Starting with The Problem

Shortly after the launch of Salesforce Engage, we met with customers to gather their feedback. While the concept of providing sales teams with real-time alerts and insights into their prospects' interests resonated well, users found the app overwhelming due to the influx of data. Therefore, we needed to implement a filtering mechanism to streamline information access. Additionally, we identified a gap in our campaigns feature, as Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) often needed to send messages on behalf of the Account Executives they supported, which was not supported by the app. Furthermore, customers highlighted the need for longer-term reporting, as sales cycles could span multiple months, whereas our current reporting only covered 7, 14, and 30-day periods. Sales managers requested team reporting, so that they could view overall performance and adoption of the tool for the purposes of ROI.

Who is the user?

Salesforce Engage allows sales and marketing teams to work together to sell their product or service. Marketing teams use it to create marketing-approved content, including customized email templates, Sales teams can access this content to nurture marketing qualified leads, make data-driven decisions with it’s Alerts feature, and close deals from within the Salesforce platform.

Research Methodology

A quote from the research sessions in regards to reports:

My UX researcher arranged some visits onsite with our customers so we could understand their workflows in detail. Spending time with them in their actual offices provided invaluable insights into their particular sales cycles which gave us an important base to start sketching some potential ideas.

After several rounds of collaborative sketches with our team, we put them in front of users for validation - this informed our direction to improve the app.

1. Onsite visits with customers:

   • Three companies were visited.

   • Task & Goal: The see how sales teams work.

   • Objective: To gain a deeper understanding of “a day in the life of a sales rep” and be able to ask specific questions relevant to what we saw.

   • Results: Nothing beats onsite research. We were able to witness how busy these customers are and understand that “time is money for them”

2. Moderated research:

   • Ten participants took part in sessions.

   • Task: We presented various concepts for three specific features:

     • Alerts

     • Campaigns

     • Reports

   • Objective: To evaluate if these updates were helpful to them.

   • Results: With some minor tweaks we were heading in the right direction. One surprising piece of feedback in regards to reports was that customers prefer tables over any other visualizations because the yare easy to understand and usually contain a lot of data.

Phase One Launch:

New Alerts

The updated design features a cleaner look, adopting a column layout for enhanced clarity. We've introduced extensive customization options to our Alerts feature, enabling sales teams to receive only the data pertinent to their needs, eliminating unnecessary information overload.

Phase Two Launch:

New robust campaigns

The platform now offers the capability to create, save, and search marketing-approved email templates. Customers can now send emails on behalf of other team members and preview them as recipients. The feature set includes the ability to send personalized, tracked email campaigns. Additionally, customers can access Engage campaigns directly through Gmail or Outlook.