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    G2 Review: “Sometimes, Salesforce Customer Service Will Disappoint You”

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    Our team here at Membrain takes our customer reviews seriously. We see them as an opportunity to understand the customer perspective directly - what’s working, what’s not working, how we can improve, and how we can deliver more of the value that our customers actually, well, value.

    We also look at reviews for other CRMs to see what’s driving people crazy. That’s how we know your CRM sucks, and in exactly what ways. And one of the ways it sucks the most? Its customer service.

    Salesforce Customers Really Hate Salesforce Customer Service

    The review in the title of this piece struck me because it was so understated compared to the vehemence with which many Salesforce customers (and former customers) talk about the poor quality of customer service with Salesforce.

    Customers report that they often can’t contact an agent when they need one: “Often it’s impossible.”

    They complain that support tickets and bug reports go unanswered: “It’s buggy and they wait for customers to complain” and “Questions go unanswered in the self-service Trailblazer Community.”

    They say that Salesforce doesn’t really listen to what customers actually want: “Features that have been sitting on their idea board with thousands of votes have gone ignored for years.”

    When we talk to our customers who have come over to Membrain from Salesforce, we hear a lot of these issues as well, often in much more colorful and strong language.

    It makes sense. Salesforce is the current market leader, and has been for a long time. They can afford to rest on their laurels a bit, and with the immense complexity of their product, it’s natural they may not want to devote the necessary resources to help all their customers get the most out of it.

    Customer support seems to be viewed as a “cost center” to them, and it’s a cost they can afford to cut corners on.

    At Membrain, Customer Success is Central to OUR Success

    When I founded Membrain, my goal wasn’t to add another sales technology to the marketplace and sell the company at a profit in a few years. I wanted to actually make a difference for salespeople and their buyers.

    My mission was to elevate the sales profession, and that mission is still very much alive in the organization today. We are only delivering on our mission if our customers are actually improving their sales effectiveness and elevating their sales team with our product and partnerships with leading sales development experts.

    For that reason, our customers’ success IS how we measure our success. So, we invest abundantly in our customer success teams and systems.

    Internally, our teams are in constant communication about what we’re hearing from our users and customers. What they need, what they’re encountering, and what would make their lives better. We have regular team meetings to sync up on these issues, as well as messaging channel conversations where we discuss in real time any issues that are cropping up, and any updates we’re working on for our customers.

    We listen to the updates you request, and we put them in the cue. If our customers need something, we work on it. Obviously, we can’t get to everything right away, but we work very hard to prioritize the things that will make our customers even more successful in their sales efforts.

    We listen to the updates you request, and we put them in the cue.

    One reason we can do this better than Salesforce is that we are very focused on the customers we serve best: Complex b2b sales teams. We invest in customer success teams who don’t just know how to soothe a customer - but understand the complex b2b sales profession, understand the workflows that salespeople need, and understand the business and individual needs of our customers.

    When our customers seek out a customer success advocate to help them with a problem, they don’t get a chat bot to talk them through basic problems and then turn into a frustrating stone wall the minute they need higher level help. They don’t get a person who has been trained to say, “there, there,” and pat them on the head.

    They get access to skilled individuals who know not only our product, but also the way our customers use it and the needs they have. They get actual help from experienced, qualified professionals who understand the lives and workflows of sales professionals.

    And, because our teams are full of heart, they get someone who actually cares and wants to help them succeed.

    As a result, our G2 and other reviews are very different from those of Salesforce. Our customers say things like:

    “Amazing Customer Support team!”
    “Unbelievable and proactive customer support”
    “Attentive and responsive CS team!”
    “Great implementation support”

    They may not know about all the conversations we’re having in private channels, aimed at solving their problems and making our product serve their needs better - but they feel it.

    Just Saying You Care About Customer Success Doesn’t Mean You Do

    We care a lot about customer success partly because we know what it’s like to work with vendors who don’t. We recently left Zendesk, ironically a company whose mission is customer success, because their customer support was so bad.

    It took weeks and months to resolve problems that never should have occurred at all. So we left them and are developing our own chat feature, which we are currently testing internally. I don’t want to brag but - we think our customers will get better service than ever through our elegantly designed, easy to access, and experienced customer service advocate-staffed chat lines.

    We believe that when there is a qualified and competent person on the other end of your chat, your call, your email, or your smoke signal - that you will get efficient, effective, actually helpful help - along with a very pleasant WOW feeling.

    We want you to have that wow feeling.

    Find out what that feels like with Membrain by scheduling a demo of our product today.

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    George Brontén
    Published August 10, 2022
    By George Brontén

    George is the founder & CEO of Membrain, the Sales Enablement CRM that makes it easy to execute your sales strategy. A life-long entrepreneur with 20 years of experience in the software space and a passion for sales and marketing. With the life motto "Don't settle for mainstream", he is always looking for new ways to achieve improved business results using innovative software, skills, and processes. George is also the author of the book Stop Killing Deals and the host of the Stop Killing Deals webinar and podcast series.

    Find out more about George Brontén on LinkedIn