Every business wants a customer experience that remains connected across all channels and departments. This experience may span across organisations and infrastructure; as well as marketing, commerce and service. Salesforce offers B2B customers a place where all their information is displayed in one place, giving marketers all the information they need to turn their campaigns into leads and ultimately sales.
The excellent range of products available on Salesforce B2B service – including Sales Cloud, B2B Commerce and Service Cloud – allows marketers to access data from all sources. Not only do the services work together, but you can also access them in Einstein Analytics and Salesforce Mobile.
Salesforce & B2C
Salesforce offers great apps for B2C clients such as Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud and Service Cloud. On their own, each has a role to play. Marketing Cloud deals with communication to subscribers, while Commerce Cloud and Service Cloud give marketers access to customer records. Each app functions well individually, but what if they could work together more?
What Is Salesforce Customer 360?
Salesforce Customer 360 is cross-cloud technology that makes B2C Marketing, Commerce and Service products work together for the benefit of businesses and the customer. Within Customer 360, administrators can register instances and information from their Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud and Service Cloud platforms. By integrating various products, users will see a complete 360 degree view of every customer, giving you a full customer story no matter the amount of data the business has available.
How Customer 360 Works
With data synced from various clouds, a canonical view of a customer is created. Each customer is identified by their unique ID so Customer 360 can stitch together all records available for the individual. For example, if John Smith has a record in Marketing Cloud and separates records in both Commerce Cloud and Service Cloud, the system understands that John Smith is the same person so you can engage with him accordingly.
Data isn’t replicated into a central place, instead, Customer 360 has a customer profile which acts as a hub which exchanges data and updates when it’s needed.
Salesforce users get access to Service Cloud Agent Console which includes a customer profile, Commerce Cloud order and data from their shopping cart. It also gives administrators the ability to purchase items on behalf of a customer when required.
The Marketing Cloud can also make a note of an abandoned shopping cart journey which gives marketers more data during a user buying journey. Alongside this, journey templates are delivered out of the box so you have this information right away without having to add them into your Salesforce org later.
Benefits of 360 Degree Customer View
There are three huge 360 degree benefits for businesses:
1. Improved sales and marketing strategies
Teams can use the data available to build a more personalised and targeted marketing campaign for customers. If the data shows that the individually frequently buys trainers and gym equipment, sales and marketing teams can create marketing materials that target this interest.
2. Better understanding of customers and their actions
By having 360 degree customer view, you can better understand your customers, their tastes and their behaviours. Are there times when your customer orders specific items? You can target them with the products they are likely to be interested in.
3. Deliver a more personalised experience
Customers like things to be personalised to them and their needs. With 360 degree customer data, you can create an experience just for them across their lifetime customer journey. For example, a bank could provide information on savings accounts for a customer who has a child that will attend university. They could also provide information on retirement plans for someone reaches the age at which they need to plan it.
Why Integration Is Important
While Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud and Service Cloud were great on their own, having to switch between them is a headache for users. With Customer 360 becoming the hub for any business, data will sync across the various clouds to put customers behind one ID for easy use of everyone. As Salesforce have purchased various cloud products to bolster their infrastructure – such as Mulesoft which they later renamed ‘Integration Cloud’ – it would always be the next step for Salesforce to improve the experiences of their client base.
Why Is Customer 360 For You?
With a stripped back approach to data integration, Customer 360 is a fresh approach to customer relationship management. With a huge demand for personalisation by customers, this is a necessary process that gives users everything they need to create a personal shopping experience.
While the focus initially for Customer 360 is on B2C businesses, there is scope for B2Bs benefiting from the features offered. Various B2B implementations could comfortably be used in Customer 360, especially those with multi-org deployments.
If you want to create a 360 degree view of your customers to help your business grow, you need Salesforce. Purus can support with Salesforce Implementation to ensure your business integrates seamlessly while enjoying the advantages the CRM brings to a business. Contact us today to get started!