New Salesforce Customer 360 Innovations Help Businesses Go Digital Faster and Drive Efficient Growth with Automation and Intelligence

Eighty-six percent of consumers say brand experience is as important as product, but CFO optimism about the economy has dropped 10% over the last two quarters¹, meaning companies will likely need to do more with less

Einstein currently generates 175 billion predictions per day, Flow Automations save customers over 100 billion hours every month, and Salesforce runs 1.3 trillion monthly automations on the Salesforce Platform, which amounts to $2.19 trillion in customer business value

Customers like Schneider Electric and GE Appliances are leveraging Salesforce to digitally transform their businesses

SAN FRANCISCO , Sept. 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Salesforce, (NYSE: CRM), the global leader in CRM, today introduced new Customer 360 innovations that provide companies with powerful automation and intelligence technologies to drive efficient growth and deliver personalized customer experiences at scale, helping customers do more with less.

With challenging market conditions like inflation, supply chain disruption and labor shortages, it's vital that companies invest in technology that improves operational efficiencies and keeps employees productive, while still delivering the great experiences today's customers have come to expect.

Automating manual tasks helps businesses provide better customer and employee experiences. In fact, 91% of organizations say they need automation technology, but only 23% have actually implemented it across business functions. And, as customer expectations continue to rise, the need for more automated, intelligent processes has increased. Eighty-six percent of consumers say their experience with a brand matters as much as products, while 57% prefer to engage on digital channels.

Companies of all types can benefit from intelligence and automation technology. With these innovations, sales teams can use bots to answer customer questions and close deals faster. Benefits caseworkers can better serve constituents by automating the delivery of public services like healthcare and housing, previously a tedious and manual process. Marketers can automate how they engage with customers across channels, enabling them to respond immediately to actions with relevant content. Customers calling into a contact center can get their requests solved instantly with AI powered bots, or routed to the appropriate channel based on their activity on the company's website. And retailers can quickly deliver new digital promotions to shoppers and find the fastest way to get their product into the hands of customers.

"In times of uncertainty, it's critical for companies to focus on greater intelligence and efficiency while staying flexible and resilient to external pressures and changes in customer expectations," said David Schmaier, President and Chief Product Officer, Salesforce. "With Salesforce Customer 360, businesses can automate to save time and money so they can spend their valuable resources on what matters: driving intelligent and personalized customer and employee experiences."

Salesforce's Customer 360 is the single source of truth for every customer, delivering end-to-end automation and powerful AI on a low-code, highly scalable platform that connects data across sales, service, marketing, commerce, and more so companies can personalize every interaction and drive efficient growth.

To close deals fast, sales teams need technology to help them forecast with precision and ensure every rep is productive and confident.

• Sales teams can generate more qualified leads and accelerate pipeline virtually with Einstein Bot for Sales, which helps reps avoid minutiae and focus their time on closing deals fast. The bot can perform multiple tasks including answering customer questions, connecting them to the right rep via Slack, and automatically scheduling meetings.
• Companies can raise rep productivity with Enablement, which provides data-driven coaching to help sales managers focus on improving the skills that matter most to fuel efficient growth. Enablement automatically tracks achievement milestones and delivers training programs in the flow of work, ensuring reps can skill up fast.

Service leaders are dealing with a variety of issues, from rising customer expectations to staffing shortages. Intelligent automation and connected data can help organizations reduce costs and provide engaging customer experiences.

• With Service Cloud's next-generation Contact Center solution, organizations can benefit from real-time data to deliver proactive, personalized service across any channel, at scale. Contact centers can improve agent productivity and efficiency with a unified agent desktop across all channels and AI-powered recommendations.
• Pre-built experiences for service enable companies to drive increased productivity and cost savings through automation. The Service Catalog empowers companies to automate frequent service requests, like refunds or subscription plan changes, saving agents time and allowing customers to request services through a storefront-like experience. And Flow Automation Packs provide capabilities for automating the life cycles of various tasks — like managing incident tickets and customer onboarding processes.

Marketers today need to deliver customer engagement on tighter budgets. New Marketing Cloud innovations offer real-time personalization and automated engagement.

• Account Engagement API Enhancements allow B2B marketing and sales teams to work more effectively together to grow pipeline, drive efficiency, and reduce costs with a more flexible and scalable API that enables new integrations with Salesforce's Customer Data Platform and external segmentation tools. Now, marketers can create and share segments with CDP, leverage a richer set of account attributes for personalization, and activate engagement across channels using Salesforce and third-party platforms – such as engaging freemium software users with a personalized enterprise software upgrade journey across video, email, and mobile.

In this increasingly digital world, commerce leaders need to find ways to increase relevance and drive efficient growth. To succeed, they need a platform that is flexible, fast, and personalized.

• With Commerce Cloud's new Composable Storefront, retailers can take a headless approach to commerce while offloading the management of site hosting, security, and scalability. The new storefront allows them to create and deliver flexible, custom commerce experiences to any device or application quickly without the need for expensive architecture — helping online retailers increase conversions and basket sizes while driving down costs.
• The Store Associate app bridges the gap between digital and physical shopping by giving store associates automatic customer insights and inventory levels, helping transform the store into a fulfillment center. Retailers can cut costs, improve productivity, and deliver more personalized shopping experiences with ship-from-store functionality, Buy Online Pickup In-Store, omnichannel inventory visibility, and personalized clienteling.

Companies need technology built specifically for their industry, whether for compliance needs, regulatory management, or serving their customers more quickly. With Salesforce, businesses in any sector can go faster with flexible and automated technology built for their particular needs.

• With MuleSoft Direct for Industry Clouds, Salesforce administrators can enable pre-built connectivity use cases directly in Salesforce that MuleSoft developers customize and maintain in Anypoint Platform – reducing implementation time from months to days.
• Flow for Industries are purpose-built automation tools that are now included with Manufacturing Cloud, Health Cloud, and Financial Services Cloud. With click-based configuration and integration tools, organizations can simplify the build and delivery of branded and automated experiences for companies in these industries.
• Governments need to deliver services to the people with more speed and scale than ever before. With Composable Case Management for Public Sector, government caseworkers can serve citizens faster by automating case intake and eligibility determination, digitizing case documentation, and using data to drive to better outcomes.

In addition, Salesforce has an extensive partner ecosystem that provides unique expertise and solutions to companies looking to digitally transform their businesses. These partners are equipped to implement these solutions tailored to individual business needs, enabling automated and intelligent interactions that enhance the overall customer experience.

"Today, Sales Cloud covers the full opportunity lifecycle," said Irina Zubova, Vice President, Sales Management and Support at Schneider Electric. "Since building the Digital Opportunity Factory using Sales Cloud, Schneider Electric reduced time-to-close by 30% and earned a 15%–20% success rate from lead to order. Additionally, with Salesforce Platform, Schneider Electric has developed an automated quoting system which has enabled sales and project teams to complete the quote-to-order process for distributors with highly complex orders in as little as 15 minutes."

"We believe that zero distance to customers is the answer to the quintessential question of how to be successful," said Viren Shah, Chief Digital Officer at GE Appliances. "Our partnership with Salesforce enables us to be closer to every single GE Appliances user, understanding their needs, anticipating their desires, and serving them better when they need us. When the pandemic disrupted our normal lives, our 1,700 service agents uninterruptedly continued supporting millions of users from around the country, enabled by Salesforce Service Cloud and Field Service. Solutions such as Consumer Goods Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and MuleSoft help us create insights and intelligence to understand our historic and current service levels; and connect marketing and performance metrics to deliver zero-distance consumer experiences across all channels."

• Sales Cloud: https://www.salesforce.com/products/sales-cloud/overview/
• Service Cloud: https://www.salesforce.com/products/service-cloud/overview/
• Marketing Cloud: https://www.salesforce.com/products/marketing-cloud/overview/
• Commerce Cloud: https://www.salesforce.com/products/commerce-cloud/overview/
• Flow for Industries: https://www.salesforce.com/news/stories/salesforce-flow-for-industries-announcement

Salesforce, the global CRM leader, empowers companies of every size and industry to digitally transform and create a 360° view of their customers. For more information about Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), visit: www.salesforce.com.

Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase Salesforce applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "CRM." For more information please visit https://www.salesforce.com, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.

¹ https://www.richmondfed.org/research/national_economy/cfo_survey/ 

SOURCE Salesforce