Thoughts on 2023

What’s your focus for 2023?

As this year unfolds it’s understandable to wonder how things will develop throughout 2023. The recent tech layoff announcements coupled with the economic and geopolitical uncertainty make predicting the future pretty tricky but we’ve been talking to customers about their plans for 2023 nonetheless. While rightly treading cautiously, many are seeing 2023 as an opportunity to make sure their software and systems are tuned to help them do more with less and be ready to scale when growth returns. We’ve captured some trends we’re hearing: one from the sales world where new sales are still happening but perhaps they’re even more hotly contested than before; and a couple from the customer experience viewpoint where great service and communication is key to retaining customers. Read our thoughts below and if you’d like to know more, please get in touch.

Speed to Lead could be key

Are you finding lead flow is reduced in this economic climate? Some of our customers are reporting that deals are closing but there are fewer of them. Speed to lead has become more important than ever in order to outperform competition by responding quickly and accurately to qualify inbound leads.

Get leads to the right reps, faster

Distribution Engine can rapidly classify, de-duplicate and assign leads as they arrive maximizing your chance of beating the competition to the punch. If a given rep isn’t able to respond within the required speed to lead window, Distribution Engine can automatically reassign to the next rep in line.

At a glance Distribution Process View - click or tap to expand

Optimizing your speed to lead shows your prospects that you care, that you are organized and performing to a high standard. Responding to prospects quickly greatly improves your odds of converting the lead as this article from the Harvard Business Review explores. The article might not be new, but it’s arguably more relevant than ever.

It’s straightforward to set up assignment rules and track your current speed to lead / time to contact within Distribution Engine. You can read more about our simple to configure Tracking & SLA features here.

Improve Speed to Lead with Tracking & SLAs - click or tap to expand

Retention is king!

Are you pivoting towards a greater focus on customer retention to weather the economic storm? Many of our customers talk to us about ways to bring efficiencies to the way they organize customer service & success, freeing up more time to give their customers a great experience. Distribution Engine forms an important part of the customer service process for many of our customers and that typically happens in 2 areas:

Support teams:

• Managing inbound cases to ensure they are assigned to the best agent quickly, enabling a fast, accurate response to the customer. Read our skill-based matching example here.
• Managing the workloads, shift patterns and working hours of agents to help with morale and maximize the chances of a timely response to the customer.
• Auto-reassigning cases where they miss SLAs for time to action.

Easily manage working hours with Shift Planner - click or tap to expand

Customer success teams:

• Assigning accounts to CSMs so that their portfolios are balanced and they can provide a great experience for those customers.
• Account assignments can be based on required allocation volumes, geography, skillset, value or many other criteria to fit your ideal success model.
• Make sure that all the customer accounts are being effectively owned and the teams are working as efficiently as possible - focusing on customer success, not assignment admin.

It’s simple to configure our territory and other rules-based assignment using the Distribution Classifier and Distribution Tags

Simple territory management with Classifier - click or tap to expand

If you are interested in learning more or would like us to help you set up a trial in your org free of charge just get in touch or visit our Salesforce AppExchange listing.