If your organization uses both Salesforce and Google Apps, you should enable the connection between the two. Doing so lets your team track email conversations with customers in Salesforce. It also lets you link important Google Docs with a customer’s Salesforce record. Connecting all of this customer information within Salesforce makes it easier for your team to serve customers quickly.
Salesforce and Gmail
Customer email history doesn’t have to be tucked away in a single user’s Gmail account. Instead, important emails can be linked to a customer record. This type of information sharing can produce better customer service and support: everyone on your team can see the customer’s communication history.
Here’s how it works. Sue in Sales clicks on the “Gmail” icon next to a customer’s email address in Salesforce. This creates a new Gmail message to the customer. The new email includes a BCC field pre-populated with Sue’s unique “email to Salesforce” address. Salesforce stores the email with the customer’s activity history. When Ann in Accounting accesses the customer record, Ann can view the email that Sue sent to the customer.
Sue might also save her unique “email to Salesforce” address as a Google Contact. She can then quickly send a BCC to her “email to Salesforce” address anywhere she uses Gmail. Users can find their “email to Salesforce” email address by clicking their Name (upper right) | Setup | Email | My Email to Salesforce. They can then create a new Google Contact to associate with this address. You may want to prepare your help desk to assist users with the “email to Salesforce” feature.
Sue can send an email to a client from her smartphone, with a BCC to her “email to Salesforce” address. Salesforce will associate the email with the related record in Salesforce. Salesforce can save file attachments, as well. This gives Sue an easy way to make sure client communications are tracked in Salesforce while on the go.
If Sue sends to someone with an email address not yet in the database, Salesforce can place the email in a “My Unresolved Items” category. Sue can deal with these “unresolved items” when she logs in later. Again, linking Salesforce and Google Apps makes it easy to track all communications made with customers.
Salesforce and Google Docs
The Salesforce and Google Docs connection lets you associate a Google Doc with a Salesforce record. I’ve seen clients use this to link a wide range of documents with client records including proposals, contracts, presentations and meeting notes.
There are two easy ways to connect a Google Doc with a Salesforce contact record.
The first method works best when creating a new document. Go to the Contact record in Salesforce, and then choose “Add Google Doc”. You can create a document, spreadsheet or presentation. The document link can be found within the contact’s Salesforce record.
The second method works best when you want to associate an existing Google document with a Salesforce record. You’ll need to create a browser button: do this by dragging a link from within Salesforce to your bookmarks bar. Salesforce provides a video overview of the process. Then, when you’re working on a Google Document, click the “Add Google Doc to Salesforce” browser button and find the Salesforce record to which you want to link the document.
Give some thought to document naming. You don’t want to see a list of files named with Google’s default “Untitled Document”. Encourage people to use descriptive words in document titles, such as “Contract”, “Proposal”, “MeetingNotes” or “MeetingAgenda”. And involve users in the process when establishing naming conventions.
How to enable the Salesforce and Google Apps connection
You can enable the connection between Salesforce and Google Apps in just a few minutes. In Salesforce, you’ll need to provide your organization’s Google Apps domain name. Then enable the services you need. To get the functions I mentioned above, you’ll want to enable “Add Google Docs to salesforce.com”, “Gmail to Salesforce”, and “Gmail Buttons and Links”.
Users have the ability to delete emails and Google Documents associated with Salesforce contacts, so make sure to backup your critical customer data, emails and documents automatically.
Connecting Salesforce with Google Apps gives your organization a very powerful set of tools to use to collaboratively serve and engage your customers.
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