One of the aspects of Salesforce that makes my chest swell with pride is our ability to leverage our own software to mobilize teams to quickly and precisely respond to the needs of our customers. The one-to-one closed-loop process we architected for our Customer Success Survey is a great example of this capability in action.

The Customer Success Survey is a “pulse check” survey that is triggered to customers at key milestones in the relationship. It’s how we understand customer perceptions and expectations at each point in the life cycle, and it serves as a key input to the ongoing development of customer experience insights. There’s no doubt this feedback interaction is valuable for Salesforce, but our goal is to make it equally valuable to our customers . So we set out to maximize our survey closed-loop process.

First, we recognize that following up on each and every one of the 500+ responses we receive each month for our Customer Success Survey just isn’t practical. So we designed our feedback interaction to allow customers who need help solving an issue or seeking guidance to raise their hand for assistance. This process contains four key components:

1. The addition of a few dynamic survey questions (driven by response options) that offer customers the opportunity to tell us about an issue they’ve encountered, or a need for guidance.

2. An automated process for creating Salesforce cases that contain details about the customer’s need.

3. A playbook we designed for our Global Customer Success Centers, which instructs Salesforce Specialists on how to address various needs with customers.

4. A Salesforce dashboard where we track and monitor customer issue and guidance requests. This dashboard is used to identify opportunities to create new programs or resources that will address common needs by customer segment or life cycle stage.

Because this entire process is automated, our Salesforce Specialists reach out to customers within one day of survey submission. On average, our Specialists collectively handle 150 cases each month—most of which can be quickly addressed by sharing how-to tips or resources with our customers. Occasionally, customers need help with a technical challenge, and sometimes it’s just tactical help related to invoicing. Regardless of the issue, our closed-loop process provides a quick and easy way for Salesforce to help customers when they need it, providing an immediate value to customers that goes above and beyond actioning customer experience insights.

As a CX professional, there’s little better than being able to deliver an exceptional closed-loop process for our customers, but I have to say the impact it’s had on our Success Specialist has also been gratifying. It’s not uncommon for a Specialist to post in Chatter or send an email to my team, remarking about how good it felt to be able to quickly and easily help a customer. It’s also not uncommon for customers to mention they were intermittently working around a small issue or question, and that they wouldn’t have necessarily taken it upon themselves to reach out to for help if it weren’t for the invitation to do so in our survey. By accelerating customer requests for assistance, we have the opportunity to address something before it becomes an issue, and at times, even provide proactive coaching that helps mitigate future issues. This is a win for the customer, a win for our employees who are motivated by being able to assist, and a win for Salesforce as a company!