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You might be familiar with the name ‘Salesforce’, but what would you say if someone asked you ‘What is Salesforce?’.

“Salesforce? Um, something to do with sales? With the fun mascots, right? And the blue cloud. And I saw something – the best place to work in Australia and a float at Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras? Um, definitely sales. But tech as well?”.  

We do a lot, and it’s tough to give an elevator pitch for a platform that covers so much. But if we had to, we’d say this: “Salesforce brings companies and customers together to benefit both”. 

Like most elevator pitches, that leaves a fair bit to the imagination. Let’s fill in the gaps.

Companies are traditionally made up of separate and sometimes competing departments. We break down those barriers and align marketing, sales, commerce, service, IT teams and more to give everyone the same, shared view of your customers on one integrated Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform. We call this Salesforce Customer 360. 

That means you can get a 360-degree view of your customer, which is just what it sounds like: a comprehensive view of them in all their complex glory – preferences, history, challenges, demands, requirements. 

When everyone in the company has access to this view, they can respond faster to customer needs and predict new opportunities to engage. And more importantly, everyone can deliver the personalised experiences customers expect. This is what builds lasting, trusted relationships.

Customers aren’t what they used to be

Over the past 20 years, customers’ expectations have dramatically increased and changed. Our latest customer research, the result of a survey of more than 8000 consumers and business buyers, shows 84% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services, and that trust has become a critical competitive edge. 

If you send customers down a rabbit-hole of transferred phone calls, they won’t look forward to buying from you again and your competitors will look pretty enticing. 

They don’t want to talk to your marketing, sales or service departments. Today’s customers don’t care about your departmental structure. They just want to engage with one entity – they only see your brand. They want to trust that it will deliver what they need, when they need it. And meeting that demand is where Salesforce Customer 360 shines. It helps businesses meet (and even exceed) the needs of today’s connected customers. 

Maybe it’s easier to listen to our customers explain what Salesforce does for them:

A recipe for outstanding CX

To create journeys that take prospects right through to brand loyalty, companies need to engage personally at every interaction – from first awareness to advocacy. Salesforce Customer 360 helps you do exactly that by:

  • Improving lead generation, customer acquisition and upselling opportunities by tailoring your marketing messages to the right person at the right time on the right channel using our marketing solutions.  
  • Arming your sales organisation with the tools it needs to develop and implement a precise, repeatable sales process with our solutions for sales. Less time on data entry and more time connecting with customers? Simplified path from lead to cash, and beyond? Yes please.
  • Building simple, seamless ecommerce experiences that help convert more customers, grow brands faster and connect commerce to the rest of your business with our commerce solutions. 
  • Delivering consistent, personalised support experiences across every interaction – whether it’s with a service agent or via an automated AI-powered chatbot – with our solutions for service.
  • Building modern apps to meet every employee, partner and customer need with our solutions for IT. Improve your employee experience and boost productivity by increasing mobility while automating and simplifying key processes, and deliver experiences today’s connected customers expect. Those IT solutions also help you make security and transparency key – treat their data with respect and your customers will reward you with loyalty.

Just as tailored customer service is so important today, it’s also essential to have a platform you can tailor to your specific industry and business needs. From AI to analytics, from integration to staff training, Customer 360 accommodates all your business capabilities. 

But wait; there’s more …

Did we mention it's not just the technology we build? We create resources and services, we gather experts to advise, and we provide a free, open, ever-growing learning platform built on best practices and learnings from 20 years working with 150,000 customers.

Who uses Salesforce?

The short answer: the last organisation that made you think ‘wow that was easy’. The one that recommended just the right jacket to go with those jeans and with your life. The one you called with a problem and hung up from happy. The one that made you think  ‘I didn’t have to repeat all my details to three different people – how did they know what I wanted?’.

And that’s why they use Salesforce – to provide better experiences for their customers. 

“Customer demands have changed so much because their reliance on technology is just so huge,” says Nevash Pillay, Global Partner Sales Executive at Telstra Enterprise. “When you take that into consideration, it is easy to see that we had to change.”

The Salesforce Customer Success Platform provides Telstra’s Enterprise business with that 360-degree view of customers that we were talking about earlier, enabling cross-functional collaboration and changing how teams across the business can work every day. 

“For the first time, we have everybody collaborating on the same platform for the benefit of our customers, and with the use of Einstein, we’re able to focus on the things that really matter,” says Digital Enablement Principal Mirko Gropp.

Find out more about how we bring companies and customers together by helping you make every interaction personalised, timely and impactful.

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