Sep 23, 2020 By Adi Kuruganti

Experience Cloud: Get To Market Fast With Enhanced Personalized Customer Journeys

in Digital Transformation, IT, Community Cloud

Adi Kuruganti is senior vice president and general manager of Salesforce Experience Cloud.

Today, we announce Experience Cloud, Salesforce’s Digital Experience Platform built on the Customer360. With Experience Cloud brands can quickly build websites, portals, mobile apps, and many other digital touch points to engage with customers — and digitize business processes to move faster in our online-first world.

We’ve brought together Experience Builder, Salesforce CMS, Mobile Publisher, and our suite of web apps to power the entire customer journey. And we’ve enriched it with the power of the world’s #1 CRM.

Why digital, why now?

The urgency to “go digital” has never been so high. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed two truths for digital transformation: that digital experience is imperative for businesses to survive, and customers expect to be able to easily and intuitively interact with companies online. It’s the digital experiences a company provides that connects the customers to this digital transformation, empowering them to engage and take action.

So, what is required to make this leap into the all-digital world, and make sure you do it right? We have consistently heard three requirements:

First, you need to get your experiences to market fast — and then be able to update them even faster to adapt to what’s changing with your business or market trends.
Second, customer interactions need to be personalized and actionable — which is only possible when connected to CRM data and business processes that empower customers to take action..
And finally, every single one of these touchpoints need to be consistent across a multichannel customer journey. The moment a customer feels like they left your ecosystem, they are highly unlikely to come back.

These requirements are what drove the Experience Cloud mission and roadmap, and today our customers are building a limitless variety of digital experiences that are both mission-critical — and built in record time.

What is Experience Cloud?

Experience Cloud customers gain the competitive edge because they have launched fast, connected every experience to data, and tied everything together across a seamless customer journey.

Here’s how Trailblazers see success today:

Speed of execution has never been so critical as the world changes faster than ever.

Mascoma Bank had the mission-critical task of disbursing COVID-19 financial relief to small businesses through the PPP small business loan program.

To get this vital service up and running fast, Mascoma partnered with Salesforce SI Partner, nCino, and used their packaged loan application solution built on Experience Cloud to create a connected and simple digital application experience. This powerful portal allowed them to streamline application intake forms, feed the leads through Financial Services Cloud for review, and upload applications to the centralized federal processing system.

In just 13 days, Mascoma Bank:

Processed more than 1,000 loan applications, equating to what is normally a year’s worth of loans.
Supported 12,500 jobs in their area through $120M in funds in only the first round of PPP, with more to come in the government’s second round of funding.

Mascoma Bank’s PPP Portal, powered by Experience Cloud

Creating a seamless and connected experience was top of mind for Xcel Energy (XCEL), a U.S.-based utilities company that serves more than 3.3 million electric customers and 1.8 million natural gas customers.

Prior to implementing Salesforce, Xcel Energy had various digital properties like their corporate website, microsites, partner sites, and mobile applications. These were all built on separate systems, disconnected, and requiring different skill sets and partner teams to maintain and update. Between native mobile applications, unauthenticated web CMS platforms, and home grown systems, Xcel Energy needed to repeat small updates three or more times to maintain consistency across all channels. This took time and resources, which delayed them from getting to market quickly.

Xcel Energy was looking for a single instance Digital Experience Platform to help manage all digital properties, from the front end to the backend agent experience. And, they wanted a solution that helped them go fast, with configurable, out-of-the-box experiences, rather than completely custom. Finally, alignment was critical, they needed every experience connected so that they could have a single view of their customer.

With Salesforce they have been able to develop multiple experiences ranging from their website to portals to warranty registration sites. Their new sites, built on Experience Cloud, include a customer support site, a building and remodeling site for trade partners and builders, and a site for consumers to enroll in affordable appliance repair, and replacement and maintenance plans— all with self-service tools that significantly reduce the load on service agents and sales representatives.

Today, Xcel Energy sees over 70% digital adoption within their service application experience, and a 14 point increase in customer satisfaction since implementing Experience Cloud.