Kao Consulting Inc.

An administrator for a non-profit posed a question recently about implementing Salesforce Service & Support’s Knowledge Base feature. This is a critical part of the CRM lifecycle, and some upfront investment in thinking about what solutions to create can dramatically reduce repetitive support inquiries later on.  I figured I’d give you some process tips if you’re considering using this.

First, some vocabulary. A Knowledge base in Salesforce is comprised of a set of Solutions, so certain designated customers (or the general public) can search through it to find answers to common issues. Considering that phone-based, live customer support is one of the most expensive customer support channels, businesses of any size should consider offloading some of the more basic questions to an area that people can search themselves.

I came across an article on BNet that discussed why “Scientific Forecasting” flops. All the examples they gave were based on organizational challenges, and I wholeheartedly agree.

Salesforce.com does a good job of providing a Forecasts tab for companies that really enforce this process, but IMHO this is more suited for companies selling specific products (usually with SKUs) that need to tie this information into their back-end systems. Is this the majority of users? I’ll boldly say that I don’t think so.

Even users that have the above situation may also not use forecasting in the system, simply because of the organizational challenges that seem to rear up when it comes time to forecast.