One of the most time consuming parts of a Salesforce Admin's job is answering emails from users with questions like "How do I log a case again?" and "What do I do with a duplicate again?"
Fortunately, this is also the easiest type of inbox filler to drastically reduce. Here are 3 tips for answering your Salesforce users' questions without having to actually answer your Salesforce users' questions:
Tip #1 - Find "Super Users" who can help
Which of your users is really excited about using, and learning about, Salesforce? These users can become your little army of helpers who act as the first line of defense.
Nurture these Super Users with special lunches, extra training sessions, and unmeasured servings of praise and affection. Let them know that you need assistance fielding questions from your users and that you're depending on them to help you.
Let your organization know that Sammy (our fictional Super User) is going to be a resource, too. When you get an email, forward it on to Sammy so that he/she can respond. Over time, people will begin to trust that Sammy can take care of basic problems. When Sammy can't answer a question, then the issue can be escalated to you.
Tip #2 - Give users a place to search for answers
You and Sammy have to eventually enable your users to be self-sufficient when it comes to answering basic questions and workflows. The best way to do this is to create a documentation site that you can link to in your emails.
If you and Sammy communicate your documentation site to your users, and regularly direct them to the answers via links (e.g. "here's how you set your time zone"), they will come to trust that they can find the correct answers on their own by searching your documentation site.
Adopting your documentation site may take time depending on how good it is and how easy it is to access, but when everyone catches on, your email (and Sammy's email) volume will drop significantly.
Tip #3 - Set up a Chatter Group
Set up a Chatter group called "Support and Training" so that questions can be answered by everybody. This often works better in theory than it does in practice, but it can work if you do it right.
Just think about the Salesforce community - there are probably more questions answered by non-Salesforce employees outside of help tickets than by Salesforce employees in help tickets. If you can get the same kind of response within your organization, you can have a lot of helpers providing links to your documentation and answering questions before you ever have to.
What have you done to successfully reduce the emails you get from your Salesforce users? Share your answers in the comments.
