For the sixth year running, the only Salesforce Gold Partner in Bulgaria, Next Consult, hosted the annual Salesforce Conference. The event was under the slogan The way to #digital excellence and it gathered over 200 managers from local and international companies. The guests dived into an exciting journey in the world of technologies alongside key people from Salesforce, who talked about digital innovations around the world.
The VI Annual Salesforce Conference led the way to digital excellence
Orlin Dochev, Next Consult’s Managing Partner, opened the event with some of the company’s biggest achievements, one of which is that Next Consult was recently recognized by Financial Times as one of Europe’s quickly developing companies.
Here are some of the key topics that were discussed at the conference:
In the fourth industrial revolution, the client is at the center of everything
The conference began with a lecture by Hrvoje Supic, Regional Vice President for Central and Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean, and Stanislava Atanasova, Sales Manager for Central and Eastern Europe, who uncovered the latest global trends in sales.
According to a study by Salesforce, 79% of the customers surveyed say that the experience that a company gives is just as important as the products and the services it offers. Mr. Supic also said that currently, many of the traditional business models such as telecom, utilities, retail, and finance are undergoing disruption. These changes will plot these companies against each other in direct competition because the upcoming model will be "everyone is selling everything".
"Tech companies are selling insurance, banks are selling utilities, food retailers are selling clothes and shoes. Competition is no longer based on products but on experience and this simply can’t happen without the necessary technologies." – said Mr. Supic.
Know, personalize and engage
These are the three keys to success in digital marketing, according to Alexandru Ursu, Regional Manager for Marketing Cloud at Salesforce.
He summarized the top 5 marketing manager’s priorities according to a study by Salesforce conducted in December 2018:
• Engaging the customers with the company in real time
• Optimizing the marketing mix so that there is a better ROI
• Making use of technologies and marketing tools
• Creating a 360-degree view of the customer
• Unifying the sources of customer data
According to the same study, however, only 28% of the marketing managers are satisfied with the current engagement of their customers by their company.
Alexandru demonstrated the system live and showed how Salesforce Marketing Cloud helps you know the customers based on many different data sources, allows personalization at scale and executes individual client journeys while measuring everything real time with its sophisticated AI Einstein.
Another independent survey by Nucleus Research showed that customers who use Marketing Cloud have achieved 26% growth of the return on their marketing investment.
Mobile technologies and AI drastically change the journey to a purchase
"The companies of today have to really rethink the customer experience – starting with the marketing, the sales processes, the servicing – how they invest in it and how they improve it." – shared Ed Stonestreet, Director of Emerging Markets Commerce Cloud.
He demonstrated the functionalities of the Salesforce Commerce Cloud that services over a billion users a year. Mr. Stonestreet cited a study by Salesforce which places information seeking from various sources as the number one activity that potential customers do. 75% of the people surveyed stated that they want to receive a personalized offer based on their purchasing history and 50% of the online purchases are influenced by a visit to a physical store.
The AI in Commerce Cloud is a potential solution to these challenges as companies have the power to forecast future purchases and create personalized offers based on customer’ behaviors.
According to an independent study by Salesforce, companies that use Commerce Cloud increase their revenue with 7-16%.
Mr. Stonestreet also said that Salesforce is a platform that is accessible for companies of all sizes not just the biggest ones like Adidas, L’Oreal, etc. and that there are many companies in Bulgaria that could really see the benefits of using such system.
The biggest challenge in customer service is having too many competing priorities
According to a study by Salesforce, 42% of customer service communication happens online.
Lora Georgieva, Director of Software Solutions at Next Consult, demonstrated the number one platform in customer service – Service Cloud. She said that servicing must be integrated, personalized, innovative and focused. At the same time, companies are trying to cut costs and be more efficient without compromising on quality.
Often agents are struggling to offer the best service they can because the systems they use are not connected between themselves and the information in them is not consistent. This problem is easily resolved with Salesforce Service Cloud, which allows integrated customer service on all channels (chat, email, mobile, social media) as well as self-service.
One of the biggest advantages of the system is that 90% of its functionalities could be modified without coding and using developers.
The easiest way to cut costs is to encourage self-service
Maxim Kolev, Partner CRM Solutions at Next Consult, demonstrated the amazing functionalities of Community Cloud – the solution that helps companies create their own portals, forums, and websites.
According to surveyed clients, many of them don’t want to deal with a real person when it comes to resolving issues but prefer to use information already there, such as information in forums and blogs.
Community Cloud lets you build intuitive and easy to use customer portals without coding, with many functionalities and design templates available. Mr. Kolev made a portal in Community Cloud in under 2 minutes!
Customer success stories
One of the most exciting parts of the conference was the sharing of customer success stories.
Lina Hristozova, Marketing Manager at Omnicar Bulgaria, the official ExxonMobile distributor, shared how Pardot improved every aspect of their digital marketing activities.
Dimitar Ivanov, CEO of Vega Medical, one of the most innovative companies in medical equipment, pointed that thanks so Salesforce, the company’s salespeople are now able to create offers and manage their workload from physical anywhere – on their phones or laptops. Mobile workforce means more deals!
Valentina Tsoneva, Financial and Administrative Director at Economedia, the biggest media group in Bulgaria, told the audience more about the process of implementation of Salesforce and how the sales and the subscription management is easier than ever.
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