Definition
Custom Help is a Salesforce customization created by an admin or developer to address organization-specific needs. Unlike standard platform features, it is defined and configured by the customer to support unique business processes, data structures, or user experiences.
Real-World Example
When a Salesforce administrator at Coastal Health needs to streamline operations, they turn to Custom Help to maintain data quality and enforce organizational policies across the platform. By properly setting up Custom Help, they prevent common data entry errors and ensure that users follow established business processes, which saves the support team hours of cleanup work each week.
Why Custom Help Matters
Custom Help in Salesforce allows administrators to create context-specific help text and documentation that appears directly within the Salesforce interface. This includes field-level Help Text that appears as hover tooltips next to field labels, custom help pages that override Salesforce's default help documentation, and in-app guidance created through the Guidance Center. Custom Help matters because Salesforce's standard help documentation describes generic platform features, not the specific way your organization uses them. When a user sees a field called 'Qualification Score' and clicks the standard help link, Salesforce cannot explain that your company calculates it based on BANT criteria — only Custom Help can provide that organization-specific context.
As organizations scale and onboard new users, Custom Help becomes a force multiplier for user adoption and data quality. Training sessions teach users how the system works on day one, but Custom Help is there every day afterward when they forget specific details or encounter unfamiliar fields. Organizations that invest in comprehensive Custom Help see fewer support tickets to the admin team, higher data quality because users understand what each field expects, and faster onboarding because new hires can self-serve answers. Conversely, orgs without Custom Help create dependency on tribal knowledge — when experienced users leave, their understanding of the system's nuances leaves with them, creating gaps that lead to inconsistent data entry and process breakdowns.
How Organizations Use Custom Help
- Coastal Health — Coastal Health added Help Text to every custom field on their Patient Intake form, explaining not just what information to enter but how to format it. For example, the 'Insurance ID' field's help text reads: 'Enter the 11-digit member ID found on the front of the insurance card. Do not include dashes or spaces.' Data entry errors on this field dropped from 23% to 4% within one month of adding the guidance.
- Redwood Financial — Redwood Financial replaced the default Salesforce help pages for their key objects with custom documentation that includes their specific business processes, screenshots of their configured screens, and links to internal training videos. New advisors now complete onboarding in 5 days instead of 10 because they can reference process-specific help directly from within Salesforce rather than searching through separate training documents.
- Summit Logistics — Summit Logistics used Salesforce's in-app Guidance Center to create step-by-step walkthroughs for their three most complex processes: shipment booking, customs filing, and rate calculation. The walkthroughs appear as floating prompts that guide users through each step in sequence. After deployment, the admin team received 60% fewer how-to support requests, freeing them to focus on system improvements instead of answering repetitive questions.