This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’re sitting down with Ruchi Kumar, Product Management Senior Manager on the Core Service Team of Service Cloud at Salesforce. We’ll cover what’s new in Spring 21 for Admins with Service Setup Assistant and Macros Builder.
Join us as we talk about everything she’s working on for Spring ‘21 and how you can get involved.
You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Ruchi Kumar.
The Core Service Team that Ruchi is in charge of the “bread and butter” of Service Cloud: Service Consoles, Quick Text, Macros, Knowledge, and more. Ruchi’s team, in particular, is in charge of improving the setup experience and making the admin experience better so they can discover and adopt new features.
In Spring ‘21, there are a ton of improvements coming to Setup Assistant. “If you think of your journey as an admin, the power of the platform of Service Cloud and Salesforce is supermassive, but sometimes you just want to have a prescriptive out-of-the-box experience so that you can get ready right away with your new app and let your team focus on what they do best,” Ruchi says. It sets up a new Service App for you preconfigured with the best productivity tools so you can get going as soon as possible, drawing on all the knowledge of best practices Salesforce has.
Ruchi’s other team works on productivity tools, especially macros. “It really cuts downtime and creates instructions so agents can automatically perform routine tasks such as closing a case or sending an email,” she says, “you just need to write the instructions for the macro and they just hit a button.” Macro Builder is a Lightning tool that makes creating macros a point-and-click affair. Just highlight the component and choose the actions you need to happen.
In Spring ‘21, you can switch between tabs to create a more complex macro for your complex page layout where you can run more multi-steps and navigate easily between pages. “Any way we can make macros easier to build makes them easier to implement, and helps you deliver faster resolution times to make your agents and customers happier,” Ruchi says.
Most importantly, Ruchi and her team want to hear your feedback about how they can improve on the admin experience. Consider this your invitation to the Service Admin Advisory board to be a part of creating and coming up with the next set of admin features.
Gillian Bruce:
Welcome to the Salesforce Admins podcast, where we talk about product, community, and careers to help you be an awesome admin. Today, we are talking with Ruchi Kumar, product management senior manager. She’s got a lot of amazing things coming for you in spring ’21, focused on service. So things like service setup assistant and macros builder, and we’re going to get into all of that on today’s podcast. You’re not going to want to miss it because I promise these are really, really amazing things for you admins. So without further ado, let’s get Ruchi on the pod.
Mike Gerholdt:
So Ruchi welcome to the podcast.
Ruchi Kumar:
Thanks so much, Mike, glad to be here.
Mike Gerholdt:
January, we’re getting ready for spring ’21, there’s a lot of neat features in the release notes. And I know we’re going to talk about the broadcast and all of that stuff, but for our Salesforce admin audience that is just meeting you for the first time, what do you do at Salesforce and how did you come on board?
Ruchi Kumar:
Yeah, good questions. So what I do at Salesforce is I’m actually a product manager on what we call the core service team of Service Cloud. Now this is the Service Cloud team that really manages the bread and butter of our service offering. So that includes service consoles, quick tax, macros, knowledge. We own the core service features, and my team in particular, we’re in charge of improving the setup experience and making the admin experience better so that they can discover and adopt new features. And how I arrived at Salesforce is I actually joined, I want to say it’s eight months ago, so I have not met any of my colleagues in person. I joined while we were in a lockdown, as we continue to be, so I’ve only worked from home. I joined from another tech company in the Bay Area, and I’ve loved my eight months since, and I’m hoping eventually someone from Salesforce will get to meet me from the shoulder down as they’ve only seen me in video conferences.
Gillian Bruce:
I think all of us are going through elements of that. If you’ve joined a new team or you started working with a new person, you’re like, “Hold up, do I actually know what this person looks like? Are you six feet tall, or do you have huge muscles? You don’t know. All you see is the head and the neck. But that’s awesome. So Ruchi, one of the things you just said is that your team is in charge of the admin experience, which perks my ears, and I’m sure perks our listeners’ ears because we love product managers who are admin focused. So can you tell us a little bit about some of the awesome admin features coming in Spring ’21 that your team has worked on?
Ruchi Kumar:
Yeah, absolutely. So the first is what we call service setup assistant. If you haven’t checked it out, I’d definitely recommend that you do. You can do so by just navigating to the setup app, and you’ll see the second node there is service setup assistant. And what essentially this product is doing is if you think of your journey as an admin, the power of the platform of Service Cloud and Salesforce is super massive, but sometimes you just want to have a prescriptive out of the box experience so that you can get ready right away with your new app, and you can let your team focus on what they do best, which is closing cases and addressing customer issues.
Ruchi Kumar:
So what we’ve launched is based off our knowledge of industry best practices, we launched in Winter ’21 service setup assistant, and it’s essentially a two-step process. It’s an out of the box service app where you just turn on the toggle and we’ll set up a new service app for you pre-configured with the best productivity tools that we know would make your agents more productive. And we also have the right layouts. We have some sample data there so that we can go from zero to minutes with you ready, and this doesn’t require any implementation partner, and it really requires just you turning on a toggle and being ready to go.
Ruchi Kumar:
And we’ve seen really great success since we’ve launched this in Winter ’21. We’ve had a lot of positive feedback from the admin community. We’re here to hear more and we’re continuing to work on how to go beyond the setup experience and we’re entering our next phase, which will be around admin discoverability. So how do you guys discover the next new features you should set up based off what we’ve released and based off of what your industry competitors are doing. So that was a mouthful, but I’ll just say that if you have any input or any feedback how we can improve on our admin experience in our next phase for existing admins, please do join our service admin advisory board and you’ll be a part of creating and coming up with our next set of admin features.
Mike Gerholdt:
We’ll put the link to the advisory board in the show notes so that they can click on it. I’m thinking through even the last television I bought had a setup experience. It feels natural now that Salesforce has that. I’m super excited for this.
Ruchi Kumar:
Yeah, I’m really, really excited too, and if you think, I actually have more of a consumer tech background, and there’s no reason that enterprise should be as unintuitive as consumer is, it should be as intuitive and natural to you as it is to set up your iPhone. And we’re really working towards that vision so that… We’re making your job easier as an admin and we’re making it more intuitive so it can be just become of your day to day. I’m really excited by the updates we have there to make a more intuitive experience.
Mike Gerholdt:
Now, back at TrailheaDX, we had Purvi Desai on, who did this great segment on Service Cloud and all of these amazing features. I’ll put the link to in the show notes to the YouTube video. And she secretly was a huge macros fan, and I think, I don’t want to say infected, but enlightened all of our team on macros. And we did a macros did you know video. It was almost unanimous when the team looked at what macros builder was coming in Spring ’21 that we had to have you in our release readiness. So can you cover a little bit about what macro builder is?
Ruchi Kumar:
Yeah, absolutely. So besides tailoring the admin experience, I have another team that really works on our productivity tools, and macros are one that are beloved by our customers. It really cuts out downtime and creates instructions so agents can automatically perform routine tasks, such as closing a case or sending an email. You just need to write the instruction for the macro and they just hit a button and it fires off an email based on routine tasks. Now, macro builder is our tool Lightning that makes it very easy to build a macro. It’s just a point and click builder, and all you have to do is highlight the component that you want to have the action take place, select the instruction, so whether it’s changing the status, whether it’s sending an email, whether it’s selecting a quick text, and just continue to select instruction after instruction, so you create a manual for the macro.
Ruchi Kumar:
And what’s really exciting in our Spring ’21 release is as you have more complex page layouts, you might have multiple tabs in the macro and in macro builder previously, you would have to go to Lightning App Builder to select different components that are in different tabs. So that can be a little bit not optimal in your experience where you’re switching back… So if you want to go into one tab and do one action, then want to go into another tab, you have to spend a lot of time configuring it. But now in macro builder, we’ve made it easier than ever, so you can just switch between tabs and you can create a more complex macro for your more complex page layout where you can run more multi-steps and navigate with pages in a jiffy. So we’re really, really excited. This was based off customer demand and feedback. And like I said, any way that we can make macros easier to build makes them easier to implement and then helps you deliver faster resolution times and make your agents and customers happier.
Gillian Bruce:
Well yeah, I mean one of the biggest jobs that we have as admins is helping our users get their jobs done the most efficient way possible so that they’re able to focus on the meaty stuff, the problem solving versus, “Oh, I’ve got to take these three steps in Salesforce before I can move on to the next.” I think macros are like a awesome admin, super… Not even secret, but super weapon. It’s like, “Hey, look, what I can do for you by just doing this.” All of those tasks will be done. So macros are awesome. And I love how, Mike, you said you didn’t want to say infect, but you did. I mean, come on. Come on.
Mike Gerholdt:
It’s top of mind.
Gillian Bruce:
It’s macro mania is what we’ve got.
Mike Gerholdt:
Macro mania. Yes.
Gillian Bruce:
So Ruchi, one thing that I think is really, really interesting is a lot of these Service Cloud focused features, they’re actually available for any admin to use across the platform, if I’m not mistaken. And I think what’s really interesting is a lot of people don’t realize, “Hey, I can use macros not even specifically to help a call center agent. I can use macros across the platform.” Have you seen or gotten any feedback on some interesting use cases or some fun ideas using macros, maybe outside of the typical macro box thinking?
Ruchi Kumar:
Yeah, that’s a really good question. So I’ve heard it used a lot for complex layouts. I’ll have to think about it a little bit more and get back to you on that one. But I know that it’s really common outside of even just service. So I know sales uses it as well, and you can… Think of your Excel macro and how much it does if you run a macro in Excel and that’s how you can use it as well. So I’ve seen agents use it. It works in the console, but I’ve seen them create really unique actions, whether it’s assigning a case to themselves, or routing a sales lead, maybe, to someone else that they think is better and they’ve created a quick way to do so. So I’ll definitely have to share at a later time some specific examples, but macros really are a creative way to get things done quickly.
Gillian Bruce:
I mean, it’s an extension of automation. You can use all kinds of different… We have Flow, we have very complex automation capabilities, but macros are one of those quick great things that you can do to deliver productivity to your users.
Ruchi Kumar:
Yeah. In today’s day and age with all the automation that’s available, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be using macros.
Mike Gerholdt:
Thinking back to service setup assistant, I can’t remember, and you can correct me and fill in the blanks, this is available to anybody that hasn’t set up service. Is it just a new org or is existing works as well?
Ruchi Kumar:
In essence service set up assistant is available to any org that has… If you’re an admin that has… So you have to have the admin profile, but that has the setup app and has a PE edition or above. So if you’re a sales org or if you’re a service org that hasn’t started set up, you can turn it on. Now if you’re an existing customer, we want to make sure, and you’ve already set up certain service features, we want to make sure we don’t override anything that you’ve already configured. So you can still use it, and we might configure some things for you that you haven’t already, but we won’t override any of your existing configurations. But really when it comes to existing service orgs, what we’re doing in the next future release is what I’m really excited about, which is creating more of a central server service admin experience where you can hear more about what’s new, what’s upcoming, and make sure that you’ve implemented your features correctly.
Gillian Bruce:
I think one of the things, Ruchi, that keeps coming to mind for me is when Mike asked the question of if you’ve already started to set up service. I have a feeling that a lot of companies, especially in this past year, maybe are using Service Cloud a little bit more than they expected because of the digital transformation they’ve been going through, and everything is virtual and Service Cloud is a great way to manage those interactions. I would imagine that you’ve seen a little bit of an uptick in your eight months here at Salesforce in terms of how many people are using Service Cloud and more use cases and, and more admin interaction, because now people are paying attention to this, whereas in the past, they still had the option for doing things the old way. Can you talk to us a little bit about maybe some of that momentum or some of that energy that you’ve seen in the admin community?
Ruchi Kumar:
Yeah. I mean, obviously this new shift in work has changed the way that we all do our day-to-day job. And we are really seeing that translate into, one, our usage numbers of Service Cloud, not only just in the areas I managed like core service, but really in what we call the digital engagement space, so bots, self-service, case deflection, voice. We’re seeing more and more users, now that they’re working from home, they’ll reach out to their businesses and they’ll reach out over chat or messaging. So we’re really seeing that explode. In addition, we’re seeing a change in how agents collaborate. So in the past you could do what we call prairie dogging, which is just lift your head up, look at the cubicle next to you, if you have a question that you can’t answer, you can go ahead and just ask your neighbor next to you and they can help.
Ruchi Kumar:
But now the way that agents collaborate have to change because of this remote environment. So there’s really looking into the new future of how do we use Slack, our new acquisition, to work and collaborate as a sales and service organization together, and really, really looking into, again, how to save time, because as many of our customers have noticed, as people work from home, they have more time to reach out to agents, but not just by traditional phone or email, but by other social mediums, like Facebook, Twitter, messaging. So we’re really seeing an uptake there in terms of conversations and really helping our customers address these as quick as possible and serve the best customer service as possible to their community while keeping agents satisfied and not burned out, because I can attest to it being a tough job sometimes, and we’re really all focused about helping our customers keep their agents happy.
Mike Gerholdt:
But prairie dogging is just one of the highlight words. So perfectly explains it. I have such a vision in my head for exactly what that would look like, and nobody’s going to… Can’t really prairie dog so far working from home. I mean, you can, just no one on the other side. Ruchi, I’d be curious. We learned from Grace that she loves to do puzzles, which was fascinating because I had a lot of puzzle questions and our community always loves to hear some of the fun stuff that you like to do outside of Salesforce when you’re not studying up on making all of our products better.
Ruchi Kumar:
So I try to have a heavy stream of outside projects, and one of those is I am naturally artistic and I find it’s a great stress reliever. So I try to do as much as I can to paint in the evenings. Sometimes just draw within the lines. Art is a big hobby for me. Another one is I try to give back. I’ve been doing a lot with Project Sunshine, which is a nonprofit. I’m advocating for it, but a lot of children now that are in hospitals, they can’t go to the nursery or playroom area given COVID constraints, so they have to stay in their room. So I’ve been working a lot on packaging different kits for them, so that they can have a kit, to have almost like a small basketball hoop in their room or have more puzzles and word activities so that they can keep themselves entertained during their hospital stay, especially during the time where we can’t get many visitors.
Ruchi Kumar:
And then lastly, I’ll say that I had a very eventful 2020 aside from what’s going on in the world. I got married, I bought a house, so I’m still adjusting to all of that. So I’m adjusting to being a first time home owner in the Bay Area and setting up and furnishing my house as well as… I got married in October, so some of the dividends that come from being married afterwards, I’m working on, so thank you notes and various odd gifts, responding to them, that I receive in the mail.
Gillian Bruce:
Oh well, congratulations, Ruchi, that’s… Of all of the chaos in the year of 2020, it sounds like you had some pretty exciting, positive milestones. So congrats on that. That’s awesome. And I love Project Sunshine. I have heard of it years ago and I hadn’t even touched back in with it, so that’s a really fantastic organization, and I love how pivoting to helping kids who are in hospitals right now. I mean, gosh, I can’t imagine. I’m going crazy just being at home. I can’t imagine being in the hospital and being a kid and not being able to do anything fun. So thank you for what you’re doing. That’s a really cool organization. We’ll make sure to put a link in the show notes if people want to get involved. That’s really awesome.
Ruchi Kumar:
Yeah, absolutely.
Mike Gerholdt:
Well Ruchi, thanks for taking time out on the podcast, and we’re very excited to hear how the home ownership stuff goes and maybe tackle one or two less stressful things this year in your life. That’s a piece of advice. You did tackle a lot, but we’re glad to see the new stuff that set up assistant and macro builders has, and thanks for joining us on the podcast.
Ruchi Kumar:
Yeah. Thank you so much for your time. So glad to be here, and such a great fan and admirer of our admin community.
Mike Gerholdt:
So that was a great conversation with Ruchi. I love that she’s into artistic things and congrats on buying a new house and everything that you got done in 2020. It feels like major accomplishment. And we’ll put links to the nonprofit and to sign up in that discussion board in the show notes. And of course, if you want to learn more about all things admin, go to admin.salesforce.com to find more resources. You can stay up to date with us on social for all things admins. We are @SalesforceAdmns, no I, on Twitter, I am on Twitter @MikeGerholdt, and Gillian is @GillianKBruce. So with that, stay safe, stay awesome, and stay tuned for the next episode, and we’ll see you in the cloud.
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