- Salesforce recently unveiled a new Customer Data Platform (CDP) at the annual Salesforce Connections conference
- And Salesforce also introduced next generation of Customer 360
CRM giant Salesforce recently unveiled a new Customer Data Platform (CDP) at the annual Salesforce Connections conference along with the next generation of Customer 360. This new platform will allow companies to unify customer data within the whole organization and personalize every engagement based on a single view of the customer. And Customer 360 will go beyond traditional CDP capabilities and extend the CRM with consumer-scale data management and activation.
“Customers today will not settle for fragmented experiences, and companies recognize that creating a single view of the customer is imperative to earning their loyalty,” said Salesforce president and Chief Product Officer Bret Taylor. “With Customer 360, we continue to extend our platform in new ways, empowering brands to unify data and personalize customer engagement at scale.”
Currently, most of the interactions that customers have with brands today are disconnected. And Salesforce’s latest Connected Customer report found that 78% of customers expect consistent interactions with a company regardless of the department they are engaging with, but only 50% of companies personalize engagements based on a customer’s past interactions.
Enterprises are struggling because they have a deluge of customer data. And many of these companies are trying to unify data from legacy systems and disconnected channels. Plus these companies also have to adhere to regulations such as GDPR and adapt to new channels like voice and chatbots.
“Enterprises are having a difficult time capturing all of their customer data in one place. With so much data coming in from dozens of sources, it’s hard for companies to keep track of it all, let alone use it to their advantage to deliver the connected experiences that customers want,” added Sheryl Kingstone — Research Vice President & General Manager at 451 Research. “A lot of solutions out there claim to solve these common challenges, but miss the mark. What Salesforce is announcing today is a strategic step forward in helping companies truly understand their customers through a single lens and engage with them one-on-one across marketing, commerce, service and beyond.”
Salesforce introduced Customer 360 at Dreamforce 2018. And this service allows companies to connect Salesforce apps and create a unified customer ID to build a single view of the customer. And by extending the power of Customer 360 with MuleSoft, companies are able to connect any app, data source, or device across any cloud and on-premise.
Now Salesforce is expanding Customer 360 with new advancements that will make it easier to bridge fragmented customer data across the whole organization and enable companies to deliver integrated customer engagement at scale.
Salesforce’s next generation of Customer 360 will enable data unification and consent management (including known and unknown data like cookies, first-party IDs, etc), advanced audience segmentation (allows companies to identify specific groups of people to engage with in real-time based on demographics, engagement history, and customer data), personalized engagement (activate customer success once brands know what audience segments they want to reach), and optimization based on Einstein Insights (companies can analyze and understand how and when to engage with customers using AI).
So a company would be able to build an audience of female shoppers interested in running shoes based on information gathered from a combination of web browsing activities across several retail sites, marketing email interactions, previous purchases, etc.
“Pacers Sports & Entertainment hosts hundreds of games, concerts and events each year for millions of fans in Indiana. Since teaming up with Salesforce, we’ve been able to improve fan engagement and build loyal relationships” explained Todd Taylor — the CMO of Pacers Sports & Entertainment. “We can now reach fans with the content most important to them, deliver personalized customer service and analyze how best to engage to keep them happy and involved alongside the entertainment experiences that we deliver. Customer 360 is a breakthrough innovation that we’re excited to adopt as we continue to grow the relationships we have worked hard to create with our fans.”
