Pages

Thursday, December 28, 2023

Tips for passing Salesforce Contact Center Accredited Professional Certification

 

Motivation behind this


Salesforce has come up Contact Center AP certification and it is available from Partner Learning Camp (PLC). As part of Salesforce Days program, completion of contact center courses helped me to procure free certification voucher. Since, I have worked Service Cloud extensively which helped to appear for this exam and helped me to pass on first attempt. 

Sharing my tips to prepare and pass this certification for trailblazers.



Exam Outline


Content60 questions (1 out of 3 is correct answer)
Time allotted to complete the exam: 75 minutes
Passing score66%
Registration fee: USD 150 plus applicable taxes as required per local law
Delivery options: Proctored exam delivered in an online environment that can be accessed
through Partner Learning Camp (PLC)
References: No hard-copy or online materials may be referenced during the exam
Prerequisite: None

Topics











Preparation


Follow this guided path and respective courses from PLC.



Contact Center Capabilities


Below are the courses designed to know Contact Center Capabilities.

Exam Structure


For each question there are only 3 options and only one option to choose. As there are no multi-choice answers, so it will be less confusing on choosing the answers.

Few Important points to cover for exam


Though this certification doesn't have any pre-requisite but if any one clears Service Cloud certification, then it will be easy for them to pass. If we understand following concepts it will be easy to pass the exam.

Contact Center



Why Contact center?
  • Connect every channel on one platform - with the help of Service Cloud Voice, Digital engagement, BYO-channel
  • Resolve every issue faster and smarter - with the help of Einstein GPT, Data Cloud
  • Scale with Automation and AI - with the help of Bots, Automation, Omni Routing, Einstein GPT
Shifting to a Scale


There are at-least 5 questions from this diagram and concepts.

Feedback Management



Shift Scheduling



Digital Engagement & Einstein Bots

  • Connect channels for continuous engagement
  • Reduce costs with intelligent automation
  • Deploy fast, scale efficiently




There are around 4-5 questions on above topic

Omni Channel Routing





Below slide is very important, at-least 4-5 questions in exam.


Why Einstein Bots?


Why Service Cloud Voice?
  • Get Started Fast with Agile Cloud Telephony
  • Resolve Calls Faster with Automation & AI
  • Manage your Teams More Efficiently
  • Build Relationships with Every Phone Conversation





There are significant number of questions on SCV.

Self Service

Deflect cases and reduce cost with self-service
  • Scale with AI and automation - with help of Flow, Service Catalog, Next Best Action, Knowledge, Search
  • Personalize every interaction - with help of Customer 360, Data Cloud
  • Create Connected support experience - Einstein Bots, Community, Help Center, Authenticated Portal, Mobile


Few more points to be covered:

  • 15 KPIs every Salesforce Call Center Manager should track in Service Cloud - pay attention to Fast Call Resolution, NPS
  • Job descriptions of Call center manager, IT project manager, VP of IT, Project sponsor
  • Salesforce reports and dashboards along with suitable AppExchange product to be leveraged
  • Configuring Bot on Experience Cloud, Pre-chat form and what information to be passed
  • Salesforce Data Import - Use of Data Loader, Import Wizard
  • Service Level Agreement
  • UX Personas in Salesforce
  • Email-to-case configurations and use cases to solve
  • Web-to-case configuration and use cases to solve
  • Use cases on when to use Long code and Short code
  • Testing and deployment of WhatsApp channel
  • RecordTriggerFlow related use cases
  • Given an incident use case, how to notify customer
  • Configuring escalation rules
  • Configuring Business Hours
  • Advantages of using CI/CD
That's all I can remember and thanks for reading!

Further Reading for other certifications


Sunday, December 17, 2023

Trailblazer Community Event: Kolkata Trailblazers Yearend Connect 2023

 

Motivation behind this

 
2 Trailblazers community groups have successfully organized in-person event on 16th December,2023 and it has a great time meeting with Kolkata Trailblazers. Being group leader I would convey my thanks to all of them.

Organizers:


Venue:

Webel IT Park Tower 1, BN4 , Salt Lake Sector V, Kolkata 700091




Sessions:


1) Sales & Service GPT (with hands-on demo)


Speaker: Santanu Boral & Arunangshu Pal

This session covers:
  • Einstein Trust Layer
  • Sales GPT Features like Sales Emails
  • Service GPT features like Work Summaries, Service Replies
  • Configuring and initiating conversation from Einstein Bot
  • How grounding is configured and works with Case and Knowledge


2) Useful features from Salesforce new releases


Speaker: Santanu Pal

This session covers:
  • Dynamic Component Instantiation
  • Dynamic Form
  • DataWeave
  • Lightning Record Picker
  • Mass Actions in Related Lists
  • Salesforce on AWS
  • Data Cloud
  • And his favourite topic - Prompt Engineering demo using ChatGPT


Glimpse of Event



Join with us at our Telegram Channel

Thank you for joining with us and receiving our own customized gifts for all.

Monday, October 9, 2023

Trailblazer Community Event: Kolkata Trailblazers Connect Oct 2023

 

Motivation behind this

 
2 Trailblazers community groups have successfully organized in-person event on 7th October,2023 and it has a great time meeting with Kolkata Trailblazers. Being group leader I would convey my thanks to all of them.

Organizers:


Venue:

Webel IT Park Tower 1, BN4 , Salt Lake Sector V, Kolkata 700091



Sessions:


1) Dreamforce Takeaways


Speaker: Santanu Boral

This session covers:
  • Dreamforce Highlights
  • Dreamforce is more than sessions
  • Demo on Einstein Co-pilot

2) Apex Best Practices


Speaker: Kingshuk Sarkar

This session covers:
  • Security Best Practices
  • Performance Best Practices
  • Design Apex for Scale
  • Writing reusable Apex code
  • Writing Maintainable Apex code

Deck is taken from Dreamforce Session conducted by Mohith Shrivastava and Daniel Ballinger


3) Introduction to AI


Speaker: Santanu Pal

This session covers:
  • What is AI?
  • What is Machine Learning?
  • What is Deep Learning?
  • AI Strategy
  • About Generative AI


Glimpse of Event



Join with us at our Telegram Channel

Thank you for joining with us and receiving Dreamforce collectibles.

Monday, September 18, 2023

Dreamforce 2023 Takeaway - My own way

 

Motivation behind this


This is my third Dreamforce experience and first time after receiving MVP Hall of Fame title and thanks to Salesforce for providing free full conference pass for MVP and specials thanks to my company Concentrix Catalyst for giving an opportunity to attend this event.

During my attendance, I have gathered some technical piece of information which I thought of sharing those. Hope those are not subject to copyright for sharing as it is.

Announcements 


Here is brief of Dreamforce Announcement at a glance. For more information, refer following links:


Highlights


Here is the list of highlights and announcements we heard during Dreamforce and it will be available as per the timeline given by Salesforce.



Click on the above picture to view in better way.

Event Details




Eventful Days




Receiving Salesforce MVP Hall of Fame Award


I am thankful to Salesforce for giving me the Salesforce MVP Hall of award and opportunity to share the stage with other fellow MVPs.









Trailblazer India Community Gatherings




Sharing moments with my colleagues



Unforgettable moments



And there are much more.

Overall it was a memorable experience for a life time. 

Sunday, June 25, 2023

Trailblazer Community Event: Kolkata Trailblazers Connect June 2023

 

Motivation behind this

 
2 Trailblazers community groups have successfully organized in-person event on 24th June,2023 and it has a great time meeting with Kolkata Trailblazers. Being group leader I would convey my thanks to all of them.

Organizers:


Venue:

Webel IT Park Tower 1, BN4 , Salt Lake Sector V, Kolkata 700091

Attendees: 30



Sessions:


1) Exploring CRM Analytics


Speaker: Souparna Bose

This session covers:
  • Overview
  • Pre-requisites
  • Live Demo
    • Einstein Analytics-Data Manager & Query Language
    • Dashboard Components
  • Benefits & Limitations Of CRM Analytics

2) Valuable Features of Summer 23 release


Speaker: Arunangshu Pal

This session covers:
  • Admin features
  • Developer features - Apex
  • Developer features - LWC

Glimpse of Event



Join with us at our Telegram Channel

Thank you for joining with us!

Monday, May 15, 2023

Tips for passing Salesforce Sales Representative Certification

 

Motivation behind this


Salesforce has announced Sales Representative certification and it is available from 4th May, 2023. Being on Salesforce platform more than a decade and worked various roles including pre-sales engineering which helps me to target for this exam and clearing with flying colors.

Btw, this is my 100th blog post which motivates me to pen down right away.

Sharing my tips to prepare and pass this certification for trailblazers.



Exam Outline



Content60 multiple-choice / multiple-select questions and 5 non-scored questions.
Time allotted to complete the exam: 105 minutes
Passing score70%
Registration fee: USD 200 plus applicable taxes as required per local law
Delivery options: Proctored exam delivered onsite at a testing center or in an online proctored environment.
References: No hard-copy or online materials may be referenced during the exam
Prerequisite: None

Topics


Topics

Weighting

Planning

21%

Customer Engagement

15%

Deal Management

37%

Pipeline Management

12%

Forecasting  

 6%

Customer Success

 9%              


Preparation




Exam Structure


For each question there are only 3 options and only one option to choose. As there are no multi-choice answers, so it will be less confusing on choosing the answers.

Few Important points to cover for exam


Though this certification doesn't have any pre-requisite but if any one clears Sales Cloud certification and Business Analyst certification, then it will be easy for them to pass. If we understand following concepts it will be easy to pass the exam.

Planning


Sales Territories and Forecasting

  • Territory Management Best practices
    • Divide territories based on company goals
    • Balancing territories - No of companies, Geo, Size of companies, Propensity to buy, Industry
  • Plan your territories in Salesforce way
    • Plan for growth
    • Avoid Disruption
    • Lessen Ramp time
    • Lead with Data
    • Be Fair
    • Always adjust
  • Track Most important Metrices
    • Pipeline
    • Salesforce’s number one metric is ACV (annualized contract value), which is the sum of new or add-on opportunities
    • Measure Monthly
  • Managing Territories in Salesforce
    • Model your territories
    • Create a territory hierarchy
    • Define assignment rules
    • Promote team selling
  • Forecast with Precision
    • Pipeline is a comprehensive view of a rep’s open opportunities.
    • Forecast is a subset of the pipeline and includes just those deals expected to close in a certain period, like this quarter
    • Define your Sales Process - establish consistent terminology for your sales cycle
    • Inspect forecast constantly
      • Does the prospect have a budget?
      • Have their executives signed off?
      • Are all key decision makers identified and engaged?
      • Have we effectively quantified ROI to the buyers?
      • Is there a compelling event driving the timeline?
  • Dashboards every Sales Leader needs:
    • State of Union - comprehensive view of your sales, highlighting the most important metrics for the business each month
    • AMP - activities, meetings, and pipeline
    • Daily Pipe Gen - pipe generation on a daily basis
    • Clear Your Room - t’s important to keep your CRM clean. With this dashboard, you can assess whether your sales reps are keeping their deals current and accurate.

Managing Key Accounts


It allows brands to:
  • Design smarter territories that positively impact sales performance and revenue growth.
  • Unlock account collaboration to increase productivity with shared tools.
  • Engage in joint business planning, integrating channel planning and budgeting.
  • Optimize trade promotions to achieve a 360-degree view of spend and return on investment (ROI).
  • Forecast customer demand to gain complete commercial visibility and drive transparency and profitability within accounts.
Understand KPIs:
  • Growth: Nurture growth on metrics such as sales volume, revenue, and margins. Metrics can be based on a region, account, or product category mix.
  • Revenue: Reach a sales volume figure in your accounts. In cases where there’s a universal unit of measure across multiple categories, revenue can also be measured by volume.
  • Margin: Deliver the growth and revenue targets in accordance with a certain margin goal.
  • Trade Spend: Trade spend budgets are fixed or derived from a live rate percentage of revenue available to reach targets for the year to date.

Sales Rep Training

  • Preparing your team to sell successfully
    • Manage Get fresh ideas to generate more Sales Pipe
    • Manage your time efficiently
    • Develop Business Acumen
    • Develop Sales Acumen
    • Know your product
  • Tech right selling behaviors
    • Demonstrate good selling skills
    • Have good operational rigor
    • Play well with others

Set Sales Performance Goals

  • Use Activity and Outcome KPIs
    • Activity like calls made, emails sent, Meetings Set, Voicemails, Onsite Visits, Webinar Attendance
    • Outcome measures; Revenue, Attainment, New Logos, Leads Generated, Lead Follow-Up Time, Lead Conversion Rate, Retention, Churn, Customer Lifespan
  • Incentivize Sales Team

Relationship Selling


Sales Model


Make a Connection
  • Relationship Selling
    • Long term results
    • Building trust
    • Offering insights
    • Creating value for the customer
  • Transactional Selling
    • Short-sighted, one-off deals.
    • Making a sale.
    • Product.
    • Price
  • Craft a Relevant Story
    • Incident - Describe the customer’s situation before implementing your solution.
    • Action - What the customer did to solve the problem (using your solution).
    • Benefit - Describe how your solution solved the problem and the value received by the customer.
Collaborate with Customer
  • Clarifying questions
    • In what regard?
    • How so?
    • Tell me more...
    • How do you mean? etc.
  • Confirming questions
    • It sounds like ..
    • What I'm hearing you say is..
Create Sales Presentation
  • Summarize solutions using Facts, Benefits and Applications
    • Summary Statement tells the customer about your ability to help. It shows you listened by restating the customer's Should Be and Payout
    • Facts - specific, true, provable statements
    • Benefits - brief, clear descriptions of how any customer could use and enjoy the solution
    • Applications - clarify how your specific customer will apply and benefit from the solution
Confirm an effective solution
  • Listen Empathetically
  • Understand nature of objections and responding:
    • Cushion
    • Clarify
    • Cross-check
    • Reply
    • Trial Commitment
Get a commitment
Find more customers
  •     Referrals
At the end, read this page.

Customer Engagement


How to approach difficult conversations



  • Observation - What is the conflict? What stake is at jeopardy?
  • Feeling - How did or do they feel about the focus of the conversation?
  • Need - What does the customer need?
  • Request - What is it they are asking?
Best Practices
  • Manage Emotions
  • Get acknowledgement
  • Be transparent
  • Be solution focused
  • Adopt a mindset of inquiry
Identify problems and solutions
  • Show Empathy
  • Ask questions to understand the Customer's perspective
  • Make recommendations
  • Be transparent
  • Focus on solutions
  • Follow up

Design Thinking for Sales

  • Creating  problem-solving process used to find novel solutions
  • Using Feasibility and Viability
  • Customer centric approach to Discovery

Sales Process





How to find new prospect
  • Follow the prospect before you connect
  • Find them in groups
  • Hype them up

Cold Calling


Warm up to Cold calling
  • Be compelling
  • Ask smart questions
  • Make a plan

Prospecting to improve Sales

  • How prospecting fits in Sales Cycle
    • Attention - The customer is aware of the product.
    • Interest - The customer demonstrates a desire to learn more about the product.
    • Desire - The customer chooses to purchase the product.
    • Action - The customer makes the purchase.
  • Develop a Contact Strategy
    • Segmenting Accounts
    • Develop sales messages:
      • Short
      • Specific
      • Results-driven
      • Conversational
      • Positive (both in their message and energy)
      • Inspiring
      • Unique (demonstrate the benefits of doing business with you)
      • Beneficial to the prospect (address “What’s in it for me?”)
  • Know when to reach out


Deal Management and Pipeline Management


Pay attention to understand following topics and images. Half of the total exam questions are from the following.

Know about Sales Pipelines




Stages of Sales Pipeline 

At-least 8 to 10 questions at exam, focus on each of the stages

  • Prospecting - Process of developing new business. Research, outreach and search for potential customers or buyers of your product. You can start gauging interest with potential buyers through personalized emails, cold-calling, customer referrals, industry events, or sometimes just through building a strong social media presence that establishes you as a problem-solving expert.
  • Lead Qualification - Focus on qualifying and filtering by creating ideal customer profile or buyer personas that outlines characteristics of customers which you are trying to bring in. Think about ideal industry, company size, location, pain points. To move those leads deeper into the pipeline, consider offering an e-book, white paper, webinar, case study, or other type of free resource to determine if the prospect is interested in learning more about your solution. It’s also helpful to conduct a preliminary discovery call to get to know the prospect’s needs before you launch to the next step of a sales call.
  • Sales call, demo or meeting - Bring all your collective insights and build a business case that demonstrates how your product will help your prospect achieve their goals.
  • Proposal - make official sales offer. You again summarize how your company can help address the potential customer’s pain points. You reiterate pricing information and demonstrate why the business value of your product more than offsets its cost. Personalization and perceived value are the key.
  • Negotiation and Commitment - Handling objections or additional inquires that require renegotiating the initial proposal. Discuss expanding or shrinking the scope of work, adjusting pricing, and managing expectations to come to a final agreement.
  • Contract Signing or Opportunity Won - You got the deal and proceed for signing.
  • Post Purchase - Customer experience has just begun. The buyer will expect attentive service during implementation and regular monitoring of the account’s progress. At the right times, you can cross-sell existing customers on new services and upsell them on premium solutions. Overall, be sure to treat your new customers well — referrals and future sales depend on it.
Important metrics of Sales Pipeline



Objection handling strategies

  • Defuse acknowledge the objection and address the emotion behind it.
    • Sharpen your EQ - Stay cool, Practice empathy, be assertive, bounce back from adversity
    • Show empathy with matching statements
  • Discover - ask questions to get more details about what’s really going on.
    • Asking open ended questions
  • Deliver - respond to the objection.
    • Respond with proof (stats, product & feature details, differentiators)
    • Use Feel, Felt, Found
    • Share customer success story

Forecasting

A Sales forecast is an expression of expected Sales revenue. It should be based on 5 simple questions:
  • Who  if the prospects are the decision-makers or just influencers, the forecast will be more or less exact.
  • What - Forecasts should be based on exactly what solutions you plan to sell.
  • Where - In what location is the prospect making their buying decision, and where will they use the actual products?
  • Why - Why is the prospect or existing customer considering new services? Is there a big event making them consider it now?
  • How - How does this prospect make purchasing decisions?
That's all I can remember and thanks for reading!

Further Reading for other certifications