- Salesforce is doubling down on its goal of helping businesses get a "360 degree view" of their customers with new announcements at its annual Dreamforce mega-conference in San Francisco.
- The key announcement is a new tool called Customer 360 Data Manager.
- The tool will make it easy for users to create a single ID to identify their customers across all of their devices, and across the sales, service, and marketing departments.
- Read more on the Business Insider homepage.
Salesforce is doubling down on its goal of helping businesses get a "360 degree view" of their customers with new products announced today, ahead of its Dreamforce Conference in San Francisco.
For Salesforce, having a "360 degree view" means being able to track customer's actions, preferences and habits across devices. It's something Salesforce co-CEO Keith Block has called the company's "fourth act," and a "Holy Grail" for its customers.
"The underlying vision or north star we're always looking for at Salesforce is customer centricity, so we build all of our applications to help businesses be more connected to their customers. So ultimately that's what we're trying to solve for," Patrick Stokes, EVP of platform shared services at Salesforce, told Business Insider.
As part of this strategy, Salesforce will introduce at Dreamforce a new tool, called Customer 360 Data Manager, that will make it easy for users to create a single ID to identify their customers across all of their devices, and across the sales, service, and marketing departments.
The problem that it's trying to solve, Salesforce says, is that poor customer service comes when a support agent doesn't know everything about the person on the other end of the phone or standing at the help desk. Essentially, Stokes said, Salesforce wants to give its customers a single place to put everything they know about their own customers — no matter where that information came from.
Beyond customer service, that single ID tool is supported by another new tool called Customer 360 Audiences, which is aimed to help businesses better market to their customers. This tool will allow businesses to use the profile of a customer to inform how the company markets to them through emails, online advertisements, and other channels.
Salesforce is also rolling in pre-existing tools into what it now calls the Customer 360 Truth group, including a tool that lets customers log in to sites using that single ID, and another that helps keep data in compliance with regulations like Europe's GDPR.
New AI improvements
Artificial intelligence is also playing a role in Salesforce's updates at Dreamforce. Salesforce's Service Cloud, its cloud software for customer service agents, now uses AI to transcribe a phone call in real-time, helping eliminate the need for a caller to repeat themselves. The offering is called Service Cloud Voice.
Another new update is also voice-related: Salesforce will provide developers with the tools to build voice-powered software for Alexa and other digital assistants that can also interface with the data on its platform.
Salesforce's Einstein AI will also be able to recommend solutions to customer support agents as a call goes on.
It's all part of the company's long term goal of using AI to help improve the customer relationship experience.
"Everything about Salesforce from when we started 20 years ago, it was CRM, customer relationship management...flash forward 20 years, it's about being number one in customer relationship management and leveraging the power of the latest innovative technologies to drive better customer relationships," Stephanie Buscemi, Salesforce CMO, told Business Insider in a recent interview.
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