Salesforce Ideas

Summer '08 - Multiple Communities

Create Multiple Communities to Engage Internal and External Collaborators

Professional, Enterprise, and Unlimited Editions

Deploy multiple communities catering to different audiences
Toggle between different communities and conversations
Manage communities within a single integrated location

With Multiple Communities, you can enable organizations to extend Salesforce Ideas to a broader audience of internal and external collaborators. It’s easy to go from one community to another and to participate in the discussions that are most relevant to each. It’s also easy to manage these communities and keep tabs on the latest ideas and comments posted. Some examples of communities.

Departmental Communities
Create a community site for an individual department so teammates can easily share best practices and ideas.
Employee Communities
Deploy an online community across your entire employee base, breaking down organizational barriers, fostering cross-team collaboration, and fueling a culture of employee-led innovation.
Customer/Partner Communities
You can deploy Salesforce Ideas to your customer and partner base to capture product feedback, reduce incoming support inquiries, and engage the community using the Salesforce Customer Portal or Salesforce Partner Portal.

Reports and Dashboards provide visibility into the community at the idea and contributor level, allowing you to slice and dice the data in any number of ways.

NJ Transit can hear when a customer screams

Tom Feeney Star Ledger

NJ Transit riders with suggestions about how to prevent late trains, missed buses and other indignities of the daily commute will soon have a new place to share their ideas.

The agency will run a "virtual ideas cafe" beginning June 1, offering riders a place online to post suggestions, read suggestions left by other riders and vote on the suggestions they like best.

Salesforce Ideas YouTube Video

"The dead-end suggestion box is no longer tolerated". Check out this short clip that tells the story of Bob, an employee who has great ideas for his company but doesn't know where to turn to, and how Salesforce Ideas makes it possible for companies to bubble up the top ideas from employees and customers:

Summer '08 Release - Customizable Ideas

Create Customized Fields and Triggers to Streamline Ideas Management

Professional, Enterprise, and Unlimited Editions

Create new custom fields to track idea status or related projects
Build workflows and triggers to customize your Salesforce Ideas experience
Get timely notification of new comments or ideas

With Summer ’08, Salesforce Ideas features custom fields that facilitate idea management through a broad set of options that make it possible to surface any number of fields at the Idea level. You can then use those fields to filter by criteria or to expose the field’s latest status—for example, “under review” or “delivered”—in Salesforce Ideas.

Ideas is now also tightly integrated with the Force.com platform in the form of validation rules, workflows, and Apex triggers that customize the Salesforce Ideas experience with the help of rule-based notifications. Examples of Notification Alerts that provide up-to-date visibility to community activities include being able to set up email workflows based on comments or keywords or to set up language guidelines.

Note: Not automatically visible. Feature is enabled, but requires some setup.

BusinessWeek Article on Ideas

Jeff Jarvis wrote a terrific article in BusinessWeek on Ideas titled, 'Hey, Starbucks, How About Coffee Cubes?' It is worth reading the full article but here are some great quotes that jumped out.

Schultz intends to use Ideas to change his company—to instill what he calls "a seeing culture." Chris Bruzzo, Starbucks' chief technology officer, who oversees MyStarbucksIdea, adds: "It was also to open up a dialogue with customers and build up this muscle inside our company." He says Starbucks "stood on the shoulders" of Dell's experience—Dell himself shared his lessons with Schultz.

You could say this is nothing but a fancy suggestion box. Benioff argues no. "The dead-end suggestion box and the auto reply are symbols of corporate indifference and are no longer tolerated," he says. In this age of nonstop, immediate communication in blogs, wikis, Twitter, and YouTube, he says, "your customers are having a conversation about your products and practices. The question every company has to ask is: 'Do I want to be part of this conversation? Do I want to learn from it? Am I willing to innovate on the basis of it?'

Jeff also published an extended version of the BusinessWeek Article on his blog, BuzzMachine.

Guidelines for Customer Portal CSS Customization

With the Customer Portal and Partner Portal, companies want to customize the UI to match the look and feel of their corporate website.

Point and Click Customization

The simplest approach is to use the tools provided in the Portal Setup area of the application to pick your fonts, colors, HTML header and footer, tabs and sidebar components. Since it is point and click customization it is very easy and there is no risk of things breaking.

Cascading Style Sheets

While you can go a long way with this approach, some companies want to take it a step further and apply their own Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). This approach is a little bit more technical, but it is a skill set that most web developers are familiar with. By injecting CSS into the HTML header and footer you can gain much greater control over the UI. There is some level of risk that comes along with this customization. For example, if new features are added during the seasonal releases, they could break your CSS. Therefore, we recommend that you test your CSS in the pre-release environment to catch any bugs that might have been introduced. We also recommend that you are careful about how far you take your customization. For example, if you re-arrange the elements on the page you increase the likelihood that things could break badly vs. if you just change how they are styled.

Continue reading "Guidelines for Customer Portal CSS Customization" »

A Model for Modern Communication

I came across a well written post in my RSS Reader today titled "a model for modern communication." It explains many of the principals Salesforce Ideas is built upon and calls out My Starbucks Idea as a great example of this movement.

Step 4: Participate
This is where it gets interesting and where most brands fail. You’ve switched from push to pull to participate. This is not a monologue from you to them anymore, this is a dialogue... So you need to give them a place for them to congregate, a hub to what you stand for where they can go to fulfill their desire to participate. And where you will give them the solutions and tools (utilities) to support your communication. You are building yourself a little army of fans and they don’t want to be disappointed.

Step 5: Recruit
They see you as the champion of your cause and they want to help you spread the word. You need to give them the tools to do so. Get them involved in your product creation, find ways for them to participate in your comms or be a proud part of your activities. By participating to these activities, they will become evangelists.

Step 6: Advocacy
You might want to go back to broadcast media to show the results of your actions and how participation from the community has created something extraordinary. This is how you complete the model.

Also See.... The FLIRT Model of Crowdsourcing: Creators, Critics, Connectors, and Crowds

Press Picks Up on My Starbucks Idea

"We engage in millions of conversations with our customers everyday, and those conversations and ideas have helped shape the company we are today," said Starbucks Chairman and CEO Howard Schultz. "With the launch of MyStarbucksIdea, we are extending the Starbucks community online and creating a dynamic forum that enables us to capture and act upon our customers' best ideas."

Wall Street Journal: Starbucks Moves Aim to Revive Brand and Shares

The company also has launched a Web site -- www.mystarbucksidea.com -- for customers to offer the company suggestions about ordering, products and other aspects of the stores. The company wants the site to be a social network where users can comment on each others' ideas.

CIO Magazine: Starbucks Wants Your Ideas

Starbucks decided to launch its new site as a way to extend the dialog it has with customers in its shops online, said Alexandra Wheeler, director of digital strategy for Starbucks. Called My Starbucks Idea, the site is built on a hosted offering called Ideas from Salesforce.com. "In looking at the space, Salesforce is really the technology provider that had the application and on-demand software service that came closest to what we were looking for," she said.

Buzz Machine: Starbucks listens - at last

Following Dell’s Ideastorm, Starbucks has no opened a forum — also powered by Salesforce.com — where customers can make suggestions then discuss and vote on them. Starbucks, of all companies, with its loyal and opinionated customers, should have been doing this years ago. Every company should be doing it now.
Why does listening to your customers sound like a web 2.0 idea? It should be a business 1.0 necessity.
I don’t understand why companies aren’t falling over themselves to at least offer their customers this opportunity.

Suggestion Box 2.0: Is My Starbucks Ideas a Blueprint for Banks?

Employees appreciate the opportunity to voice their ideas to senior management and do their part in making the company/products better. The same concept can work even better with customers where you don't have to worry about favoritism and corporate politics.

The Guardian: One shot of coffee and two shots at changing the way Starbucks is run
BusinessWeek: 'Hey, Starbucks, How About Coffee Cubes?'
AP News: Thousands of posts flood the Starubcks Site
Boston Globe: Starbucks asked the average joe and boy did it get answers
New York Times: Starbucks Plans Return to Roots
Guardian: Starbucks lets customers have their say
Groundswell: Starbucks embrances customers' input
Time: Starbucks Announces New Upgrades
CNet.com: Starbucks caters to digital crowd with social-networking site
Mashable: Starbucks' Bright Idea: Launching a Social Network
Venture Chronicles: When Customers Vote
Social Media Insider: Eww... What's That Smell? It's My Starbucks Idea (take a look at the comments)
Beagle Research Group: Automating the Suggestion Box
CRM Buyer: Bloggers Hopped Up on My Starbucks Ideas

Innovation Management White Paper + Cool Use of Issuu

Phil Wainewright, a leading commentator on ZDNet on emerging software industry trends, shares his insights on how best to leverage online communities to drive innovation. It's a great article that explains how Web 2.0 can help overcome traditional barriers to innovation, and points to best practices on how to capitalize on the innovative potential of communities:

"In today's emerging Web-connected era of business, the quest for new ideas that enhance competitive edge and deliver new sources of profitability is no longer a solitary, cloistered activity. The Web itself has become a source of breakthrough innovation in effective techniques for discovering, harnessing, and prioritzing new ideas, not only internally within an organization but also in collaboration with partners, customers, and other communities."

Dell IdeaStorm Wins PR Week's Coveted Innovation of the Year 2008

The digital space is growing rapidly. To keep up with the Web 2.0 world, PR needs to explore all facets of the Web to find ways to tap into consumers.

That was what Michael Dell had in mind in early 2007 when he posed a challenge for his team: launch a new tech-based solution that would unleash the power of community-driven innovation. To ride on the successful implementation of Salesforce.com's IdeaExchange in October 2006, Dell's CEO sought a partnership with Salesforce.com to take the concept even further and open it to the global community of Dell users. The solution became an online "crowdsourcing" community called Dell IdeaStorm.

Salesforce Ideas Spring '08 Recorded Demo

Here is a quick recorded demo that highlights the new Ideas Spring '08 features, including My Ideas Inbox, Recent Comments, Top All-Time, and Salesforce Ideas API among others. Very exciting features that enhances interactivity with the community and deepens the user experience.

Also see... How do I activate Salesforce Ideas?

How to Use Salesforce Ideas to Collect Feedback on Your CRM Rollout

A great way to get started with Salesforce Ideas is to use it to collect feedback on your CRM Rollout. It is incredibly easy to set up and it is included with Professional, Enterprise, or Unlimited Edition license.

You'll have to define the type of feedback and discussions you want to have with your users, but in this example we have created a category for executive sponsorship, change requests, training, best practices, data quality, new tools, and marketing requests. By clicking on the images you can see the type of feedback you might get. This is a great way to be more responsive to the needs of your users and drive broad adoption.

Continue reading "How to Use Salesforce Ideas to Collect Feedback on Your CRM Rollout" »

Salesforce Ideas Weekly Webinar

Online_workshop_3 Now that Spring ’08 is generally available, we are ready to kick off our Weekly Webinar Series.

During this 50 minute session we will take you through a product demo and share implementation best practices to help build a vibrant online community.

To attend, login 5 minutes prior to the 11:00 a.m. PST start time using the instructions below.

Each Friday - 11:00 PST, 2:00 EST
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/join/702122673
US Dial-In: (866) 342-2541
Conference Code: 4155364684

The Webinar is meant to be an interactive session, so please feel free to come with questions. We look forward to having you join us on the Webinar!

Webinar Agenda

Quick Introduction: A couple of slides to introduce the product and answers to FAQs such as how is Salesforce ideas Priced.

Demo #1: We will start off by showing you how Salesforce Ideas can be used to collect feedback on your CRM implementation. This is a great way to drive adoption and show your customers you are listening.

Demo #2: Many companies are considering company wide rollouts so that they can break down organizational and geographic barriers to innovation. While a company might have some CRM users who already have access to Ideas, we'll show you what it might look like for an Ideas Only user. We will also show you how you can turn your ideas into projects to help manage follow through on your top initiatives.

Demo #3: Many companies are interested in creating communities for customers and partners. We will show you how easy it is to create a customized portal to collect feedback and allow customers to connect with one another.

Implementation Best Practices: We will take you through some implementation best practices and point you towards resources to help you achieve success.

Salesforce Ideas is GA! Here's How to Activate it in Your Org.

Salesforce Ideas is Generally Available! If you are using Professional, Enterprise, or Unlimited Edition, it is included so give it a try.

For new customers signing up for trial accounts, Ideas will automatically appear in the AppExchange drop down. For existing customers your administrator will have to activate Ideas. To do so go into Setup > Customize > Ideas > Settings, and you can click on the check box to enable Ideas.

Once you get Ideas Enabled, here are some recommended resources to help you roll out Salesforce Ideas.

Top Feature Requests for Salesforce Ideas

With the Spring '08 Release we are going to deliver 5 exciting new features off the IdeaExchange. Recent Comments, My Inbox, Top All-Time, an API, and Ideas for the new partner portal.

As we begin planning for our Summer Release, I want to get an understanding of what features are most important to our customers. I went through the Salesforce Ideas category on the IdeaExchange and here is what I found. We need to get more participation, but here is the prioritized list as it stands.

I'm amazed that some things like mult-site administration and public sites aren't in the top 5. If you think something should be prioritized higher on the list, click through and vote on the idea or add a comment to tell other people why it is so critical.