Something powerful is happening at the intersection of consumer trends and emerging technologies, fundamentally changing the way customers are looking to engage with each other and brands.  

And this is exactly what we will examine each week in my new web show, The Innovation Series with John Brunswick.

Innovation Series with John Brunswick Trailer

Our business muscles are typically honed through years of optimizing our own, internal processes. But these essential processes never had to take into account the evolving ways that customers expect a brand to understand them, regardless of department or process.

By embracing a beginner’s mind and stepping outside of our “walled gardens”, we can develop a very different view of what our organizations need, to become Customer Companies. The Innovation Series will help you gain the insights to do this by demystifying how things like machine learning, connected products, wearables, augmented / virtual reality, and image recognition all contribute to our understanding and ability to engage and delight our customers.

In our debut episode, “Customer Journeys - Part 1”, I highlight the power of creating 1:1 customer journeys, showcasing the first half of a live experience with a fictional brand. What you’ll see is a small implementation I created over 6 weeks that uses the breadth of the Salesforce Platform.

In episode 2, “Customer Journeys - Part 2”, the quality of the journey continues to unfold, as we highlight how each touchpoint (from storefront to Facebook, to Smartphone, to connected Apple TV) plays a role in evolving and upleveling the customer’s relationship with the brand. As our customer travels over a series of locations, devices and screens, our fictional brand gets smarter and more predictive, responding with increasing precision. The end result is an experience where the customer feels known and understood.

You may be wondering how this is actually innovative. Haven’t companies offered the ability to do this for years?

Loyalty is far more than an elaborate point system to drive repeat business. It is defined by your customer’s relationship to your brand - based on the sum total of their experiences.

By using real applications and live systems at the workbench, the customer’s journey comes alive. Say goodbye to the constraints of powerpoint and whiteboards.  Hopefully, the Innovation Series sparks some good conversation about how Salesforce can be applied to help you connect with your customers in entirely new ways. And each week, you can look forward to us releasing new episodes on Wednesdays at 9am PT on youtube.com/salesforce and salesforce.com/video.

If you are curious about any of the technologies included in the series, or are curious about how they apply to creating amazing experiences for your customers, connect with me on @johnbrunswick on Twitter or LinkedIn. We always welcome your comments and feedback on the series.

See you at the workbench.