W.L. Gore & Associates slashed 400+ meeting hours, doubled user satisfaction, and increased seller productivity.

W. L. Gore & Associates is a global materials science company dedicated to transforming industries and improving lives. With over 2,200 Salesforce users across three distinct business divisions and globally dispersed sales teams, W.L. Gore & Associates struggled to embrace the full capabilities of Salesforce. Gore partnered with WalkMe to increase user confidence and adoption, streamline departmental and user-focused training, and, ultimately, drive better business decisions.

Thanks in part to WalkMe’s Digital Adoption Platform, Gore:

• Achieved a 75% reduction of enablement time for new features
• Eliminated over 400 meeting hours for Sales Leaders and teams
• Reduced training time by over 83%
• Experienced a 154% boost in Salesforce user sessions year over year
• Saw 50% increase in Salesforce user satisfaction NPS scores

W. L. Gore & Associates is a global materials science company dedicated to transforming industries and improving lives. With over 2,200 Salesforce users covering 49 countries, Gore needed a way to enable sales teams, increase Salesforce engagement and proficiency, and communicate updates and information specific and relevant to its various user groups across businesses.

W.L. Gore & Associates partnered with WalkMe, and, as a result, Associates are served a cohesive just-in-time training strategy via Walk-Thrus, SmartTips and Launchers. Behavior Based Segmentation ensures all Associates complete required training, making for the most productive Salesforce experience. The partnership with WalkMe has led to the sales Associates adopting, and in fact preferring, the all-digital training approach.

Gore recognized that the disparate sales processes among their sales teams created inefficiencies for the organization. Consequently, making a unified shift to Salesforce as their corporate CRM system helped drive a common and more efficient approach – but user adoption lagged behind expectations.

“The biggest issue we faced was the adoption of Salesforce throughout our organization. Gore has several divisions using Salesforce in different ways. When you add in frequent process changes, new feature rollouts, and enhancements, it’s difficult to communicate these updates, not to mention train end users on how best to use the tool for their specific role or division,” states Christi Lopez, WalkMe Administrator, W.L. Gore & Associates.

“We were caught in a loop of product enhancements, the associated training, end user knowledge loss, retraining and updating outdated support materials, quickly followed by a newer product feature. Oftentimes, the new training cycle would start before the previous one had completed. All teams were getting frustrated, we needed to break that cycle,” adds Lopez.

The team at Gore sought to find a partner to improve ease-of-use for new features and sharing new feature alerts while users were in Salesforce, at the moment they needed it. Additionally, the Gore development team wanted visibility into user behavior, so they could determine enhancements and next steps for different features. Historically, it was difficult to know if Salesforce was being used, and equally important, how it was being used and where users were struggling.

Gore selected WalkMe’s Digital Adoption Platform to provide training and communication personalized to specific users, directly within Salesforce. WalkMe seamlessly serves targeted guidance and communication, while providing user adoption and usage metrics to drive informed future enhancement decisions.

“Now, our entire digital adoption strategy is in WalkMe – and the change in our organization has been remarkable. The majority of our rollouts are now 100% through WalkMe and the need for live trainings has been eliminated completely in the majority of cases,” Lopez says.

Lopez continues, “Our users no longer need to take time to ask someone, or open time-consuming support tickets for how-to questions, which has really streamlined their daily processes and reduced the load on our development teams: exactly what the company was looking to achieve.”

All training and feature rollout communications are now done with a clear in-application messaging strategy. Gore uses ShoutOuts leading up to new feature releases and changes, as well as post go-live.

When the new feature is live, end users are taken on a “tour” style Walk-Thru showcasing new features. Key SmartTips and Launchers help users get the answers they need quickly and in the flow of work. “On our most recent NPS results, we had a 50% increase in Salesforce user satisfaction, which was surely boosted by our digital adoption efforts,” adds Lopez.

Lastly, WalkMe’s Digital Experience Analytics and Tracked Events give Gore’s development and leadership teams the visibility they need to evaluate training and adoption progress.

“Each digital rollout can be assessed with WalkMe Insights, so we can understand the rate of progress and what additional support is needed. We can then use Behavior Based Segmentation to send targeted follow ups aligned to meeting our business objectives for completion or adoption. We want to drive smart and targeted communications and not send irrelevant messages, which will frustrate and turn-off our users. We ultimately want to establish a pattern where our users understand that when they get a message, it will help them know what they need to do to successfully do their job and meet their objectives,” explains Shawn Nautel, Digital CX – Sales/Service Leader, W.L. Gore & Associates.

“W.L Gore and Associates is consistently recognized and awarded as a great place to work, with many of our Associates proudly celebrating more than 20 years with the company. The speed at which all team members adopted this new strategy is staggering. We were expecting push back, or to see concerns arise, but it was exactly the opposite. Now, users have come to expect the in-tool messaging and started asking ‘So, the next rollout will be the digital way again, right?’” beams Lopez.

Not only has the field embraced digital rollouts, but they’re more active and productive in Salesforce. Associates have rapidly adopted newly deployed functionality, helping to drive user sessions up over 150% year over year. This increase in activity has led to major account planning and segmentation projects that had previously been labeled “too difficult” now being successfully completed with ease.

WalkMe has also filled a huge void for leadership. Previously, it was very hard for the Gore team to understand the participation with training initiatives, overall software adoption, and which Associates could benefit from more information and added support.

“For us, success is not just users taking the training provided and engaging with WalkMe, but the fact that these activities actually lead to users adopting and effectively using the tool [Salesforce] and specific solutions being rolled out. We are spending a lot of time understanding the needs of our customer-facing teams and designing fit-for-purpose solutions for them – but if they do not know what they have or how to use it, we have missed a huge opportunity,” says Nautel.

Nautel continues, “The in-tool approach also aligns with our goals to make things easy and have a straightforward user experience where our teams can understand, navigate, and utilize new and improved functionality without disruption. In the end, we can design and deploy the best solutions, but if we cannot help our teams use it consistently, we will struggle to realize the desired value and ROI for our businesses and our customers.”

Lopez says “One great example is the recent implementation of various new account and territory planning solutions across our divisions. The rapid adoption meant our sales leaders and their teams were collectively saving hundreds of hours of time compared to our prior method.”

Additionally, following each new feature rollout, Lopez sends weekly stats, gathered through WalkMe Insights, allowing leaders to understand adoption and patterns, which they use to drive critical sales enablement processes and practices within Salesforce.

“Leaders can now get the background they need quickly and in advance of meetings, and jump straight into value-added coaching and joint planning discussions around specific needs and actions to take, which is a more productive use of time together,” says Lopez.

“In the near term, Gore looks to create various formalized onboarding programs with WalkMe TeachMe and automate more processes with WalkMe ActionBot. Our hope is that WalkMe can help us continue to onboard our Associates into our various platforms and solutions in a more streamlined fashion,” explains Lopez.

Building on this, Nautel wraps up with “Gore is quite diverse, and we have a lot of different roles. So, as we grow our digital solutions, it is imperative for us to be able to set up a robust variety of initial learning tracks and tailored ongoing support, save time on initial training, and drive faster time to proficiency and value realization with new, constantly improving functionality.”

The long-term vision for Gore is to expand WalkMe into a multi-app experience for their end users, expanding on the benefits they’ve seen to date.