What is Salesforce? – Understanding the Leading CRM Platform
7 min readPosted on July 06, 2023
Before Salesforce, a company had to manage the customers by introducing a CRM of their own which cost a lot of time, money, and effort, as there was no effective channel of communication with and management of the customers.
Hence very few companies were able to provide close to satisfactory customer support under those circumstances.
And then Salesforce came into existence saving businesses and changing the customer relationship market forever.
WHAT IS SALESFORCE?
Salesforce is a SaaS and PaaS for Customer Relationship Management. Along with it, it provides a load of other features to keep a company on top of a B2C as well as B2B market.
It aims at improving the relationship between the business and the customer by providing one-to-one channels for communication and provides consumer insights and records for improving the functionality and operations of the business.
FEATURES OF SALESFORCE
Lead Management
Forthcoming leads (as in interested customers or potential customers) are managed in Salesforce based on their priority.
Account Management
Customer Account Management that they create for providing customer feedback and filing grievances is managed effectively with all their previous data.
Contact Management
It eases the burden of the staff personnel dealing with customers with contacts management, along with the call history, order history of customers, and much more.
Opportunity Management
Opportunity refers to the later stage of a lead when it is converted into an opportunity and requires a follow-up.
Salesforce enables it by keeping track of the interactions with the customer throughout the process.
Integration
Large businesses can operate on one or more platforms. Thus they need to integrate the platforms.
Integration means merging the data of the platforms to save the time and efforts of the staff of a business to search through different places for particular information and hence it improves customer satisfaction.
POPULAR SALESFORCE PRODUCTS
Salesforce offers a variety of products for different purposes and industries in a business named Cloud Platform mainly including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, and Analytics Cloud.
Sales Cloud
Salesforce Sales Cloud, as suggested by the name, is used by the sales team of a business for purposes like managing the sales to customers, segregating the orders by an order number, and keeping an entire history of purchases of a customer.
It also helps in tracking the performance of the sales reps by the management team to determine their productivity and if the business needs any changes in operations to enhance the same.
Service Cloud
Once the Sales process is over and done with, the process of support starts.
It may include providing after-sales services like help with the usage, or any issue that the customer might be facing.
It provides the history of purchases of the customer with the business to give the assigned personnel an idea about the customer they are dealing with.
Marketing Cloud
Before even the sales and service processes start, it all comes down to marketing, which is managed by this Salesforce product.
Lead management, opportunities management, consumer and visitor insights, along with analytics and reports on audience engagement is provided as a feature in this cloud platform.
Commerce Cloud
A business operating to sell their products online i.e. establishing and running trade and commerce whether offline or online can use this cloud for providing the best customer experience there is.
Analytics Cloud
All of the Salesforce Cloud platforms provide insight into customers’ presence, but Salesforce offers a completely different product to record the reports and keep track of visitors to your business’s website.
SALESFORCE IN DIFFERENT INDUSTRIES
Salesforce is a multifunctional platform and the wide variety of products that it offers is suitable for every industry that goes on. Whether it be retail, health sciences, manufacturing, or even logistics and transportation, Salesforce is the one-stop shop for most businesses.
Let us take a look at some of these industries and their utilization of Salesforce for their benefit and expansion-
Salesforce for Healthcare Industry
The healthcare industry uses the Salesforce platform for updating patient data along with their medications and treatments so that the physician assigned to them can access their whole history and treat them accordingly.
Salesforce for Manufacturing
Keeping track of goods manufactured, quality assurance checks they have gone through, the orders packed, and information about the workers working on a particular good on a particular shift is what Salesforce enables a business involved in manufacturing to enjoy.
Salesforce for Retail
Salesforce enables businesses to respond to customer orders quickly and effectively along with efficient data management of the stocks and purchases leading to smooth selling and buying experience for both, the business and the customers.
Salesforce for Consumer Goods
With the Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud, Businesses involved in dealing of the same like, apparel, footwear and accessories, health and beauty, home durables, and some other fast moving consumer goods can manage their data and boost their sales.
Salesforce for Communications
With Salesforce solutions for Communication, reps can access all the information about their customers, and helps the company to remain connected with the customers to understand their needs better.
Salesforce for Media
Salesforce products offer companies a platform to deliver content that appalls the customer as it is based on their interests and hence help the businesses to develop a community among their customers. Financial Times is a flourishing example of using Salesforce for media for their operations.
Salesforce for Government
Yes, even the government tends to prefer Salesforce for operations like digital service delivery, managing regulatory agencies, health and human services etc.
Salesforce for Transportation and Hospitality
Salesforce facilitates keeping data records of shippers and consignees along with effective engagement to attract more shippers to engage with the business dealing in the same. It combines, research, market, sales, and support altogether for an effective user experience.
Salesforce for Automotive
Like every other industry, Salesforce is utilized in the automotive industry to drive customers, convert more leads and deliver an enhanced experience to customers.
Salesforce for Non-Profit
Non-Profits utilize Salesforce to Keep track of all the members involved, raise more resources, customize communication among each of the groups in a non-profit and work better together overall.
Salesforce for Education
Salesforce for education provides its services to help institutions connect with their students across their whole student cycle. It provides two solutions- one for K-12 and the other for Higher Education.
SALESFORCE APP EXCHANGE
AppExchange is an online store service hosted by Salesforce on Force.com that enables third-party software vendors to deploy their apps on the platform for other users to download and improve the functionality of their device or cloud service.
It also helps in the process of configuration of Salesforce as it contains third-party tools for automation, synchronization etc. and hence proves to be a useful platform for businesses and other users.
WHY USE SALESFORCE EXACTLY?
Customer-Centric
It personalizes the experience for the customer by tracking a consumer’s activities once they are on the website and then displaying or suggesting personalized products, and it has been proven that the customer is likely to spend more when they have advertised products according to their previous needs or wants.
Maximized Conversions
An e-commerce website with a responsive design, ease to navigate through the products offered by a business and unique design tends to convert more customers as they find the website user-friendly and have an overall good experience.
Automation
Salesforce enables creating workflows for repetitive tasks and hence it saves time so that they can utilize it on achieving an organizational goal and resolving the issues of the customers. It includes many tasks that can be automated.
Analytics
It provides an in-depth analysis of positive and negative interactions with customers, the performance of service agents, and the feature of monitoring the activities so that the company can find the gaps in operations and work towards improving the particular area.
CONCLUSION
You must keep in mind that after all the above advantages of Salesforce; implementing it is still a very complex and time-taking process. And also, it requires expertise and in-depth knowledge of the platform as well as the process. And hence you must always consult an expert before diving into it to know the needs and wants of your business and what is best suited for it.
