Today’s companies are competing primarily on the basis of customer experience. More than pricing or feature sets, today’s consumers examine the experience they can expect from each business to determine which brands they want to work with.
For business leaders, delivering a consistently exceptional experience means investing in tools which provide insights into the customers they serve and the journeys they encounter. A CRM, or Customer Relationship Management tool, is perhaps the most effective way for brands to access a behind-the-scenes view of their clients and their needs.
While there are many different CRM solutions available on the market today, Salesforce stands as perhaps one of the best-known and most reputable vendors. Appearing as a leader in various industry reports and Gartner Magic Quadrants, the Salesforce Customer 360 ecosystem provides business leaders with a complete range of tools for managing and optimizing the customer experience.
Salesforce CRM Review: The Features of Customer 360
Salesforce offers companies a variety of different tools intended for specific use cases and purposes. Organizations can invest in these offerings on a modular basis or access the complete network of CRM solutions provided by Salesforce with Customer 360. Hosted and managed on the Salesforce platform, Customer 360 leverages Hyperforce infrastructure architecture to deliver access to numerous apps and tools across the sales, service, and marketing landscape.
Customer 360 combines multiple technologies on the Salesforce platform to unite marketing, sales, and service in a way that strengthens consumer relationships. With Customer 360, companies can unite and integrate data from any source and take action instantly with the MuleSoft integration platform, Tableau for Business Intelligence, and Einstein for AI insights.
Some of the core features of Salesforce Customer 360 include:
- Sales tools: Users can leverage the various features of the Sales cloud to empower their reps for virtual sales strategies, track leads, and discover new opportunities.
- Service: Features of the sales cloud include everything from contact center solutions for connecting with customers, to case management and automation capabilities.
- Marketing: A comprehensive customer data platform provides marketing teams with the tools they need to create personalized and automated marketing campaigns.
- Commerce: Commerce solutions support both digital and in-person sellers with opportunities to manage transactions, financial data, and conversions throughout the sales channel.
- Analytics: Built-in reporting and analytics tools offer behind-the-scenes insight into revenue, forecasts, and opportunities across the entire sales landscape.
- Platform: The Salesforce platform gives companies an all-in-one development environment for building customer experiences, apps, and connections via the Blockchain.
- Collaboration: Salesforce’s recent acquisition of Slack delivers direct access to valuable collaboration tools for sales, marketing, and service teams via chat and messaging.
- Einstein: Built-in Einstein AI provides behind-the-scenes intelligence on customer sentiment and intent, with best-action insights and custom reporting options.
- Integrations: Companies can leverage a range of integrations with leading solutions for collaboration, contact centre management, financial reports, and ERP tools.
- Genie: The Genie technology combines always-on intelligence with real-time hyper scale data for workflow automation and improved access to deal opportunities.
Salesforce Customer 360 Review: Benefits
For business leaders struggling to keep up with ever-evolving customer expectations, Customer 360 from Salesforce provides a flexible, scalable, and modular solution. Companies can build the functionality they need into their platform, selecting the exact tools and technologies most relevant to their employees and target audience. Plus, Salesforce works with a range of application developers, consultants, and developers to help companies build the perfect custom solution.
The all-in-one platform empowers business leaders to accomplish more in a connected platform where they can track interactions with customers and leverage useful insights from data. Some of the core benefits of Salesforce Customer 360 include the following:
- Endless flexibility: Built on a powerful cloud platform, Customer 360 can adapt to suit any business need, with access to modular apps and tools users can customize at will. It’s possible to integrate everything from sales to automated marketing solutions in the same platform, with end-to-end access to data across all applications. Plus, Salesforce integrates well with a range of the tools business leaders will already be using for customer service.
- Intelligence: Access to state-of-the-art AI solutions and automation capabilities ensures business leaders can access more useful insights and business intelligence. The Einstein AI system provides access to everything from sentiment and intent analysis to predictive analytics. Plus, Genie can be integrated to provide employees with the next best action guidance at the moment and improve a company’s chances of sales.
- Industry-driven solutions: As companies from different industries often have specific needs when it comes to serving and supporting customers, Salesforce ensures every organization can access the right functionality. There are Salesforce apps, integrations, and toolkits specially designed for a range of different industries, including financial services, healthcare, manufacturing and more.
- A comprehensive platform: Salesforce Customer 360 unifies the various tools business leaders leverage on a daily basis to improve experiences for customers. The comprehensive platform creates end-to-end views of all customers, with insights from a range of different data repositories and resources. The Slack integration even ensures business employees can collaborate more effectively with their colleagues.
- Exceptional support: Alongside a platform built for excellent user experience, customers of Salesforce gain access to a customer-obsessed team of professionals. Not only does Salesforce provide access to consultants and technical experts, but the company also offers a range of courses and webinars to assist users in making the most of their technology. On-demand training and expert services are available for all use cases.
Salesforce CRM Review: Verdict
Salesforce has earned a reputation as one of the most popular Customer Relationship Management platforms for a reason. The flexible and scalable Customer 360 platform adheres to the needs of countless business leaders from virtually every industry and can be adapted to suit all requirements.
With built-in intelligence, automation, and an ever-evolving feature set, Salesforce CRM ensures every company, large or small, can deliver exceptional experiences to customers. For growing business leaders, few solutions can compete with the functionality Salesforce has to offer.
