Yesterday was a milestone of sorts for Salesforce India. We held our first ever virtual Salesforce Live event to connect, collaborate, and learn with customers, partners, and employees from across the country. What an incredible experience it was!
Visionary leaders shared their perspectives on how to navigate the new normal, and accelerate the journey back to growth. Innovative Trailblazers discussed how they’re using technology to transform customer and employee experiences. Salesforce experts showcased some of our latest innovations that are helping businesses thrive.
Reinforcing our commitment to India, we made some exciting announcements. In our efforts to bridge inequalities around education, sanitation and nutrition we announced $240,000 in grants to six NGOs across India impacting over 15,000 people. Additionally, our customer trailblazers have asked for a solution to host data locally, and as such, we are proud to announce that we will have a local instance in India by the end of this year.
Here are five top takeaways from the event:
1. We will emerge stronger from the pandemic with digital as the foundation
“Digital transformation is not just a nice-to-have anymore - it's an imperative.”
COVID-19 has pushed all of us to reimagine how we connect with customers, partners, and employees. Digital-first is the new mantra. As Salesforce India CEO and Chairperson, Arundhati Bhattacharya said, “Digital transformation is not just a nice-to-have anymore - it's an imperative.”
Leading the digital journey are companies like WhiteHat Jr. The edtech company has grown an astonishing 30x in the past 10 months, powered by technology. Sales teams now have a granular view of customer interactions at every touch point across the sales funnel, enabling them to improve customer delight.
Meanwhile, print media—which has been slow to adopt technology in the past—is rapidly accelerating digital transformation. HT Media has integrated its BPO, back office, and sales team on a single platform to deliver seamless customer experiences. The company is also innovating with digital coupons and a self-service portal to meet subscriber needs.
Stories like these powerfully demonstrate how companies are using digital to thrive in the ongoing crisis. With technology at their core, they’re elevating customer experiences, accelerating growth, and pivoting for success.
2. Salesforce Customer 360 puts your customers at the centre of your business
Today’s customers expect businesses to deliver connected experiences across channels and departments. Salesforce Customer 360 helps you meet this demand by providing a single source of customer truth across sales, service, marketing, and commerce.
With Customer 360, Tata Capital has built a complete unified view of each customer, so that all stakeholders—whether they’re a dealer of consumer durables, a credit manager, or a service agent—can provide meaningful and personalised customer service.
Manufacturing giant Godrej & Boyce, is also using Customer 360 to realise its vision of “One CRM.” The platform connects customer touchpoints across the company’s lines of business, giving teams the insights they need to deliver superlative customer experiences.
With Customer 360, all of a customer's interactions and preferences are consolidated in one place. This enables companies to effectively address service issues, predict customer needs, recommend products, and create more personalised customer journeys.
3. The employee experience is just as important as the customer experience
Some of the most inspiring stories from Salesforce Live: India were of how companies are empowering and tooling their employees to serve customers better.
At Praxis Home Retail, service agents no longer have to toggle between different screens to find answers to a customer query. With Salesforce, all the information they need is easily available in one place. This has led to a 30% drop in the time taken to answer customer questions.
But before that happened, Praxis knew that the Salesforce implementation would only be as successful as the extent of its adoption. The company held contests, provided incentives, and ensured that end users of Salesforce technology were involved in all discussions around implementation right from the start. These and other measures resulted in 95% of employees adopting Salesforce—and experiencing the accompanying benefits.
Employee experiences are not only about the right enabling technology. Employee-centric companies also focus on the quality of employees’ lives, especially important during these unusual times. Karen Mangia, VP, Customer & Market Insights at Salesforce, and author of The Work from Home Playbook - Succeed from Anywhere shared valuable and practical tips on how we can make the WFH experience a productive one. And more importantly, how to avoid blurring the lines between work and life in this new world.
4. Technology is helping businesses reopen safely
Since the pandemic, Salesforce has spent a lot of time thinking about how to support and protect employees as they return to work. Work.com is the result of our efforts to build workplace trust and safety when it matters most. The solution helps businesses triage risks, assess employee wellness, and enable teams to work from anywhere.
With Work.com, Pine Labs is closely monitoring employee safety, hygiene, and health to ensure that all employees feel comfortable returning to the office.
Meanwhile, Tata Steel is using Tableau to make informed and near real-time decisions about the safety of their workforce. IoT devices worn by workers transmit key data for crowd sensing, contact tracing, face mask detection, proximity analysis, and more. This data is aggregated and visualised on Tableau in a way that makes it easy for management teams to identify and mitigate potential risks.
The result is that companies like Tata Steel and Pine Labs are better prepared to manage their workforces, keep them safe, and uphold their trust.
5. Companies are stepping up to help communities affected by the crisis
COVID-19 has amplified many societal inequalities. More than ever, non-profits and communities need our support. At Salesforce Live: India, we announced $240,000 in grants to six NGOs across India that are making education, sanitation, and nutrition accessible to over 15,000 people in these unprecedented times.
We were also inspired by our panel of change makers from NIIT Foundation, Appirio, and Salesforce who are doing remarkable work to bring relief to communities affected by COVID-19. For instance, Appirio and Salesforce have collaborated to reduce the digital divide by building a number of Trailblazer community labs where underprivileged children can access online education.
Salesforce also joined hands with NIIT Foundation to financially sustain over 500 at-risk families during the pandemic by funding their rent, electricity, phone bills, medical bills, and other necessities.
Initiatives like these help us move forward together, and build a future that works for everyone. As Sapna Moudgil, Director at NIIT Foundation, pointed out, “Never underestimate your power to support another life.”
Salesforce Live: India wouldn’t have been successful without the support and participation of the Salesforce community. Thank you to everyone who tuned in, posted on social media, and engaged in our virtual sessions.
Click here to watch all sessions on-demand.
