What is our primary use case?
It's a centralized dashboard for all our in-house information.
We used to have all of the data in Excel sheets, but with the CRM, we can have all of the information in one place. You have access to all your deals, and all the information is visible to everyone in the company. You don't have to ask each employee to share individual sheets with you. Instead, what Salesforce does is that it gives everybody access to all the information on the dashboard.
What is most valuable?
Opportunity is a feature that I use very frequently. You create an opportunity when you schedule a call with a client. Within the opportunity, I can log all of the relevant data.
The type of customization that comes with Salesforce CRM gives me a lot of liberty and ease of access to add any information that I wish to add. For example, the name, email ID, designation, the name of the decision maker, when the client joined the company, and the amount of influence he will have on the product.
I also like the type of reports that I can create. Salesforce gives you the option of creating customized reports, which helps me to have a clear view of my opportunities. You don't have to necessarily go and check each and every opportunity, and there are in-built reporting capabilities as well.
I'm a massive fan of the custom integration Salesforce offers.
What needs improvement?
Salesforce Sales Cloud does not integrate with Slack or WhatsApp, for example. As a result, there is no easy way to directly log a conversation with a client that occurred on one of these platforms. There are a few things that still need to be done manually in these instances.
As for additional features, I would like to be able to link my personal phone to Salesforce so that I can log the records from my personal phone as well. With the current setup, they have to set up your ISP. To ensure that your data is logged into the CRM, you have to have the physical phone integrated with Salesforce Sales Cloud. If used with caution, I think this feature is going to help out. In India, the business model is such that nobody replies to an email. So, you have to use your personal phone or WhatsApp.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using Salesforce Sales Cloud for more than three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
As a user, I'm happy with the stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have 20 people who use this solution, and we hope to expand. However, at my previous company, the Salesforce integration took six months. Therefore, in terms of scalability if you have to add different departments or new employees, the integration may take a while.
The only challenge that I see is in terms of having to run the cycle, create the account, and contact different teams for different purposes. What could be done better is to have a single point of contact for all your queries, but that is a massive request because there are sales teams, support teams, tech teams, dev teams, etc. However, if you can have a sales engineer who can help with all our questions, then it would be great.
How are customer service and support?
The FAQs are helpful, and the technical support team is very efficient and capable of handling all your questions instantaneously.
Also, the help that I got during the initial stage is where Salesforce stands out completely. They are not about email, chat, or phone. They are present throughout your entire journey.
I'm a massive fan of the Salesforce technical support team and would give them a ten out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We went with Salesforce because most of the employees who joined our company had used Salesforce before and because Salesforce comes with a lot of options.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is very straightforward.
The deployment took six months from start to finish.
What was our ROI?
Salesforce saves time, and I have seen a fair amount of growth in terms of efficiency and accountability.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We have a yearly license, and there are no hidden costs. Considering the Indian market, the pricing is reasonable. I don't consider it to be on the high side.
What other advice do I have?
Have a training module in place because Salesforce is a little bit technical and you need to understand all of the features.
The Salesforce Sales Cloud platform stands out from other products, and I would give them an eight on a scale from one to ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.