Salesforce User Adoption in the Age of AI:
A Practical Guide to Thriving in the New Era of CRM Webinar
Are you tired of trying to crack the code to Salesforce user adoption amidst AI? Put your worries aside because Dr. Shannon J. Gregg is going to tell you everything you need to know!
Discover how to unlock the full potential of Salesforce user adoption in the age of AI. Learn about the newest research, proven strategies to drive user adoption, and how to maximize the return on your Salesforce investment.
In this interactive session, we will explore:
The transformative power of AI in modern CRM
Key strategies for successful AI-driven Salesforce adoption
Real-world examples and best practices
Tips for training and enabling your Salesforce users
Addressing user concerns and building excitement around AI
Leave this webinar with actionable insights and a clear roadmap for empowering your team to embrace AI and thrive in the new era of Salesforce.
Let us know if you have any questions or if you have any requests for our next CAS Come and See Video!
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
SPEAKERS
Shannon J. Gregg, PhD
Welcome, welcome, welcome. Today we are going to talk about something that is near and dear to all of your hearts. And that is Salesforce user adoption in the age of AI. I am Dr. Shannon Gregg. And like all of you that have joined this call today, I am a supreme nerd when it comes to the concept of CRM user adoption.
It is all that I think about. So Those of you that know me professionally and personally know that means I am super fun at parties. I’m constantly talking about how to get people to do the things you want them to do. You know, judging by so many of the names that I see that have joined us live today and everyone who’s going to be watching this recording, this is an issue for everyone.
We are just going to dive right into it because there is a decent amount for us to talk about today. AI is taking over, right? This week, we had all the new news with DeepSeek that is changing the face of AI. And one of the things that’s really interesting for us is as we move into each sort of technological revolution.
It feels like there’s a period for us to get used to it and get comfy with it and get our users familiar with it. And that is just not the case anymore, friends. You have got to buckle in and hold on because every day that you think you know what you’re talking about, something new comes along and challenges you and also your users.
So what we’re going to do today, today is get down and dirty, super nerdy. And at the end, I’ll open up for questions on this research that has just recently been published and you will get access to where I distilled all this information. I did the research for you. So this is like a cliff’s notes version of research.
How do I get my users to use Salesforce and our other ancillary sales applications when we’ve got AI in the mix? Let’s dig in. First of all, I know that many of you are familiar with the way that research is run, and that is you have to do a literature review. And that’s what I’ve done for you today, is search for literature that met some of the rigorous scientific standards.
It had to be peer reviewed, it had to be published in a journal that is known for peer reviewed research, and I am here to tell you that because AI infused and AI integrated studies CRM is really so new, there hasn’t been time for a ton of research. So the three studies that I dug into dug around in and then followed their literature review searches today are really, I think, implicit and exciting.
And you’re going to be thrilled to hear what I learned when I dug into these. Super nerdy research studies. So the first one is this dirty. This one came out of Iran and One of the things that I found really interesting is nearly all of these authors are industrial engineers So we’re seeing people moving out of the IT realm where a lot of the research that’s been done has been done around IT or Business psychology and now we see folks in industrial engineering who are doing this type of research.
What does that mean for you? Well, if you’re a person who is controlling your Salesforce org who is designing your Salesforce product for use by users. Guess what? Our friends, the engineers are now getting really involved in that, which is cool and exciting because it used to be a few of us just floating along in sales operations or sales enablement or sales leadership or our cohorts in marketing.
who are interested in this. And now you’ve got folks who are industrial engineers saying, we got to get in on this mix. It’s just getting too complex. So this study, I really, really liked investigating the organizational adoption of AI integrated CRM specifically in the healthcare sector. Why do I love this study?
I love this study because they’re focused specifically on healthcare, which we all know is heavily regulated, which means. AI and CRM has to pass the sniff test there as well. If you have a policy in your organization that says, here’s how we can and cannot use AI. Great. Good for you. If you don’t get on that right now and just start somewhere, it doesn’t have to be a fully baked policy, but it should at least say if you’re using some sort of open AI, chat GPT, These are the ways you can and cannot use it.
You can’t put customer information in there. You can’t put de identified patient data in there. And so one of the things I really liked about this study is, it was done based in a heavily regulated environment. So, excited to give you the details on that one. The next one that I studied for you was the impact of AI enabled CRM systems on organizational competitive advantage.
And this one was a mixed method approach. When I did my PhD dissertation work on Salesforce user adoption, I had to do it with a qualitative approach, because there aren’t very many. quantitative assessments or instruments that already exist to allow you to evaluate whether or not things have been heavily adopted.
Now, all good peer reviewed research comes from a place that is purely academic and typically not funded by an organization. So we’re not looking at studies that have been funded by CRM vendors or ISVs or applications that are dependent on CRM to ride the rails of. Because they want to be able to take that academic view.
So I think you’re going to find some very interesting and maybe slightly controversial conclusions that came out of these research studies, specifically this one. So I can’t wait to tell you about it. And then the final one. It’s focused on IT network operations and while that is not CRM specific, there is not very much CRM specific academic research on AI and CRM.
So this one has been published and all these have been published in the last 18 months. They’re very, very recent. So this one is focused on AI technology adoption in general, in corporate it network operations. And so these three studies together have led me to a few conclusions that I’m going to give to you today.
And as I’m rolling through them and I see loads of people in here who I know, who will not be surprised by some of these results, but I want to encourage you to consider them as you’re thinking about how you roll AI into your own product. or your own user’s experiences. So, let’s dig on in. Let’s get super nerdy.
Alright, the first one that I want to talk about with you is an older framework. This is from 1990, and this is the TOE framework. I saw this appear in all three of these research papers and what the TOE framework is, and I did laugh like an 11 year old because I considered calling it the Toe Adoption Framework for you guys today because I thought that was fun.
Just a moment of levity as we get down deep into academic research. But when you look at the TOE adoption framework, first, you’re thinking about the technology. What is the availability? What are the characteristics? And I know that’s something you’re all thinking about all the time. You know, when we have bells and whistles, do we need to take advantage of all of them?
And how do we do that? How do we roll that out? Anybody that’s familiar with UPMC, I’m in Pittsburgh. So super familiar with UPMC. See, when they take over another new hospital, they have something they call the big bang approach, which is they allow all of their systems on one particular day to take over what had previously been done in that hospital organization.
So when you’re thinking about availability, technology availability, how do you consider the impact? of the technology. So as you’re rolling all of those things out, that big bang versus rolling out small features at a time, that’s the type of thing I want you to think about when you’re thinking about technology.
Are you using everything in salesforce? Are you using the lead object? I hope so. When you’re looking at all of these types of things and understanding where you may have redundancy in your tech stack, or a gap in your tech stack, that’s what we’re talking about here with the technology component.
Next is organization. And so this is formal and informal linking. This is structure, communication of process, size of the organization. Sizing all of these things to your organization. So if you are a 15 person company, you certainly are thinking about how you’re going to roll out AI very differently than if you’re a 5, 000 person company.
So really considering the culture of the organization, whether you’ve had a lot of paper based processes, what the tolerance is for AI, and how it can fit into your organization. That’s what I want you to think about in the O of the TOE framework. And then finally, the environment. So what are the industrial characteristics?
And one of the things I’m going to tell you about today is all of these research papers did specifically point to the ability of AI to make your organization a More competitive. That is a conclusion that I’m going to foreshadow or just tell you about right now because we see that in all of these papers, the technology support.
So the training and the change management that so often people will red line out of a budget. That is something that points towards the ability for Your adoption to occur in a way that people will be pleased with. And then infrastructure and government regulations, thinking about the way that your technology is going to impact regulatory requirements, which looking at the people who are in here is probably everyone.
So in 2006, we saw an adaptation of this, which was called hot fit. And this included a little bit more thinking about humans, this human centered design concept that we’ve been talking about for about a decade and a half started to develop here. So how do we go past the TOE and start to think, how does that work with the humans?
And then really, this is to me, the way that this. These two frameworks have started to coalesce in our real world AI driven CRM use, so humans, and I really want you to see the senior executives innovativeness, and you’re going to see that throughout our chat today. That is it. That is the most critical, important part of this, and knowing that for the first time ever, we have four generations in the workforce at once, Thinking about where the senior executives are and how they’re adopting technology and using it to have that top down effect on the rest of the organization is absolutely critical.
The perceived technical competence of the staff and then, of course, top management support. And then you’ll see these same components that we talked about before. Technology. What’s the relative advantage? So many relative advantages of using Salesforce, right? You can hire somebody that’s used it before.
They understand the jargon. They may have to be trained on your approach, and you may be rolling in new initiatives like AI, AgentForce, Next Best Actions in your ISV applications that are connected, but when you think about technology, considering that complexity, so how do we roll it out? How do we think about implementation?
The environment. We already talked about that. Really critical the organization. And now this model, which is brand new, rolls in cost as a consideration. So cost of implementation, cost of training, both opportunity costs. So when we think about what does it mean to pull people out of the field to train them and the actual realized costs.
So how do we get it into our system? How do we license the people that need to have it? So thinking about those things will help you decide where do I roll in AI to my CRM system in a way that it will actually be used. So we’re continuing to look for best fit. And I really like this piece. So this is a beautiful structure and framework that I will share with you.
So you will all have access to it. And of course Q& A is open. So if you want to ask any questions, do that. The MN research model and tying these three research studies together. Sounds probably very familiar to you by now. So when we’re looking at AI adoption, we’re looking at the technology, the organization and the environment.
And then they, of course, tied in productivity and stability. And that is something that, with Salesforce’s trust layer, we probably don’t think about very much. But as you’re bringing in different AI components to your overall process, And specifically in the CRM, you do want to think about the speed and the impact for your users, specifically if you’ve got folks out in the field.
This is the U model, which is tighter and more detailed. But I love these things, and I want you to consider using these as tick boxes as you’re looking at implementing AI into your CRM process. So data driven decision making. Does the AI help you with that? Can you use AI in your analytics? Is that going to allow you to be able to more quickly understand trends in marketing qualified leads, converting into opportunities?
Can you use AI to help you make data driven decisions faster, more efficiently, without that sort of human emotion component? That one is perfect. Customer centric personalization. Of course, I believe personalization at scale is a lie. Those two things, when you put them together, don’t even make much sense.
So, can you start to develop an overall look at the customer using something like agent force to say, here are the things that I know about you, Shannon Gregg, that I can put together in a way that helps me see who you are as a customer and where you’re likely to do things. So that’s a beautiful place to start.
to consider starting to use AI to really enhance that customer 360 of sales and service that we’ve thought about long before and bring in some leading indicators to make predictions and personalization on very specific integers. Always think about that user friendly interface. Your people, especially if they are in sales or marketing or field service, they’re busy.
They’re working on many things at one time. So considering how the interface Shifts when you’re introducing AI and then task automation is a pretty low hanging fruit So you’ll be able to access these in the book that we’ll send you after this webinar And I want you to think about using those as a evaluation tool So do I need to be able to do ticket tracking in a way that is more effective and efficient if it’s enabled by AI?
Probably is. So these particular factors and these definitions are ones that I want you all to have because it’s going to help you have common jargon whenever you’re thinking about talking to your vendors, your partners, your Salesforce. Developers, admins, BAs, and then the people who are your users on the other end of the equation.
So, when we’re thinking about top management support, the definition for that is, is there a supportive environment, one, and do you have sufficient resources, two. And if you don’t, which you may not, how do you start to frame your business requirements use case so that you can get that type of support? Support from top management.
So as you work through these, and I’m happy to help you with it. I think everybody here knows how to find me. You will have the words that will allow you to have these conversations. So when we’re thinking about vendor support. Port, how far will your vendor go? Your vendor may be able to tell you, Hey, here’s how you can best do training.
This is what we’re seeing across organizations. They’re seeing loads and loads of them, and maybe you’re only seeing your one instance, or maybe you’re on the vendor side and there’s something that you offer to your clients that you should think about pointing out to them, Hey, we’ve been thinking about AI for 18 months, and these are the ways we see it working really, really well.
So, think through these research variables as you’re rolling out AI components or enforcing AI usage in your organization, and that will be super helpful for you. Anybody here watch Severance? I hope you do! If you do, I’d love for you to tell me in the chat if you think, Helly R is still an innie or an outie.
If you don’t, I think it’s a show you should watch. It’s lovely. But what are we going to do here? Right? You’re sitting here saying, Shannon, I don’t even know why I joined this conversation because now you’ve gotten me really confused. There’s too much academic research. How do I take that and put it into practice?
Because I’m under so much pressure. I have loads of things I need to do. It’s the beginning of the year. And I am really trying to take all of this information and put it into a place that’s going to help me help my users. Well, I want you to take a small pause and I want you to listen to the conclusions of the research here because I think they’re going to help you stay super focused on how you can improve things.
So, the first research conclusion, and I see Patrick, your conclusion is she’s still an idiot. I cannot wait to get on the phone with you or talk to you at Scope about this. All right. The first research conclusion that came out of you is adopting AI without planning ahead is Has failed to provide positive outcomes.
Wow, we know this, but we see loads of organizations that are doing it. They are just rolling out AI or other components without thinking, How does this impact my user’s day? How much additional pressure and stress does this put on my users? And so, the U conclusion said, We have to provide a strategic guideline.
Begin with the end in mind. What is the ultimate outcome you’re trying to get to? So when you think about user perception and organizational performance in light of four generations in the workforce, what are you going to message to them? So they understand this is why you’re changing the way that I’ve been doing things for the past five years.
And this is the interruption that you’re giving me. And finally, this is the benefit I’ll get. And I really want to slow down here for one second so that you can pay attention to the words and what this is telling you to do and that is understand what the goal is and then communicate that to your users because the chances are So, You’ve been doing this for so long.
You’ve been prepping. You’ve done all of the user stories. You understand what the documentation is going to look like. You’ve probably already done the UAT. Your users are just joining you where you are. So make sure that you take them through that enough that they understand. Are things going to be a little uncomfy for a while?
Maybe, probably. Humans really resist change. But it’s going to benefit you, and here’s how. So trust me, stick with it. Here’s how we used a decision tree to get to where we got to. And even though it feels really complicated and challenging now, guess what? It’s going to really help you in the end by A, B, and C.
So if you don’t think about that strategy and allow your users to understand it, you can see right here. You said your initiative will fail, so don’t go into it without thinking about how you’re going to let everybody know where it is based on the research that was done by you. And I love that. It’s really not any different than any other user adoption that we’ve seen.
Implementing AI. can certainly move people forward, but it’s no different than when you implemented automation six years ago, or when you started thinking about implementing CRM for the first time. The concept isn’t different because humans haven’t actually changed that much. So Disjurty, which was my favorite piece of research to read, said the experts agreed top management support is the most critical variable in the human dimension.
So this research study said Humans are the biggest challenge and opportunity whenever you’re trying to get adoption on anything, and we know that, we’re really aware of that, but in that class of humans, the most important one is top management, so we are presented with a little bit of friction here because very often our top executives are very busy, they’re making decisions, They don’t want to sit down and understand how this AI is going to work.
They just want it to. So being very specific and succinct about how you message that and making that direct ask to your top management and saying, will you support me in this? Can I create a memo from you? Will you record a video that says, in your meetings, will you, and I’ll show you how. And so oftentimes it just requires you being able to say, let me hold you by the hand, so that you can help this initiative be very positive and it will definitely increase the competitiveness of our organization.
All of these studies said exactly that. If you can implement AI the right way, AI enabled CRM is going to allow you to move faster, respond to your clients and prospects with more personalization, and it is going to give you a competitive advantage. So the benefits are clear, it just takes a little bit of work on your side.
And then finally, the MN research says companies have to develop strategies and roadmaps that will account for employees. So these humans that are going to be impacted by AI adoption have to be thought of in the strategy so that their understanding of change. We’ll help them to adopt the things that you are rolling out and they need appropriate training and assistance.
I will tell you on Tuesday night I went to a Women in Bio conversation and it was held in conjunction with the Product Development Management Association. And they asked five panelists, who’s using AI? Now, these are all medtech startups. These are people who have been, other than there was somebody there from Bayer, they are people that have been using AI, and they ask them all specifically, how are you as an SVP, as a CEO, as the product manager at Zoll, how are you using AI?
And they all had very elementary use cases, except for one. So as you’re thinking about these initiatives, let’s think about how do we get people passed? How do I run something through chat GPT to make sure that my tone in this email is a calm one and doesn’t cross as a come across as per my last email.
So thinking about the humans that are going to be using it and allowing your AI initiatives to be positive and sync is going to be one that requires strategy. Nothing new here when it comes to general user adoption for human brains. So as you evaluate all of these models and their similarities for your adoption success, we see the same sorts of things that are coming up, right?
We see humans, technology, the organization, the environment, the cost. We see a little bit of fit and influence. And you know what that smells like to me, my friends? That smells exactly, to me, like research that we know very, very well from the 60s and then the 90s. And that is Leavitt’s Diamond Model, which was people, technology, tasks, and structure, which we sort of Smashed down in the 1990s to the golden triangle of people, process and technology.
And there you have it. All of this research really says we’ve got to think about how these three things interface. And even though AI has the capacity to allow you to sell faster, service, smarter market with more precision, you still have to think about these humans because they are going to be your Achilles heel otherwise.
They are who will determine, is this project going to work or will it not? As I’m considering rolling out AI enabled prospecting, field service and any other application that you can use that is attached to Salesforce. You really have to spend your time considering the humans. Otherwise, it’s going to be really challenging to get it to work.
And that’s just not very different than it was before. So, I want to ask, who’s got the first question? If you could throw it into the Q& A box, I’m happy to answer that for you. And then, we’ve got a QR code so that you can access accompanying ebooks that will allow you to put these frameworks into play, knowing that they are running in the same way that everything else is.
While you’re putting your questions in the Q& A box, I want to tell you something specifically as a quote that came out of the you research, which is as we’re looking at AI becoming the new normal in organizations, and this trend extends to CRM, resulting in the development of AI enabled CRM systems, despite the growing adoption of AI, many firms report minimal or no positive effect of AI on performance.
And as you’re thinking about rolling out features, the only way that you can do this is by thinking about those silly humans that are sitting on the other end. Alright, let me check the Q& A box. Besides Patrick, who I need to get back to on this conversation about Heliar okay, I have a question that says, How can I apply this framework when my organization does not have sales and marketing in the same instance of Salesforce?
Okay, so when you’re thinking about folks that are using different instances, and I know we’ve got some people on that have Salesforce instances that are only connected by a connector, you definitely want to have conversations that say, whenever we’re rolling out something new, if we have agent force in one instance and not in another, Do we plan to roll that out?
How will we strategically allow these instances to come together so that we can report on them? Because that’s generally where we’re seeing it. Being very specific about what the strategy is and how you’re then going to be able to use those KPIs to measure against your goals. Because when you’re doing your reporting for your board or your shareholders or your stockholders, making sure you have that common language and that common jargon, It’s going to be really critical.
So, you have all heard that adage, which is something like, you know, if I had an hour to cut down a tree, I would spend the first 50 minutes sharpening my axe. So really thinking about your strategy before you roll it out, because we’re excited to get new technology in place. But you really have to think about what are the humans who are going to be using that going to say.
and how are we going to access the information that is going to be available in our system. How do we eliminate AI related tech debt? Okay, love that so much. So, first of all, I think what you’re asking in this question is what if we’ve got a few different AI systems and we’ve got AI related Strategies that we’ve started.
Maybe you are an organization that’s been using Gemini and now you want to explore Deep Seek. I think you have to think very specifically about your technology stack and continuing to do that best practice tech stack audit. And you have to do it probably more frequently now than you used to. I’m hoping everybody here does a tech stack audit at least once a year.
But as you’re considering new tools and technologies, you should do it. You should start to do a tech stack audit a little bit more frequently, maybe once a quarter to say, where do we have redundancy? How is AI overwhelming capabilities that we thought we were using somewhere else? So if you’ve got a sales engagement tool that has three additional features that overlap with a tool that you were using before thinking, who should really be.
In charge there. So, you know, a I related debt is on one side and then technical debt is on the other side. So we personally use an absolutely love elements dot cloud, which allows us to look at the metadata so we can quickly give you a response to say, Here’s where you have technical debt. Here’s where you’re carrying your technical load.
That is a tool that we use. I absolutely love because it quickly tells you in a really direct way with diagrams. Hey, you’ve got 1000 reports that haven’t been accessed in a year, or you’ve got far too many user types, your profiles are wild and out of control. AI enabled debt and technical debt in general may require two different approaches for you, but should be an overall part of your strategic tech stack audit at least annually, my friends.
I would say that is something that you should be dealing with, with some level of frequency. All right. I have a note here that says this is a direct message that says, I’m doing a performance evaluation with elements dot cloud with one of my clients, and he’s going to save 56, 000 because of it.
Preach. That is beautiful and not surprising to me. So there are lots of management tools that you can use to evaluate the way that you’re using technology, but do not let the fear of getting started stop you. When we’re looking at AI enabled CRM, it’s it is. One, strategy. Two, progress. Three, perfection.
That should really be the framework that you’re using. Think about the strategy and what the outcomes are. Where do you want to go? What are the problems that you’re trying to solve for so that you’re not just bringing in shiny new tech because it demos in a really cool way because a lot of them do. Then thinking about how do we make progress in ways that are comfortable for our users.
So it may be looking for that quick wins, which is the underlying positive component of the change management theory, which is roll out something small, get people to use it, tell them how great it was like that DM. I just got that said, we used elements. cloud and this organization is going to save 56, 000 based on the information we gleaned out of it.
Tell people about it. And then you continue to progress that so you can take all the things that you put into it and keep it moving forward. And I think that’s going to be really positive and super helpful for you. Alright, let’s see. I’ve got another question here. Okay, how do I decide what AI to use?
Okay, that’s a really good one. It’s wide and it’s wild because there’s so much available out there. I, because I am your super nerd friend, like to play around at night and look at, there’s an AI for that. com, that’s my favorite website. You know, is there an AI that can? And, some of it’s super simple, like, If I tell you the ingredients I have in my refrigerator, can you create a weekly menu for me?
And some of them are a little bit more specific, which is, if you’re looking at my load of billable utilization, how can I best distribute my workforce across the following three projects I have available? It’s just everywhere. But one of the things that I will tell you is one, look for sustainability.
Because we are in what I would say is the gold rush of AI backed technology applications, one of the things that you will see is many things are being designed to be sold. So I like to follow this website called acquire. com and there are AI applications that are continuously being developed just so they can be sold.
And we all know, I think probably many of you have had the unfortunate experience of buying an application, investing in an application, rolling it out to your organization. Then they get acquired and maybe they don’t get quite as much R& D attention as you would have hoped or expected. So look at that scalability.
Make sure you understand the staying power of the application that you’re looking to pull in. Making sure that you actually have a problem to solve. So not just being seduced by really cool technology, but saying, does unmet need that is that our organization is aware of so that you can spend your calories and your dollars fixing a problem that actually exists, which will translate to that communication piece that we talked about before.
So your users feel like they are supported and want to use the system and can help get through that sort of friction moment of where they have to change their everyday normal habits. So as you’re digging through those components and trying to decide what your tool is, looking at those These types of questions are helpful.
We love doing tech stack evaluation, so if you just want to bop it off of me, let me know. I am happy to tell you, yes, I’ve seen that before and here’s the way that I think can be used very with sanity in your organization and think about how it will propel things forward. Are humans scared of AI?
Yes, of course they are, because we’re starting to see lots of instances where AI has come in and changed the way people do their jobs. Has it taken some people’s jobs? I think what we need to know, and I will quote my friend Ian Gotts when I tell you, he says, AI isn’t going to take your job, but somebody who knows how to use AI is.
So the fact that you’re on here today tells me that you’re interested, you’re invested, you’re constantly thinking about how to use AI to your advantage. So you’re the type of person that’s going to do really well with this. Kudos to you. I appreciate you spending your time with me today. I am constantly looking at this type of research and it is one of the things that I love to do.
Bring that research to reality so we can take the folks who are the industrial engineers who are spending their time looking at the way this could happen in organizations based on frameworks and folks like you who are actually making it happen in the, these organizations. So if you aren’t already connected with me on LinkedIn, please, I invite you to be, because I love to share out things that I’m seeing and musings on these types of things so that you can have a better workday. Because if you don’t, what’s the point of it all? I thank you for spending your time with me today. I hope your workday today and the rest of them all are pleasant, wonderful, and fueled with beautiful technology.
Have a great day, everybody!