I want you to stop for a moment and think about an experience that blows your mind. It could be an experience that made your life easier or has created a remarkable memory for you. It’s an experience that whether you realize it or not, has changed the way you live.
A common example that I’m sure you have at least experienced: Amazon Prime (If you don’t have a membership I’m shamelessly plugging my referral code). Amazon recognized that time is a commodity and being able to help save time is a tremendous value-add. Anything you want to buy, it’s on Amazon, and you can get it shipped to your door within a day or two. I can get a subscription to everyday household essentials and not have to think about buying them because they get shipped to my door on a scheduled basis- it has gotten to the point where my friends have mocked me for having a toilet paper subscription. I am a proud toilet paper subscriber and pride myself on being an early adopter of toilet paper subscriptions.
It’s also a curse to have experienced Amazon. My patience has dwindled. Gone are the days where I wait a week long for orders to arrive in my mail. Guess what? Those expectations shape my experience as a whole- it doesn’t act in a silo of expectations of other industries. I can feel the expectation pressuring me in my own career, I’m constantly looking for ways to engineer and improve the customer experience- and you should too.
So what can your company do to stand out and deliver that experience? Look to your own industry. Be a customer of your competitors- heck, make it exciting and make an alias when you pretend to be a customer of your competitors. What are they doing and are you meeting the expectations? If you at least meet the expectations- guess what. That’s not enough. Those expectations are constantly evolving and changing. Look outside of your own industry for innovations in customer experience. Evaluate the fit for those innovations to your industry and start becoming a leader in setting customer expectations.
Let’s look at Salesforce’s contributions to designing THE customer experience and how Salesforce offerings can help you achieve your customer experience goals. As my expertise only lies in Salesforce, I can only attest to those offerings, however, if you don’t use Salesforce products taking out the time to understand what technology is out there and how your competitors are using this technology will help you gain insight and visibility into how customer experiences are changing.
Community Cloud
Build a loyal customer network
I recommend implementing this product if you find your customers engage in similar interests/issues. Create an engagement platform where your customers can gather and develop brand loyalty. Build a personalized and interactive experience that is connected to your business processes. Build brand loyalty and keep customers engaged with your brand, by connecting them with other customers. Quickly create and manage customized communities without any code. Creating communities will also help your customers make informed purchasing decisions as they rally opinions from other customers in the community.
Learn more about Community Cloud here.
Field Service Lightning
Empower your mobile workforce with actionable customer data
If you have a workforce that goes onsite to customers- I highly recommend you look into field service management type products. What differentiates Field Service Lightning from the rest is that it is a skills-based scheduling for mobile workforces. You’ll be able to schedule your workforce not only based on their availability but their skills. Your mobile workforce will be able to access all the customer data they need to perform their jobs, as well as be empowered to even upsell services based on the information they pull up from their mobile devices. Your mobile workforce can also get customers to sign off on the job, right from their devices. I’m only scraping the surface here with what Field Service Lightning is capable of, but I encourage you to check out the following resources to learn more:
Watch a Field Service Lightning Demo
Learn more about Field Service Lightning here.
Service Cloud
Be proactive in helping your customers
If you require a comprehensive customer service platform that offers customer data visibility and actionable insights, this is for you. This is the product that will bridge all the others together (along with Sales Cloud) to create a single shared view and accelerate your customer service capabilities. Empower customers by building a seamless branded service around the channels customers want help on- social, web, chat, text, call, communities and knowledge base. Find solutions before your customer even knows that there is an issue.
Empower your service team with valuable information from other departments that enable them to sell as well. Empower your other teams with insights based on service data.
Learn more about Service Cloud here.
Bonus: Marketing Cloud
Take your customers on personalized seamless journeys
I know- it’s a marketing product- but, it has a place in creating the customer experience. I highly recommend Marketing Cloud as a tool to continue to develop the relationship between you and your customer at a mass level. Design branded and personalized cross-channel experiences (email, landing pages, mobile and social channels just to name a few) that will help to deliver the right message at the right time on the right channel. Personalize communication across your channels, and design a journey your customers can continue on, even after the sale. Create brand loyalty and engage with your customers on platforms that they want to be on. Marketing Cloud also connects with other Salesforce CRM systems, and you can create journeys in Marketing Cloud based on Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Community Cloud data.
Learn more about Marketing Cloud here.
Get in touch with us for a free consultation to learn more about how you can incorporate strategies to further your customer experience goals.
