Salesforce Unveiled Customer Data Platform (CDP) with Next Gen Customer 360

Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) unveiled its Customer Data Platform (CDP) with the next generation of Customer 360. New platform services will enable companies to unify disparate customer data throughout their entire organization and then personalize every engagement based on a single view of the customer. Customer 360 will go beyond traditional CDP capabilities and extend the power of 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 Bret Taylor, President and Chief Product Officer, Salesforce. "With Customer 360, we continue to extend our platform in new ways, empowering brands to unify data and personalize customer engagement at scale."

Customers Expect a Level of Personalization They’re Not Getting

Most of the interactions that customers have with brands today are disconnected and therefore underwhelming. The latest Salesforce Connected Customer reportfinds that 78 percent of customers expect consistent interactions with a company regardless of the department they’re dealing with, yet only 50 percent of companies tailor their engagement based on a customer’s past interactions.

The challenge for companies is that they are swimming in a deluge of customer data. Many are trying to unify data from legacy systems, disconnected channels, multi-channel attribution and elsewhere. They also need to adhere to regulations like GDPR and adapt to new channels like voice and chatbots. In this reality, delivering personalized and integrated engagement is difficult, and customers often pay the price. A retailer is unlikely to know that the customer who just contacted customer service for a broken product is the same one that also just received a promotional email for that same product.

The Next Generation of Customer 360 Delivers Integrated Customer Engagement

At Dreamforce 2018, Salesforce introduced Customer 360, which allows companies to connect Salesforce apps and create a unified customer ID to build a single view of the customer. Additionally, by extending the power of Customer 360 with MuleSoft, companies can connect any app, data source or device across any cloud and on-premise. Today, Salesforce is expanding Customer 360 with new advancements that will make it easier to bridge fragmented customer data across the entire organization and enable companies to deliver integrated customer engagement at scale.

The next generation of Customer 360 will enable:

• Data Unification and Consent Management: Brands will be able to unify all of their customer data to create rich customer profiles. This includes known and unknown data such as cookies, customer first-party IDs and more. With Salesforce’s consent management framework, companies also have the ability to easily gain customer consent wherever they engage–from email marketing to digital advertising.
• Advanced Audience Segmentation: Segmentation capabilities will allow companies to identify specific groups of people to engage with in real-time based on demographics, engagement history and all other customer data available. For example, a company will 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 and more.
• Personalized Engagement Everywhere: Once a brand knows what audience segment they’d like to reach, it can then activate the customer data across marketing, commerce, service and beyond. This means companies won’t skip a beat, reaching customers and prospects across channels like ads, email, social, mobile and web that are all integrated to deliver a continuous experience with the brand.
• Optimization Based on Einstein Insights: With artificial intelligence, companies will be able to analyze and understand how and when to engage with customers to drive customer loyalty and improve business performance. Customer profiles are continuously updated based on their behaviors – as customers click on an ad, browse an ecommerce catalog, buy a product and open an email. This allows rands to leverage AI to drive the most relevant mix of product and channel recommendations to optimize channel engagement and customer satisfaction.

“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,” said 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.”

“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” said Todd Taylor, CMO, 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.”

Salesforce Connections 2019: The Customer Engagement Event of the Year

Thousands of marketing, commerce and customer service professionals from top brands are coming together in Chicago, Illinois from June 17-19 to blaze new trails in better, smarter customer engagement. Speakers include leaders from Salesforce customers such as Conagra, e.l.f. Cosmetics, The Indiana Pacers and more.

Availability

• Next generation Customer 360 platform services will be available in Pilot in the Fall of 2019.