Achieving a 360-Degree View of the Customer at Dreamforce

 Last week, my colleague Joe and I, along with 170,000 other customers, prospects, partners, and fans, descended upon San Francisco for Dreamforce.

Salesforce’s annual user conference, Dreamforce, gives participants insight into upcoming features, practical application of existing capabilities, and best practices across five days and more than 3,000 sessions. You can see some of the activity and performances (including Metallica and Janet Jackson) that were part of this massive event.

Dreamforce Take-aways

Attivio uses Salesforce for our internal operations and also integrates with Salesforce as part of our platform offering, which means Joe and I viewed the experience through both of these lenses. One of the key themes that resonated most strongly with us was Customer 360. Because Salesforce is a platform that spans across the customer lifecycle – from marketing to sales to service and beyond – it can support a company’s interactions with its prospects and customers at virtually any touchpoint with them. All of the information gathered across these touchpoints can be brought together into one “360-degree” view to provide a complete portfolio of an individual customer. This becomes a powerful tool for companies, as they can better serve their clients when they have a full picture of their preferences, behavior, purchase history, and so on.

Achieve a holistic view of company data resonated with Joe and me, as this is one of the Attivio’s core competencies. In most organizations, customer information is scattered across disparate systems – from CRM systems to support platforms, and from ecommerce interactions to social posts, and more. In silos, it’s helpful but not always useful information, and bringing that together can provide a whole new perspective on a customer, whether it’s used by sales to identify new opportunities or upsells, or by support to head off a CSAT issue.

How would you grade your own success developing a 360-degree view of your customer? Most companies we speak have thought about this, but still have a ways to go before making it a reality.

We’re here to help – contact us to learn more about unifying sources of customer information to help make your organization smarter about its customers.