effective Sales group. Sales Cloud can help your business improve in Sales, follow-up leads, and develop your business. Sales Cloud can help you with the following:

  • Campaign Management: Campaign management in Salesforce helps in improving the Marketing programs that are focused to create better leads with campaigning programs. Instances of campaign programs are Advertisements, Emails, Seminars, Events, TeleMarketing (Placing calls to clients), and so on. 
  • Leads Management: A Lead in the Sales Cloud is a potential client who has shown interest in purchasing an organization’s item because of campaigning or out of their own advantage, however, they may not be completely interested in purchasing yet. If the lead is a person/ organization with whom you have never done any business they are henceforth considered as potential clients. Sales Cloud helps in identifying leads and tries to convert them into customers.
  • Accounts Management: Presently it’s very probable that a lead probably won’t be the only individual who is responsible for starting the deal and driving it till its conclusion; there could be numerous other people involved, such as the finance and infrastructure teams, etc. Accounts are used to store info about the people/business with whom you will make an agreement. 
  • Contacts Management: At a point when an account is set up, you also need to set up and keep up with the contacts of key business people included in a deal and convert them to customers. There is additionally a choice to label the contacts to a generally existing account in Sales Cloud.

To perform all the above follow the below-given steps:

Step 1: Log in to your Salesforce account.

Step 2: Go to products and choose Sales from the drop-down menu. You are prompted to a new window.

Step 3: Choose the Campaign or Lead or Account or Contact menu depending on what you want to perform.

Step 4: Now click on the new button. A window pops up.

Step 5: Fill out the details and click on the Save button to save the changes made.

Now you know how to use Salesforce Sales Cloud.

2. Understanding How to Use Salesforce Service Cloud

How to Use Salesforce Service Cloud
Image Source: Techilaservices

Before trying to understand how to use Salesforce Service Cloud let’s learn about Service cloud and its features. Service Cloud is a Cloud-based software that enables you to achieve top-notch administration with a 360-degree view of the client — all from one control center(the console). From a live chat to a common information repository, Service Cloud makes it workable for you to work with cases quicker, offer more intelligent self-assistance, personalized client care, and convey support all over the place.

With Service Cloud, you can increment productivity and client faith, by conveying answers/responding to customers at lightning speed. You can also tailor a client’s support experience from well-known online media hubs, text information, etc with the help of use-case data, individual inclinations, and their channels of preference.

To access the Service Cloud console follow the given steps:

Step 1: Log in to your Salesforce Account.

Step 2: Create a Salesforce Console App.

Step 3: Choose its display and save it.

Step 4: Customize push notifications according to your requirements.

Step 5: Grant users Console Access and start using the console.

Step 6: Perform various operations on Case, Solutions, Knowledge, Communities, Social Media, and live agent with the help of the console. 

Now you know how to use Salesforce Service Cloud.

3. Understanding How to Use Salesforce Marketing Cloud

How to Use Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Image Source: Techilaservices

Before trying to understand how to use Salesforce Marketing Cloud let’s learn about Marketing Cloud and its features. Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a Marketing product that has abilities to help numerous aspects of Marketing including multi-channel campaign execution, dynamic client ventures, pre-and post-campaign analytics including audience building and division, social media commitment and publicizing, and a data management platform. Marketing Cloud does this utilizing segments they call “Studios” and “Builders: 

 In Marketing Cloud, Studios are utilized to oversee channels of correspondence which includes Email Studio, Social Studio, and Mobile Studio. In Marketing Cloud, Builders are utilized to oversee data, content, and client ventures in the Salesforce Marketing Cloud stage. 

Salesforce Marketing Cloud has various features that are spread across the Marketing space:

  • Real-time Customer engagement
  • Automation of email and Marketing
  • Listening and advertising on social media
  • push notifications and SMS messages
  • Marketing Analytics on customer data

Step 1: Log in to your Salesforce account.

Step 2: Go to products and choose Marketing from the drop-down menu. You are prompted to a new window.

Step 3: Connect your Marketing Cloud with your Salesforce account.

Step 4: To configure Cloud Connect API user in Marketing Cloud, hover over your username and select Setup.

Step 5: From the Setup screen, type Users into the Quick Find box and click Users. Click on Create button. Now add your reply Email and notification email address.

Step 6: Select your Time Zone and set a temporary password.

Step 7: Click on the Save button. Now you can test the Marketing Cloud API.

Now you know how to use Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

4. Understanding How to Use Salesforce Community Cloud

How to Use Salesforce Community Cloud
Image Source: Getoncrm

Before trying to understand how to use Salesforce Community Cloud let’s learn about Community cloud and its features. Salesforce Community Cloud is an online social platform for organizations to make websites for connecting clients or representatives with one another. It gives them the data they need to achieve their work proficiently. 

By streamlining key business operations and broadening them across departments and offices, every individual who is essential for your business ecosystem can execute their work continuously, support clients more adequately, and close deals faster. Salesforce Cloud Community is exceptionally adaptable for any business demand and use case.

You can use your CRM data by directly connecting with your community or any third-party system. Overall, the online Community Cloud software enables your company to build personalized experiences for its customers for seamless enterprise collaboration and streamlined business processes.

Step 1: Log in to your Salesforce account.

Step 2: Go to products and choose Community from the drop-down menu. You are prompted to a new window.

Step 3: Choose the New Community button. A large number of community templates appear on the screen. You can choose a template or build your own template. The new template is created.

Step 4: Now click on the theme icon and choose a theme for your template. With the theme option, you can modify colors, fonts, content layouts, etc.

Step 5: If you want to add any CRM components you can search for them in the search bar and drag and drop the search results onto your template. You can add as many components you want.

Now you know how to use Salesforce Community Cloud.

5. Understanding How to Use Salesforce Analytics Cloud

How to Use Salesforce Analytics Cloud
Image Source: Algoworks

Before trying to understand how to use Salesforce Analytics Cloud let’s learn about Analytics Cloud and its features. Salesforce Wave Analytics, referred to as Analytics Cloud, is a Business Intelligence(BI) platform from Salesforce that is streamlined for mobile access and data representation. The mobile application in Analytics Cloud permits clients to work with enormous data sets and make diagrams, graphs, and other visualizations from them.

According to Salesforce, the platform allows users to drill down into key parts of the business with only a few clicks and little or no training in data analysis.

To enable the working of Analytics Cloud and follow the below-given steps:

Step 1: Log in to your Salesforce account.

Step 2: Choose Analytics from the product drop-down menu. Now go to settings and select enable Analytics Cloud

Step 3: Click on the save button to save the configurations.

You can prepare your data and connect them to Salesforce using the Standard Salesforce APIs. After this, you can configure your dataflows in the Analytics Cloud by going to settings and choosing the Data Flow Manager. You can also create Dashboards and query your data accordingly.

Now you know how to use Salesforce Analytics Cloud.

Conclusion

Salesforce is still evolving in terms of functionalities and features at an alarming rate. Thus, Sales, Communication, Marketing, etc can be improved significantly and that too in a cost-effective manner. Now you know about the major services offered by Salesforce and you now know how to use Salesforce for building your CRM software.

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mm
Former Research Analyst, Hevo Data

Easha is a programming enthusiast having experience in automated test script creation, regression testing, and integration projects like Thyrocare Integration. She is keenly interested in creating technical articles related to data science and integration.

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