Salesforce Chatter–a cloud-based collaborative tool enables an opportunity for salesforce.com to reach every employee of an organization. Salesforce is the world’s leading cloud-based software provider delivering services to over 15000 businesses globally.
If you’ve ever wondered about Salesforce Chatter, its purpose, or why you should consider using the tool, this blog will satiate your curiosity.
Before we get to the nitty gritty of this tool, it is worth noting that it is World’s first Cloud 2 enterprise social collaboration application unlocking huge potential. Moreover, its unique features make it better than the existing collaborative tools. Let us understand what Salesforce Chatter is.
What is Salesforce Chatter?
Salesforce Chatter is a collaboration application that enables employees to share information, talk to each other and work together. The tool lets you follow people and groups within the organization’s internal network. The working of this feature is similar to the working of Facebook. So, it is a miniature social-networking platform explicitly designed for businesses using Salesforce.
Now that we know what Salesforce Chatter is, below is a breakdown of its features and benefits that make it a one-of-its-kind tool. Let us dive right in.
What are the Key Features of Salesforce Chatter?
As a company offering Salesforce Application development Services, we want to highlight some key features of Salesforce Chatter.
Upload files and manage version control
How many times did you have to rework because of having the wrong version of a document? While these may seem like small bugs, they could have more significant client-facing issues. Chatter offers version control that helps you stop running into such matters. You can keep files like PDFs or word documents up to date with Chatter Files.
Create tasks and polls
Creating actions is an excellent feature for any chat application. It lets users write types of Chatter posts and create & edit records from the Chatter feed. Another helpful part is creating Poll posts. You can use this feature for effective decision-making, such as who to staff on which project, when to start a meeting, etc.
Automate an Out of Office message
You won’t have to wait for answers from employees who aren’t working. With Chatter’s ‘Out of Office’ status, users can write a post and specify their start/end dates for the time they’ve gone.
Reject or Approve records
The tool lets users reject or approve changes to records in several situations, including managing work hours, approving them, and checking updates on other information. To reject or approve records, users should search for the record and find where to reject or approve.
More than a tool for effective communication, it is a comprehensive tool that helps your team collaborate effectively. It allows users to communicate securely at work to share files, establish connections and share status updates.
What are the Benefits of Salesforce Chatter?
After knowing the key features of Salesforce chatter, let’s dig a little deeper into understanding its benefits. While features let you know what the tool offers, benefits state how businesses can use these features to solve their business challenges.
Cleanse emails
You can efficiently declutter emails with chatter tools like group forums, file sharing, and online chats. The tool also allows you to update your projects and share them with other members, after which you can track the updates with the help of the comment section of your post.
Easily share files
Imagine spending time uploading large files and sending them across through emails. This way of sharing files has now taken a back seat when tools like Salesforce Chatter can do the task within a few minutes.
Bid farewell to meetings
Unnecessary meetings take up a lot of time and adversely affect the business’s overall productivity. With Salesforce Chatter, groups can virtually discuss all their ideas and even cancel meetings when not required. The group forum feature lets you share valuable information with other team members, which is a sure-shot way to have more meaningful and constructive discussions.
Promotes organizational unity
The tool is especially suitable for organizations where employees are constantly leaving and coming or where employees are spread across varying regions and countries. Salesforce Chatter comes to the rescue as it helps maintain a healthy work environment with remote employees from across the globe.
Helps save time
The above-mentioned tasks save time along with real purpose. Less uploading and downloading time, proper communication, etc. help you save a lot of time. With the help of this, work efficiency also gets maintained. Features like Version control in Chatter are responsible for saving time for the employees and the organization.
Connected teams
As a company offering Salesforce CRM Integration Services, it comes under our umbrella of responsibilities to also help you integrate plug-ins or activate features like Salesforce chatter. This tool offers real-time updates and alerts for any changes in the projects going under discussion or among teammates. It also enables you to chat with your team members through audio/video calls or texts while viewing the same screen of Salesforce.
Overall, an efficient workplace
These overall benefits aid in an efficient workplace. Salesforce Chatter application helps to make the workplace more efficient for the entire organization. With the help of chatter features, your team can communicate effectively, which leaves your business time to indulge in meaningful activities rather than having long meetings.
Business Challenges of Salesforce Chatter
While we may think Salesforce Chatter is all perks, it’s far from true. There are many challenges with this feature as well. Let’s have a look at a few challenges.
It can be uncomfortable for new users
Chatter is a new thing for users. While some may be comfortable with social networking tools, others may have had no exposure. For those who won’t be comfortable using the tool, it can make them uncomfortable, and it may take considerable time to get accustomed to it. A well-thought communication plan will familiarize users with such social media tools. However, it could be time-consuming.
Communication overload
Yet another common concern for businesses using Salesforce Chatter is information overload. Employees may have a habit of checking their inboxes before ending their workday. Chatter posts as emails would overload their inbox with unread emails. It’s important to note that implementing Chatter can cause an overload in communication and can be overwhelming for some.
No control over what users’ chat about
Many executives get nervous thinking about the fact that they can’t control what people say on Chatter. While they can provide best practices stating what to use and what not to use on Chatter, but at the end, the users control conversations. This could pose a threat to businesses because if the employees use the tool for negative purposes, it could backfire and adversely affect the business’ overall productivity.
You need full Salesforce access
One of the primary challenges of Salesforce Chatter is that your business needs to implement Salesforce. You can’t use Salesforce Chatter without Salesforce since it’s not a standalone feature. This could be an issue for businesses with a tight budget, as implementing Salesforce might not be feasible for all businesses.
Inexperienced support team
Once the implementation is complete, you’ll need ongoing support to ensure that the platform works properly under different circumstances. However, a lack of proper support can severely impact your team’s productivity. So investing in a reliable support team is of utmost importance for a business to run smoothly.
As stated above, Salesforce Chatter has its perks and challenges. However, with a smooth and experienced Salesforce Integration company like ours, implementing this feature makes the process seamless.
In Conclusion
The blog talks about everything you should know about Salesforce Chatter. As a Salesforce Integration Company in USA, we at CloudFountain Inc. offers Application support, Amazon Web Services Consulting, Cloud Consulting, Big data consulting, Custom Application Development. If you intend to know more about our services or specifically about Salesforce chatter feature activation, we’re more than happy to help you solve your queries!