SalesforceIQ-Desk.com Integration Gives Small Business Enterprise Capabilities

It’s challenging for a fast-growing small business to offer great customer service while continuing to increase sales at a rapid rate. It would probably go more smoothly if the two departments had access to a common set of information, but making that happen for a small business has been a difficult and expensive undertaking.

Salesforce.com wants to change that and today it introduced an integrated product combining Salesforce IQ CRM and Desk.com customer service — its tools aimed at small businesses. By integrating the two, sales and service reps can get a full picture of the client across multiple channels, something that has previously only been available to much larger business using enterprise software that’s way out of reach of most small business owners.

What this means is that sales reps working in SalesforceIQ can see notes and interactions that customer service had with the customer and CSRs working in Desk.com can see the buying history of the customer.

Desk.com with SalesforceIQ info embedded.

Desk.com with SalesforceIQ info embedded.

 

The integration itself is free and will be included with Desk.com Pro and Business Plus Editions and with SalesforceIQ Growth and Business Plans. These plans aren’t cheap, but Brent Leary, co-founder and partner at CRM Essentials says certain SMBs can’t afford to ignore this.

“I think the high-growth, fast-growth SMBs who need to scale quickly while maintaining, and in some cases enhancing customer relationships will have no choice but to get it,” he said.

What’s more, Leary has done research with Social Media Today on what they call “The Social Customer Service Index” and they’ve found that sharing information from customer service across the organization becomes increasingly crucial as a small business begins to scale.

“This year’s study found that companies which had a structured process for sharing service insights with other parts of the business (sales, marketing, product development, etc.) were way more likely to see a very positive impact on company goals and objectives in terms of customer engagement,” Leary explained.

It’s possible for a small business to start with Desk.com if they are more oriented toward customer service or SalesforceIQ if they are more sales-centric, but Leary says if the business begins to grow quickly, it becomes useful to integrate them.

“Managing retention while accelerating the uptake of new customers is a tough balancing act, and will only get tougher without these kinds of integrations in place,” he said.

The trick is balancing these rapidly growing sales with the ability to service a larger body of customers, which becomes especially challenging the faster you grow.

“The ones who plan for that [growth] up front, even though they may emphasize one aspect more in the beginning, will be the ones successfully handling their growth in a way that will keep current customers happy while they bring on new ones [onboard] at an accelerated rate,” he said.

If you have both products, turning on the integration is as simple as going to the Admin panel of each and turning on the Sharing switch.

This integration is available today to all qualified customers.