Customer 360 means having a full view of your customer in a seamless, easy and accurate way. When you have the full picture of the customer, there is so much you can do to make the customer experience better, while also giving you the information you need to innovate at scale.
Think about all of the information connected to your customer—that may include:
- Account and contact information used for account management, customer service and customer journey marketing
- Customer billing and finance, including payment status
- Order details
- Customer support history
- Serial numbers
- Warranty information
- Product and bug notices
- Project details, schematics and other collaborative data
For most companies, these are all stored in siloed systems that are distributed and disconnected. When a customer calls in with a customer service issue on billing, that might mean the support agent needs to log into a separate system to resolve the issue. Checking on their warranty or shipping status might mean logging into other systems—slowing the process down, creating potential for inaccuracies and increased license costs. “Swivel-chairing,” juggling multiple logins, managing multiple windows, and cutting, pasting and reformatting all become an unfortunate fact.
This is where Salesforce’s Customer 360 can dramatically change the way you work with your customers. Salesforce’s robust application programming interfaces (APIs), middleware connectors and AppExchange products can exchange data with systems seamlessly and in real time. End-users can have a streamlined console with all of the information they need to close a case or handle a lead in one call. With the right integration(s) in place, five applications can look like one application with data interconnected cleanly and accurately. Salesforce has a plethora of flexibility to create the dream application.
It does not stop there
Having all your data in one place has huge potential for your end users. However, an additional benefit is the ability to gain insight from your now connected data. Have you always wondered who your best customers are? You may think it is just a reverse order sort of the sum of all deals you have done with them. You might find that your most profitable customers are entirely different—perhaps they are the ones with the fewest service calls or the ones who pay on time and in full. When you can combine the data into one place to get a complete picture, you now have the power to gain tremendous insight from the data, identify trends and change your business to capture even more growth and opportunity.
All it takes is the first integration. It is a straightforward process to add a data integration to your Salesforce instance. As you add more, the benefit/cost ratio starts to have a multiplier effect.
