Salesforce Connections took place from June 16-19^th in Chicago this year and, as usual, exciting developments and innovations were the spotlight of the show.

The conference included keynote presentations with valuable marketing, commerce, and technological insights. Workshops and networking opportunities were also a highlight of this years’ conference.

Further connectivity between all elements of the complete Salesforce Cloud software suite were a focus - including an enhanced Customer Data Platform (CDP) and a new Commerce Page Designer that are sure to excite users at all levels within the retail and eCommerce industries.

Next Generation of Customer 360

“New platform services enable companies to unify customer data, manage identity and consent, segment and activate audiences, and optimize engagement with AI-powered insights. Part of Salesforce Customer 360, companies can now build a single view of their customers to deliver personalized engagement across marketing, commerce, sales and service.”

Saleforce 

Providing a unified experience to all customers that still feels personalized is a constant challenge. Salesforce Customer 360 strives to do exactly that by aggregating customer data across all channels, platforms, clouds and on-premise.

The next generation of Salesforce 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 brands to leverage AI to drive the most relevant mix of product and channel recommendations to optimize channel engagement and customer satisfaction. [Salesforce]

New Salesforce Commerce Cloud Page Designer

“Quickly create and manage engaging customer experiences with clicks, not code”

The new commerce page designer gives Salesforce Commerce Cloud users the ability to build pages on their eCommerce sites using an intuitive drag and drop interface, and without needing to have extensive coding or web development prowess.

[Salesforce]

With easy-to-use capabilities, merchandisers and marketers can quickly design rich, engaging eCommerce experiences without code:

• Create—Simply click, drag and drop components like new or seasonal merchandise, banners, carousels and more into any digital storefront. Now, companies are armed with the tools they need to build deeply customized, robust webpages, leveraging a library of reusable components. Even more, companies and third-parties can build custom components unique to specific business needs, including campaigns, seasonal offerings and more. For example, if a retailer is launching a new marketing campaign for a special event like the back-to-school—their business teams will be able to use out-of-the-box, custom or third-party components to quickly build a new landing page on their site supporting this campaign.
• Preview and Schedule—Preview website content by device type across desktop, tablet and mobile, enabling companies to surface the most relevant content to their customers. Teams can also schedule website content on individual pages by date, time, customer group and locale. Now, companies can populate content on their storefront at the right time and by the right customer group, device type, as well as language and locale prior to launching this new campaign.
• Reuse—Quickly configure and update pages by saving and reusing components and pre-built page layouts from any digital storefront. Out-of-the-box, third-party and custom-built components arm companies with the layouts and functionality they need to get up and running fast. Now, with reusable components and pages, the Father’s Day homepage that ran last year can be quickly updated and deployed with just a few clicks. [Salesforce]

Increased Capabilities of AI in Customer Service

Another hot topic was how to elevate the effectiveness of service bots. Pretty much everyone has had a bothersome experience with automated customer service, and the problem is that for some more complex issues a human touch is absolutely necessary.

Salesforce commits to using new Einstein bot capabilities to make the AI representatives more adept at determining when to escalate to a human to support a customer.

[Salesforce]

Einstein Bots can now be deployed on multiple new messaging channels including SMS, Facebook Messenger, WeChat and WhatsApp. Einstein Bots empower companies to scale their self-service capabilities by responding to customers immediately, automating routine service requests, gathering basic information and seamlessly handing off the conversation to human agents when necessary. And because Einstein Bots are connected to CRM data and processes, and powered by machine learning and natural language processing, they learn your business and get smarter over time.

With Einstein Bots, service leaders and admins don’t have to be data scientists to take advantage of cutting edge AI capabilities. We’ve made the setup process easier than ever, with a new map view that gives admins a visual guide to help design conversations, ensuring customers won’t get stuck in a dead-end during a service interaction. The new exact match capability lets admins quickly create intent models that train Einstein Bots to quickly recognize what customers are asking for and help them instantly. And dynamic routing directs customers to a specific queue based on their conversation, ensuring customers are on the best path to quick resolution with the right agents. [Salesforce]

SmartOSC specializes in optimizing and implementing commerce strategies and unifying the customer experience using the Salesforce Cloud suite. Get in touch with us today to see how Salesforce can benefit your brand.