The devil’s in the details. Always.
When it comes to digital experiences, this rings truer than ever. It’s not just the pretty colors and the easy-to-navigate menu (those should be a given by now!). It’s also the ability to skip the intro when you binge-watch a new series on Netflix, the opportunity to move seamlessly among various channels of the same organization (website, app, email, social media profiles), or the awesome feeling you get when you receive personalized content on a company’s website. It’s just for you — how can you not love that?
Today’s digital experiences go beyond a simple website. And there is no end in sight to the ways you can improve on those experiences.
Think of your digital assets as perpetual beta products. As soon as you’ve finished updating your website or releasing a new version of your app, you need to start looking for the next major improvement to add.
Sounds like too much of a hassle? I get it. But let me tell you why you need to constantly improve your customers’ digital experiences before we dig into how you can do that with Salesforce.
Investing in customer experience isn’t something new. A 2017 Salesforce study revealed that no less than 68% of marketing leaders said that their companies are competing based on customer experience.
As technology evolves, so do consumer preferences. And they know it. 58% of them say that advances in technology have increased their expectations of customer experience.
Image via Salesforce
Does 5% look like too small a percentage to bother? Perhaps, but remember that this percentage is increasing every day.
Plus, these are only the people who leave because of bad loading speed. There are countless other factors to consider for a stellar experience.
Speaking of, here’s what you should pay attention to:
The pandemic held more people in front of screens and increased their expectations of customer experiences even further. But there’s a silver lining: a lot of businesses saw metric improvement across the board when they met these expectations:
Image via eMarketer
For retail, things have never been more digital. The explosion of eShopping is unparalleled. Digitalization happened at hyperspeed and only those who were able to pivot have survived.
Did I say “survive”? I meant “thrive”. Salesforce has the data to back this statement up:
Image via Salesforce
To sum up: digital channels bring more revenue. Plus, they’re easier to maintain — “cleanup on aisle four” takes less time and less personnel when it’s online (i.e. repairing a broken link) than when it’s in a traditional store.
Loads of benefits for everyone and a single, yet major caveat: the customer experience has to be stellar. It has to be agile, too, so you can easily pivot when consumer preferences and demands change.
How do you do that with Salesforce? Let’s find out?
First off, why Salesforce?
Because you’ll be hard-pressed to find a more complex and comprehensive solution for your sales and marketing needs. Salesforce has dozens of product categories and hundreds of products. It’s not a single solution, it’s an entire ecosystem.
On top of that, you can easily pile on a lot of add-ons and combine them with other solutions, especially if you’re looking for a best-in-class approach for all your processes. This brings us to the first point:
Remember what I said above about personalization and omnichannel experiences being key to an overall stellar digital experience? While Salesforce is a powerhouse on its own, you can take it to a much higher level when you “combine” it with another solution.,
What does this integration mean?
Briefly put, it means that you can say goodbye to data siloes. You’ve probably got tons of data in Salesforce. But you’ve also got relevant, actionable data in, say, an email marketing automation platform like Sendinblue, Mailchimp or Constant Contact.
This is the perfect example of siloed data.
Does the data from Salesforce clash with the insights from Sendinblue? Are there any relevant insights to be revealed by comparing and contrasting both data siloes?
Who knows? Performing such analyses manually is a gruesome, time-consuming, and mind-numbing task I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy.
This is where integration comes into play.
Through integration, your Salesforce data is merged with data from Sendinblue, Mailchimp, Constant Contact, NetSuite, TalentLMS, and many other solutions. The results? Combined reporting, combined insights, and zero manual data migration.
Check out more Salesforce integration options here.
According to our State of Automation and Integration Report, almost 60% of SyncApps users have created better marketing campaigns thanks to the combined insights.
As you can see above, the other major benefit of integration was workflow automation, something that boosts productivity and allows you to create personalized workflows and customer experiences with a few clicks.
Other integration benefits that are directly tied to integration:
Want to see a Salesforce integration in action? Check out the Kitchen Table Advisers story. They are a nonprofit on a mission to improve the food system for everyone. They use Mailchimp for Salesforce to sync contacts in real-time and send hyper-targeted and personalized campaigns to their segmented audiences.
By the way, did you know that nonprofits get 50% off their SyncApps subscriptions forever? This is the deal Kitchen Table Advisors, UNICEF, and dozens of other nonprofits enjoy every day. Learn more about our pricing here!
Got a client who made a purchase? Or perhaps a lead who just looked at some items, added them to the cart but never placed the order?
Oftentimes, this happens because customers simply get distracted by something else. Or they’re not sure they want that item. Sure, some of them come back on their own to place the order.
But most forget about it altogether.
What if you reminded them that the product they loved was still available? Perhaps even at a discount now.
With Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud you can remarket to all these categories of users. Better yet, you can even target people who were looking elsewhere for a similar product. (Yes, you can basically steal customers from your competitors but don’t tell them we’ve told you that — we hate lawsuits!)
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Really, no one wants to spend ages entering tons of information. Plus, no one really likes to give out information or to jump through hoops just to place an order.
With Commerce Cloud, you can create a very simple, user-friendly checkout experience. Better yet, you can test several options until you find the one that your customers like best. All without sacrificing important information, like your privacy or return policies.
Also, remember what I said above about always being ready to pivot and make changes when the market demands them? With Customer Cloud, you’ll be able to keep up with trends and innovate with a few clicks.
People shop via more than one channel. More importantly, they connect with your brand via more than one channel and with more than one of your departments.
Imagine this: you run an insurance company. You have a client that has a life insurance policy with you but also medical insurance, and perhaps even their home insurance.
Naturally, you’ve got different departments for each of these insurance policies. But the client doesn’t care. If they have an issue with one of their policies, they will call the number on the first contract they find. And they expect you to give them a solution, not have them call a different number or email a different colleague. Not to keep any information secret, ensure you have the information up on your contract templates.
To put it bluntly: data siloes are your problem. You should never make it your clients’ problem.
Salesforce (especially through Commerce Cloud) can help you have a unified view of all the client’s history. They don’t have to call three separate numbers to get information on their three separate policies. And you don’t have to hire three separate support agents since a single one can have access to all the relevant data.
However, this can only happen if you implement Salesforce throughout your organization. If your data isn’t “fairly” shared across departments, you will still have data siloes.
The good news is that you can easily break down those siloes and offer your customers seamless, unified, omnichannel experiences. It’s a customer-centric approach that’s also friendly with your budget, so what’s not to love?
Take this experience up a notch: did a customer support agent notice that a customer and their entire family have all their insurance policies with your company? It may be time to offer them a renewal deal — you don’t want to lose this customer!
You can do so by easily integrating Salesforce with Sendinblue, Constant Contact, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, or NetSuite. All the support rep has to do is flag a record, and your marketing or sales folks will have an unmatchable offer for them.
And just like that, you’ve got a stellar customer experience AND a way to boost customer loyalty.
GIF via GIF Tenor
As with every marketing tactic, the safest way to give the customers what they want is to walk a mile in their (digital, this time) shoes. Take a moment to think about what your customers really want in terms of digital experiences. Or, better yet, ask them directly — an email survey can do wonders!
Whatever your survey says, you’ll find a way to implement those changes through Salesforce or, at least, get support for speedy implementation.
Speaking of which, a final pro tip: browse the newest Salesforce releases every once in a while. Salesforce has MASSIVE intel into customer preferences, far more than (almost) any of their users. If you see them excited about a new release, it’s because your customers are going to love it. Try it out before your competitors do.
