A business like DoorDash is operationally unique in a number of ways. Most notably, this business model serves 3 distinct customer segments with unique needs throughout their acquisition, on-boarding, and support lifecycle.
Additionally, it has over 5 million customers on its $9.99/month subscription, DashPass, meaning 2/3 customer segments have a subscription billing model ...
In 2020, DoorDash was responsible for over 50% of all food delivery orders in the United States and generated $9.9B in gross order value for Q1'21. This is an org with the scale and complexity unlike many others out there and a unique set of challenges around building a unified Sales, Marketing, Customer Support, and Billing experience for 3 distinct customer segments.
For starters, they have made (and continue to make) the appropriate investment in Salesforce and Internal Tooling. A quick look at the composition of their Salesforce team shows 32 people dedicated to managing Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, CPQ, and Experience Cloud. Over 50% of the team was hired in 2021 alone with open headcount for another 5 immediate hires.
This team supports 4,000+ Salesforce users throughout the org.
While investing in resources is the first step, structuring & organizing the team properly is as important when it comes to being able to simultaneously support day-to-day use and push new projects forward. Something we love about the structure of DoorDash's org is the horsepower they have put behind Salesforce product strategy - 2 Salesforce Architects can focus on tactical, complex problem solving in collaboration with the 6 Salesforce Product Owners, who can contribute to tactical planning but more so own the long-term product strategy, ensuring their product area is set up for scalability. Additionally, a team of 3 Program Managers dedicated to Salesforce ensures stakeholders are support properly and the 15-person Salesforce Admin / Developer teams have clear requirements to build against with structured project timelines.
This really is an org that has struck the right balance in hiring 'doers' (Administrators + Developers) that are properly supported by 'strategists' (Product Owners + Architects).
