While Salesforce offers a robust set of features, a few areas might pose challenges—this is something you might hear from some Salesforce users. We explored some real reviews and can show you how most of the issues reported can be resolved.
Brimit has been working with Salesforce since 2011. We have created business software solutions, launched AppExchange apps, integrated Salesforce with other services, and provided consulting services. We work in a variety of industries, including banking, automotive, e-commerce, manufacturing, and education. When we get immersed in a project, we are genuinely interested in our customer’s concerns, as well as those of other Salesforce users.
We used the G2.com platform to collect the reviews for popular Salesforce products—Service Cloud, Sales Cloud, and Marketing Cloud—and focused on the negative reviews. We classified all negative reviews into the nine categories in the diagram below.
Usability
“It can be a little confusing to navigate sometimes. Things that you do not have on your plan are still on the home page. It gets a little annoying when you accidentally click on something but you don’t have it.”
“I have used Salesforce for 5 months, and during that period, I felt that Salesforce meets numerous windows for a short workflow! And for any entry-level business, it would be quite difficult to use Salesforce! They should make it simple and easier for users to understand and use on a daily basis.”
“It's actually not that intuitive. It has a clunky interface, and it can feel sprawling and hard to navigate at times.”
Salesforce’s UIs can look complicated at first. On closer examination or after knowledge-sharing sessions with Salesforce specialists, you will discover that the features it provides can equip your business with valuable insights. At the same time, if you are determined you don’t need certain features to be displayed and want to modify or simplify your user interfaces, this can be done with the help of skilled Salesforce developers or administrators.
Costs
“Licensing for the platform is not cheap, and you are locked into your spend for the duration of your contract, so give careful consideration before purchasing additional licenses or add-on products.”
“Unfortunately, one of the biggest barriers is the cost. While you do get a lot from your subscription, not all teams need the bells and whistles of the product suite, and it's not as flexible due to their cost structure.”
“Despite the fact that I believe Salesforce Service Cloud provides a lot of useful features and advantages, some people might think the platform's cost is high compared to other customer service software options.”
For sure, Salesforce is not inexpensive software. However, it has a lot of useful functionality under the hood. Small companies with limited budgets can try Nonprofit Cloud, an affordable option that provides basic Salesforce functionality.
Experience Cloud sites support all internal and portal licenses, including existing Customer Portal, Authenticated Website, and partner portal licenses. The Customer Community Login license might be an acceptable option. With this license, the final costs depend not on the number of active licenses per user but on how many times they log in to the community. If your users don’t log in often, the cost will be lower.
Bugs
“Yeesh, the bugs are ridiculous for a platform this mature.”
“The platform is completely outdated, very buggy, and constantly hangs.”
“Service Cloud is clunky and slow. It has an ugly user interface and is just filled with bugs.”
When it comes to bugs, it should be highlighted that the system itself has no bugs. If something happens, it probably means your custom solutions weren’t tested properly. In our article What Worries Salesforce Users Most When Using Their Orgs, we offered detailed recommendations for minimizing the number of bugs and their impact.
Speed
“The UI is extremely slow. Things don't update unless the page is refreshed. Sometimes, if the UI goes blank due to an interim network issue, you lose all the drafted data.”
“Everything takes much longer. What used to take 10 minutes in our previous system will take 30 minutes in Salesforce. It takes five steps to complete one transaction or event. Then, when you take the time to complete all five steps, Salesforce only saves two of them. So, you have to redo the other three steps. Our team previously had 30 customer inquiries at a time. Now, people struggle to have more than 20. It has cost the team a lot of money, time, and frustration to move to this system.”
“Complex customizations can cause Salesforce to be very slow. This is obviously related to our use cases, but even when Salesforce is implemented as efficiently as possible, this can be an issue.”
The speed mostly depends on how you organize your workspace; how your customizations, triggers, and integrations are set up; the way you use workflows; and your infrastructure and facilities. It’s best to optimize processes, remove unnecessary elements, and simplify the UI.
Learning curve
“Due to the number of different features, initial onboarding and education takes some time and effort; you can't remember everything right away.”
“It's often complicated to get around when you have a specific need. The steep learning curve of Salesforce is fruitful once cleared, but it can be frustrating at first (which was my case!) and cause issues when people don't use it as intended.”
“It has a steep learning curve. Salesforce Sales Cloud is a complex platform with a lot of features, which can make it difficult for new users to learn. It offers a variety of training resources, but it can still take some time for users to become proficient in all of its functionalities.”
Learning how to use Salesforce can be complicated. If you’re overwhelmed by all the information available, certified Salesforce experts can help you here too. For example, at Brimit, we provide knowledge transfer and learning sessions for our customers and teach their employees how to get the most out of the software.
Limits
“Trigger integration is bad. We’re always hitting governance limits.”
“Governor limits are my biggest issue while dealing with implementing a solution, especially when we are dealing with a single-org strategy.”
“There are a lot of object limits that make a single instance org feel cramped and restrictive.”
In most cases, when you hit the limits, it means the code is written incorrectly and you should review it using the best practices for preventing Apex governor limits. If you run into API request limits, use bulk APIs and follow Salesforce’s best practices for using certain APIs. When you hit storage limits, check out the best practices for deployments with large data volumes.
Data usage and management
“Sometimes, it can be too confusing to find what we're looking for and what information needs to be sent to send to customers. It would be great if there was a way to include a retention policy to make sure we're not sending out outdated information.”
“I dislike the fact that it is hard to search for specific customers in a large database.”
“It was difficult to get legacy data into our instance. There's really no way to work around the data architecture that exists within Salesforce, so you have to conform your data to their structure, which is a painful starting point.”
In Salesforce, data search has very flexible filters, and you can always create custom searches. Deduplication rules can be configured to get rid of repeated information. It’s also possible to automate the removal, modification, or even locking of outdated information.
Support service
“Salesforce support has not been knowledgeable lately and has not solved problems via chat or screen share.”
“We have a solution where our end users have to submit support tickets every day as part of the job, and the Salesforce team hasn’t been able to fix the issues and design the system to be less prone to errors.”
“Tech support is a little slow, but once you know what to expect, it's not bad. I always end up with R&D-type issues and always have to start with the beginner support reps first.”
It’s true that some Salesforce support specialists have only basic knowledge and cannot help with a particular case. In this case, it’s better to stay in contact with proven Salesforce experts who can resolve your issues.
Lightning vs. Classic
“At times, the Salesforce Sales Cloud Suite Lightning version seems to be a bit confusing, especially for people who've used Salesforce Sales Cloud Suite in the traditional way for several years. I always have to spend time figuring out where certain functionalities lie.”
“Unfortunately, the move to Lightning has actually left some Classic functionality behind, primarily when it comes to selecting and opening additional tabs. Some visibility options were eliminated as well.”
“The most frustrating aspect of Salesforce is converting to Salesforce Lightning.”
Salesforce announced its switch to Lightning Experience in 2018, and the new version does look different from the old Classic Experience. At the same time, Salesforce made Lightning Experience more flexible and customizable and enriched it with new features and productivity gains.
If you run into difficulties with onboarding and the getting-started resources from Salesforce don’t help, schedule a knowledge session with certified Salesforce specialists. Also, you can get your functionality (even a custom one) migrated from the Classic version to Lightning.
