Salesforce.com implemented and marketed Chatter as the world turned social. Modeled after the popular intranet app, Yammer, it has the advantage of being centered around your organization’s activities in Salesforce.com. Those activities provide a real-time stream of what is happening across your team with respective data records. It opens up the experience so you don’t have to go searching. Activities are delivered to you as an integrated data set. Without Chatter, you have less transparency and a feel for the pulse of your business activities.
Our Salesforce consulting clients that make use of Chatter often have questions on strategy and use of the system. Here are a few best practices to integrate this powerful tool into your business processes:
- Bypass email. The problem with email is that it is a private record located in distributed inboxes. Recording ecord communications on Salesforce.com records extends the context of your communications and houses the information in context within Salesforce.com.
- Share files. Upload files and share them within Chatter as a way of managing project and sales information in context. The collaboration goes beyond mere sending and stores your files with distribution within Salesforce.com records.
- Status streaming. To help your team understand what others are doing helps to create context and focus. Managers can understand where the work distribution and focus are. Progress can be tracked in real-time with people and data records.
- Team building. Use Chatter to help your team get familiar with each other’s talents and focus. This facilitates problem solving and collective approaches to servicing your customers in Salesforce.com. Encourage updates frequently and technical details to promote knowledge sharing.
Chatter is a powerful private social networking tool focused on promoting collaboration in context. Context is what is different from other tools on the market. The focus on a customer, project or deal keeps communications, progress and actions in one place for everyone to understand what is happening. Extra cycles of soliciting information is replaced with a push approach from the continual activity streams.
How is Chatter relevant to your work?
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