Stretching Your Ecosystem - S3 Ep4 | Simply Put | Salesforce

I love UX because it gives me the opportunity to really, I guess, be nosy. I like learning about people and why they make the decisions that they make.

Episode four already. Wow. I'm Emmanuel Acho. You're watching. Simply put, you probably know by now that on this show we take complex business challenges and give them clear solutions. Where you been? You got some catching up to do. As I've learned in my career and in two player mode on Sonic, teamwork makes us all better. So we're digging into the partnerships, expert services, and app extensions that turn Jackrabbit sports up to 11. Now Destiny Elise, UX designer at Jackrabbit, has the scoop. A little later, Hannah Friedman, a customer adoption manager at Salesforce, will help showcase Destiny's advice.

I grew up in Houston, Texas. I remember annoying my mom a lot by asking her a lot of questions. Where are we going? Why are we going there? Why did you decide to do that? I annoyed my mom a lot. I was in the Air Force reserves, and then I decided to study graph design and I learned that, oh, I don't want to be a graph designer. I want to do this UX thing. As a kid, I was always a problem solver. If something were to break, like a DVD player or something, my family would always, like, look to me and be like, okay, Destiny, you can figure this out. My curiosity in general lends itself to UX because it's kind of like doing a science experiment. You have to have a hypothesis. You have to design tests. I use surveys and testing to really gain insight on how customers are experiencing our website, and that data informs my design. I think a lot of people assume that UX designers are people who just design pretty screens. UX lends itself to critical thinking. You have to think about who you're designing for. My proudest moment at Jackrabbit is when we replatformed a website in less than three months. And then the pandemic hit and we saw how much having great digital tools makes a difference. It's hard when you have a bunch of different systems. So having a single source of truth allows our team to, like, align better. Salesforce is sort of like our secret weapon. It is way easier to make changes in Salesforce than our old platform. We can track a lot more than before. My advice for those who are looking to replatform is to learn the tools. And that's where accelerators come in. We use them to teach us best practices. Our customer success manager helps us stay up to date with Salesforce, Commerce, Cloud and is kind of a liaison for different experts. It makes it easier for me to implement all these great UX ideas that I have. Partner applications are amazing ways to extend your platform. If I want an address validator tool, but I don't know what's out there, I might see what those partners are first. My favorite thing about being at Jackrabbit is our ability to change quickly. If we see that a tile on our homepage is not getting engaged, not getting clicked, we can decide to switch that immediately. Salesforce gives us a lot of data to make decisions.

Destiny knows her stuff and she's not done dropping knowledge yet. Here she is with three tips to extend the possibilities of your business with the right kind of help. Salesforce's Hannah Freeman is on hand to show these tips in action. Ready?

Simply put, these are my top three tips to expand your ecosystem your way. Number one Invest in your success.

Great tip Destiny. When implementing any digital solution, remember success doesn't stop after go live. Jackrabbit Sports worked with Salesforce Professional services to onboard Digital360. Together they identified gaps in their digital presence. Identify an MVP from your team like Destiny who can work with professional services to champion new features that push your digital further like Einstein product recommendations and geolocation or which service the right products anywhere customers are. The good news is you're not doing this alone. Thousands of certified experts are right at your fingertips. Which brings us to our Next tip.

Number 2 Innovate with your customers in mind.

Customers are why we do this, so give them a seat at the table. When you're making re platforming decisions, you'll be set up for success in the long run. Site analytics can give you detailed customer data, but a simple survey can be just as powerful. Reward members with loyalty points for participating in short surveys on topics related to their digital experience. Use this feedback in setting goals with your system integrator so you can address what matters most to your customer. This is a great way to show your community you have them in mind during every step of the decision process.

Number three Push the boundaries of digital exactly.

But how can you keep innovating? First, assess your resources. Take stock of budget, time and bandwidth as you build out your ecosystem. Know your team's abilities to take on a wider scope of projects. Weigh out what makes sense to build versus Buy. If it doesn't make sense to build out, look at elevating your customer experience through partner apps. Want to give customers a better post purchase experience or deliver more personalized marketing? How about creating scalable loyalty programs there's an app for all that and then some. All available to help you on your digital journey. Me, I'm testing an app that tracks every mention of the words. Simply Put. Gotta go.

Salesforce is a very user centric tool. The part that I care most about customer360 is how do our customers feel about what's being shown to them. Simply put. I want to give customers an easy and meaningful shopping experience. I'm Destiny Elise and you're watching Simply Put.

Thanks for watching Simply Put. I hope everything makes perfect sense now and you're ready to conquer your challenges in your sleep. I'm Emmanuel Acho and it's been a pleasure, but I gotta run.