Perhaps now more than ever, modern sales teams expect tools to keep up with their pace, supercharge their productivity, and present the information they need wherever they are working. With so much innovation delivered across all areas of the platform in the past few releases, it’s no wonder that the Salesforce mobile application has also received long-awaited enhancements, all of which are available today!
In this article, we will explore the updated seller mobile experience within the Salesforce app, including how it can be enabled and how this change will increase efficiency while on the go.
Well-Deserved Updates
Significant updates to the Salesforce mobile app, especially when it comes to the sales process, have been long overdue. Based on customer feedback, Salesforce went back to the drawing board to develop more ways to improve the experience and functionality and to extend what can be done using a phone rather than a desktop – all to offer users more flexibility than ever before.
While the Sales Cloud and Platform areas (and subsequent changes) are handled by two different teams at Salesforce, they came together to elevate the experience and take the mobile app to the next level while integrating it within the ultimate pipeline-to-paycheck seller journey. Sounds promising, doesn’t it?
What’s Changing?
To provide a fully tailored experience, the mobile app is transitioning away from the hybrid web view to a Salesforce native experience that’s seamlessly integrated with existing and upcoming iOS and Android features. While the hybrid option remains the best way to dive into all record details, the native experience does not require as many network calls, making it much faster (and a better choice overall) for those tasks sales reps need to perform from their phones.
Even if your team prefers working on a mobile phone or a tablet, the long-term plan for the mobile app is to keep making enhancements for upcoming releases, and offer more controls to Salesforce Admins, as well as users, so they can customize the experience quickly and benefit from the latest features wherever they are.
Whether your sellers need to prepare for a meeting by reviewing existing information, log calls or other activities, or make updates to their Salesforce records, this shift promises seamless data capture, a native experience with no latency, and of course, intuitive and faster navigation.
Mobile Selling Like Never Before
Now that we know the why and the how behind the change, let’s see what all of this actually means for an account executive, BDR, or even a sales manager when they access Sales Cloud on the go!
Once enabled, users will have the option to choose the new Sales Cloud Mobile Lightning App directly from the App Launcher, with a sneak peek of what they can expect: easy access to their pipeline, swipe actions, and of course, generative AI functionality if it is enabled for your org.
Meet the Native Experience
The choice to switch towards an application native to your OS also means that Salesforce has more liberty as far as design choices go, so it should come as no surprise that the mobile app is also in line with the recently announced refreshed Lightning UI.
On the homepage, you will notice the new rounded icons and color scheme, and an intuitive, faster experience while scrolling through the available items on the page. While the homepage is not (yet) customizable, it contains the key information sellers need right from the get-go. This includes their Events (as well as a calendar view when reviewing them), their Leads, Accounts, Opportunities, and Contacts, with each tile purposefully named to help drive action.
If your users choose to navigate to the Calendar view to zoom into all upcoming events, not only does the experience completely change, but it also adapts to the device accordingly. For example, if using a tablet, the experience will adapt and display both the calendar and homepage as a split screen for seamless navigation, be it portrait or landscape.
The main objects which sales teams interact with, respectively Opportunities, Accounts, Contacts, and Leads have all received new record pages. While these cannot be customized in this release, there is always the option to go into the full record, which is in hybrid mode, to make changes and see more information.
On the new pages, however, users can immediately take action by logging their activities, as well as by reviewing the new activity timeline, in just a matter of seconds – check out how fast a Task can be accessed from the Opportunity, edited, and saved, before returning to the Opportunity to continue working.
The key objects are still available as tabs in the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen, and the new experience will be reflected when clicking into these too. Filtering, searching, and sorting are available for any of the tiles.
It’s also worth noting that while the search bar on this page only returns the results below, you can perform a global search directly in the hybrid experience by clicking on the option below the embedded search bar.
Swipe to Call or Email
For situations when sellers have multiple prospects to go through, Salesforce has reduced the number of required clicks by having the well-known swipe motion uncover the actions available for records in a list.
As you can see below, swiping left on a Lead, Contact, or even an Account allows the user to choose if they want to call, send an email, or log an activity for that record. If multiple phone numbers are available (for example, a personal and a business phone number), the option to choose between the two will be offered.
When sending an email, the Lightning Email option addresses the concerns customers expressed following the Inbox mobile app end of life earlier this year, as all emails sent through this option will pretty much replicate the Desktop experience.
Emails will be synced to the records, users will have the ability to use merge fields as well as email templates, and they will benefit from Inbox functionality which allows for scheduling links to be included in the email body – all without leaving the app!
You and your users may also notice that the Activity Timeline has been significantly improved. It not only shows many more records (all of which you can scroll through), but it also includes Emails and Meetings from Einstein Activity Capture.
While at this time not all details are available when clicking on the synced Emails (as they are not stored in Salesforce), surely this is an enhancement coming sooner rather than later, to replicate what was already done for Meetings – fingers crossed!
Ask Einstein
And finally, what would a new experience be without an update on how users interact with Einstein? Typing your requests is great, but talking is – at times – much faster, especially from a mobile device.
The AI Assistant experience is no different from the desktop version, but in the new Sales Cloud Mobile experience you can address the question or request vocally, continue working within the app, and review the results once the processing is complete!
Setup and Considerations
Accessing the new Sales Cloud Mobile Lightning App is a matter of enabling the new Salesforce Mobile App: Native Seller Experience permission, which can be found in System Permissions. Optionally, you can also enable the dedicated permission for smoother scrolling to get the most out of the new changes.
Once this is done for your users, they simply need to choose the App from App Launcher, and voilà – they can explore the new look, feel, and features!
While the differences compared with the previous experience are significant, this version is not by any means the last iteration. A native application unlocks the full realm of possibilities to make use of device capabilities too, such as Siri and Google Assistant, and even the ability to log calls directly on Salesforce records after they are done – these are just some of the things we could expect to see in the not-so-distant future.
Furthermore, as soon as you try out the updated version, you are bound to notice the navigation speed and the page load times significantly decrease in comparison with the hybrid experience, leading to a far more positive user experience.
Summary
Finally, shifting towards a native experience is sure to bring a whole new world of possibilities for Sales Cloud users. While the latest changes to the Salesforce mobile application are just the beginning, these are already game changers: new record pages for the most used objects in the sales process, swipe actions, Lightning email, and the ability to converse with Einstein by voice and not text only.
Try out the new experience and let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
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