At makepositive, we’ve seen a dramatic shift in customer expectations during the pandemic. Even in a post-COVID/COVID-safe world, people will still want to continue the digital conveniences that helped us find opportunities in an otherwise challenging time. On top of that, the end of cookies and increased privacy concerns have made first-party data critical for marketing efforts. All of which has forced many companies to rethink their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) strategy.
CRM will become even more important as a growing number of companies recognise that everything they do impacts the experience of the customer and the users. It’s so important that we focus on the transformations around customer and user experience (CX and UX), and that it all comes together with CRM. It’s crucial to realise that CRM is a way of doing business—it’s not just a tool set. It’s in the heart of our business and CRM really is the glue that brings every business together, so it will continue to be the most fundamental attribute of every company.
Each of the industries that makepositive services is facing unique challenges right now. Retail, for example, must respond to expectations about the speed that customers want items and the levels of service they expect (which has skyrocketed in recent years). The telecoms sector must continually transform just to keep up and keep businesses going. The choices that customers have and the constant need for businesses to evolve and innovate to maintain customer loyalty is staggering.
The solution for these industries, and many others, is a Customer 360 approach.
How Customer 360 solves today’s challenges
Customer 360 from Salesforce is a way to unite all your teams—marketing, sales, commerce, service, and IT—on one integrated platform with a single view of your customer, helping you grow relationships with your customers and your employees.
Your teams can access the information they need to do their best work. This increases collaboration and alignment among everyone, which leads to more connected, personalised experiences for your customers and helps you build stronger relationships with them. It also results in more satisfied employees, who are freed up from repetitive tasks so they can focus on doing their best, and most rewarding, work.
By keeping your team connected on a single, scalable platform, you’ll be able to make real improvements in every phase of your customer’s journey. Marketing becomes more personal with the ability to listen to customers and engage with them across multiple channels with customised messages. Following up on sales leads becomes faster and easier with tools that help you manage information, automate processes, and gain insights from real-time analytics. Ecommerce becomes more effective as you unify data, personalise interactions, and grow revenue across every channel. Customer service becomes more rewarding as agents gain the ability to know each customer and resolve issues faster.
The key to a successful Customer 360 implementation
The first step for makepositive is to look at the overall business objectives before planning the end-to-end processes enabled by Salesforce. Companies need to ensure they get an overarching, strategic view of the business first. Secondly, millions have already been invested in developing best practices in the Customer 360 product and platform. So we use that as a baseline as opposed to starting from a blank sheet. This is where things like accelerators come in. makepositive have implemented over 1,500 projects and have developed some very comprehensive accelerator frameworks. We start with the learnings and best practice and grow from them. Finally, we know that every company is different—so we identify these differentiators and enable them as we develop the solution in an agile way.
At makepositive, we have the advantage of recently being acquired by Sabio Group. This allows us to extend the Customer 360 proposition to the important front-end interaction experience. We can provide this front-end experience across all channels, including voice, live chat, email, and social media.
What’s holding some companies up?
Some companies might be ready to modernise their CRM but have no idea where to start. They’re often nervous about the size, complexity, and cost of the implementation. Because Salesforce is highly flexible, it’s sometimes helpful to look at Customer 360 as a strategy and not try to do everything in one go. Companies can start with a MVP (minimum viable product) and grow on, stage-by-stage. This is where makepositive can really help by guiding our customers at each step of their journeys.
Salesforce is always evolving and is constantly adding new functions and features to the platform. Compared to other technologies, it’s easy to tailor and effortlessly enables differentiators for businesses. Salesforce can connect with other systems to accelerate transformation by bringing all of a company’s data together. Many other technologies are just point-to-point solutions, which will only solve one specific problem (for example: marketing). In contrast, Customer 360 brings all systems together in a seamless way.
The takeaway
Few would argue about the importance of effective CRM in today’s marketplace. Some companies see it as a challenge, as they struggle to keep up with customer expectations. But those companies using Customer 360 are discovering new opportunities in CRM, forming stronger relationships with their customers than ever before and fostering enduring loyalty.
Learn more about Customer 360 by getting in touch with our team today!
By Omar Paul, Director of Delivery and SVP of Customer Success at makepositive
Omar is the Director of Delivery and SVP of Customer Success at makepositive, a company that’s been in the Salesforce ecosystem for 19 years and has completed more than 1,500 projects for clients hi-tech, telecom, media, retail, transport, travel and hospitality, financial services, insurance, and business services. Omar started his career in technology at Oracle, where he was immersed into wall-to-wall platforms across financials, supply chains, HR, and CRM systems. Before joining`makepositive, Omar helped launch the largest UK mobile operator. He also designed and developed some of the world’s largest loyalty programmes.
