Discover Rollout Strategies and Best Practices

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Make a strategic rollout plan for migrating to enhanced Chat.
  
• Identify best practices for minimizing disruption during your migration.
  
• Describe the importance of communication and training for a successful transition.
  

Strategic Rollout

Since legacy Chat and enhanced Chat can coexist in your Salesforce org, you have the flexibility to roll it out in stages. This approach is particularly beneficial for larger businesses with complex operations or multiple regions or brands.

Benefits of a Staggered Rollout

• Minimized risk: By rolling out in phases, you can identify and address any issues in a small segment of your user base before impacting your entire customer service operation.
  
• Reduced disruption: Staggering your rollout lets you manage the transition more smoothly so you can avoid sudden outages and make things easier for your support team.
  
• Learning and iteration: Each phase is an opportunity to learn, gather feedback, and refine your implementation before moving to the next stage.
  

Best Practices for a Smooth Migration

The time required to migrate depends on your business size and the complexity of your legacy Chat implementation. To ensure a successful transition, follow these tips.

1. Plan:
   
   • Create a project plan that outlines your migration steps, including a timeline, ownership, and dependencies.
     
   • Use the Chat Transition Readiness Report to find out which deployments, configurations, and customizations are active for legacy Chat. Determine whether to replace, retire, or adapt them for enhanced Chat.
     
   • Identify the mobile apps, websites, or Experience Cloud sites where you want enhanced Chat.
     
   • List the internal resources (admins, developers, trainers) that you need to migrate.
     
2. Test:
   
   • Migrate and test in a sandbox environment first. This lets you identify and fix issues without impacting your production environment.
     
   • Test all aspects of the new chat experience, including:
     
     • Customer experience (pre-chat, chat window, persistent conversations)
       
     • Service rep experience (receiving messages, using Service Console tools, accessing conversation history)
       
     • Routing rules and queues
       
     • Reporting and analytics
       
     • Integrations or automations
       
3. Stagger:
   
   • Roll out in stages to limit the number of users affected by each update.
     
   • Schedule major changes or cutovers during periods of low customer traffic to minimize disruption.
     
4. Communicate:
   
   • Keep your service reps and supervisors in the loop about the migration timeline and changes to their processes.
     
   • Optionally, let your customers know that you’re upgrading your chat tool. Highlight the benefits for them—for example, persistent conversations and better service.
     
5. Train your team:
   
   • Train your reps and supervisors on the new chat experience.
     
   • Update your internal documentation to help your team use asynchronous messaging, messaging components, and the updated Service Console. To get started, see Message with Customers in Salesforce Help.
     
   • Provide ongoing support after the rollout.
     

By following these best practices, you can keep your transition to enhanced Chat smooth and low-stress.

Next, let’s walk through two scenarios of migrating from legacy Chat to enhanced Chat.

Rollout Scenario 1: Quick and Easy

Navid owns a small event-planning business with a support team of five reps. His website uses a simple legacy Chat implementation without much customization. He’s already using Omni-Channel routing.

Because Navid’s customer base and chat scope are limited, he doesn’t need to stagger his enhanced Chat rollout. He chooses a time when business is slow and takes this approach.

Planning and Communication:

1. Navid lets his support team know that he’s updating their web chat tool, and that they’ll go through training soon.
   
2. Using the Salesforce online help, Navid maps out his migration steps. He also lists enhancements to make, including a messaging component.
   

Setup:

1. Using the migration tool in his sandbox org, he auto-creates an enhanced Chat channel and deployment that preserve the custom labels and branding from his legacy Chat implementation.
   
2. Because pre-chat isn’t migrated, he sets up a simple pre-chat form where customers can enter their name and contact reason.
   
3. He creates a Lightning record page layout for the Messaging Session object that includes the Enhanced Conversation component, and assigns it to his reps.
   
4. He uses an Omni-Channel flow template to create a new routing flow for his channel.
   
5. He activates a messaging component and other planned enhancements.
   

Testing:

1. He tests his chat experience using the test option in Setup.
   
2. When he’s happy with the user experience, he promotes his sandbox configuration to production.
   

Rollout:

1. Navid updates his internal training documentation, then holds a workshop with his support team to train them on the new chat experience. He walks through how to send messages from the Enhanced Messaging component, use messaging components, and manage work in the Omni-Channel inbox.
   
2. He generates the website snippet for enhanced Chat, and adds it to his website to replace the legacy Chat snippet.
   
3. After several successful messaging sessions, he deletes the old Omni-Channel flow used by his legacy Chat implementation and deactivates legacy Chat.
   

Rollout Scenario 2: Staggered Rollout

Jeanne’s company owns three outdoor gear brands. Let’s call them Brand 1, Brand 2, and Brand 3. Each brand has its own Experience Cloud site that uses legacy Chat.

Because a chat update will affect a significant number of her customers, Jeanne’s migration to enhanced Chat is best approached in stages. Here’s the approach she takes.

Planning and Communication:

1. Jeanne lets her support team know that she’s updating their web chat tool, and that they’ll go through training soon.
   
2. Jeanne installs and runs the Chat Transition Readiness Report to find out which deployments, configurations, and customizations are active for legacy Chat.
   
3. Using Salesforce online help as a guide, Jeanne maps out the steps she’ll take to migrate. She decides to migrate one brand website at a time, ending with the luxury brand. She also lists enhancements to make, including messaging components, sensitive data rules, and token-based user verification.
   

Setup:

1. Jeanne creates one queue for each brand and assigns a different team of reps to each queue.
   
2. Using the quick setup tool on the Messaging Settings page in her sandbox org, she creates a new enhanced Chat channel and deployment for Brand 1.
   
3. She sets up a pre-chat form with two visible fields and two hidden fields.
   
4. Jeanne creates a Lightning record page layout for the Messaging Session object that includes the Enhanced Conversation component. Then, she assigns the page layout to the Brand 1 queue’s reps.
   
5. She creates an Omni-Channel routing flow for her channel, and maps the hidden pre-chat fields to her flow to populate fields on the messaging session record. The flow routes all Brand 1 site messages to the Brand 1 queue.
   
6. She activates her messaging components and sensitive data rules, and sets up token-based user verification.
   

Testing:

1. She tests her chat experience using the test option in Setup.
   
2. She adds the Embedded Messaging component into the template footer of her Brand 1 internal testing site, and tests some more.
   
3. When she’s happy with the user experience, she promotes her sandbox configuration to production and adds the Embedded Messaging component to the public version of the site.
   

Rollout:

1. Jeanne updates her internal training documentation, then holds a workshop with her support team to train them on the new chat experience.
   
2. After enhanced Chat is live for two weeks, Jeanne gathers feedback from her support team on how it can improve.
   
3. Jeanne repeats the previous steps for Brands 2 and 3, incorporating her team’s feedback along the way.
   
   • When she rolls out to a brand, she assigns the new Messaging Session page layout to the brand’s service reps.
     
   • She creates a separate Omni-Channel flow for each brand, though maintaining a single, more complex flow is an option.
     
4. Jeanne deactivates legacy Chat (and does a little dance).
   

What’s Right for Me?

Every business is unique. The way you approach a staggered rollout depends on your business size, the level of differentiation between your business segments, and the way your support team is organized. Because Jeanne’s brands are distinct and each supported by their own team of reps, she echoed that separation in Salesforce, designating a queue, Omni-Channel flow, channel, and support team for each brand.

If Jeanne’s support team had cross-brand expertise and she planned to apply the same enhancements across the board, such as user verification, she could opt for a more unified structure in Salesforce and stagger her rollout another way.

We’ll leave you with three ideas for organizing a staggered rollout.

• If you offer support in multiple languages, roll out to one language at a time.
  
• Roll out to one region at a time. Start with a region with robust support resources, such as training partners and experienced supervisors.
  
• Using an external A/B testing tool or custom code deployed on your website, expose the new Chat interface to a subset of your website users. Gradually increase the audience size as you verify your new channel’s stability and your reps gain experience with the new Chat.
  

Resources

• Salesforce Help: Create Your First Enhanced Chat Channel and Deployment
• Salesforce Help: Optimize Enhanced Chat Setup
• Trailhead: Enhanced Chat Optimization