Do you find that to get things done at work you have to talk to many people in many different departments? And keep track of all sorts of documents, which are generally spread out across different applications? Well this no longer has to the be the case thanks to Salesforce Chatter.
Chatter is an easy way to collaborate and interact with your colleagues and customers in real time. It enables you to connect with the people and information you require within the relevant opportunity, support case, lead or any other record you may need; chatter is universal. Decisions are made quickly and problems can be solved in the feed. You will find that you can sell, service and market better through slick collaboration and your colleagues, managers and even customers can “follow” the accounts, records, opportunities they are interested in. Furthermore, Chatter is secure as it uses Salesforce’s security model.
Productivity is accelerated, giving you more time to focus on your deals, customers or projects and less time chasing information, feedback or documents. The “chatter” or communication thread is stored in the relevant record thus no searching for stray emails etc.
As much of the detail can be “chattered”, you will spend less time stuck in long, drawn out meetings with your colleagues and more time focused on building and delivering projects, support etc.
Despite being in different offices in different locations, Chatter enables the whole company to interact and work as though you are all in the same building working on the same record.
Reducing the time taken to search through emails and complex folder structures, allows for more time to connect with your colleagues and build better relationships with your customers.
There is a quite a lot of functionality included in Chatter, but don’t be put off. As a user, you decide how you want to use it, who you want to follow and what you want to post:-
Chatter enables you to create and follow Groups and People within your organisation. Chatter includes a directory of all the people and Groups in your company so you can decide who or what you want to follow or unfollow. You can also create Groups aimed at a specific department for a specific project and restrict access as appropriate.
If you are working on a specific Account or Opportunity, by following these records, you will be kept up to date and will receive notification every time it is updated/amended in your feed.
The feed is a great place to post about work updates, files or letting your colleagues know if you are out of the office. Or, if you are working on a specific record and are unsure how to resolve an issue, you could submit a post with an @mention to someone on your team asking for advice. Your colleagues can then comment with their feedback to the records in real time.
“Chatter allows customers and companies to help themselves and each other with answers to posted questions/queries. E.G. “I didn’t know who to ask about a particular support contract so I just posted on Chatter “are we doing this” and forgot about it for a bit until Shaun then got back to me on Chatter” – Simon Lawrence, Application Developer at Desynit.
You can also create polls to help the company decide on a specific outcome. Or see what is trending within your company with #Topics. This is a great way to gain an insight into the buzz within your company.
With Chatter the collaboration possibilities are endless.
If you would like to hear more about Chatter and what it can do for your business contact Desynit’s Shaun Holmes.
**Hot tip** Shaun and Matt produce a weekly podcast, Cloudlife. The Cloudlife podcast is lighthearted weekly round up of tech news and facts from Desynit. We’ll be chatting about where to get the benefits for your business from the cloud…and how to avoid the pitfalls along the way. http://www.desynit.com/category/blog-article/cloudlife-podcast/
See you next week for more tips about the world of cloud computing.
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