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Author: Heather Scurti, Creative Content Associate at Century Business Solutions
As we move full speed ahead into 2021, customer connections will be a huge priority for many companies trying to recover from a challenging year. While businesses continuously adapt to meet ever-changing restrictions, customer relationship management (CRM) systems offer a great advantage. Systems like Salesforce can be a huge asset to build and maintain important sales relationships.
With a new year comes new Salesforce strategies businesses can leverage to improve customer relations and overall sales. Here are some key strategies to take into 2021:
- Prioritize customer experience
- Take advantage of mobile tools
- Sync integrations into your CRM
- Introduce self-service portals
- Capitalize on AI
Let’s dive into each strategy below.
1. Prioritize customer experience
In comparison to actual products and services, 84% of consumers say brand experience is just as important. Consumers and their shopping experience should be the top priority for all industries in 2021. Businesses can use two Salesforce strategies to improve customer experience (CX): leveraging the Salesforce Marketing Cloud and analyzing data from past successes.
Leverage Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a great tool for businesses to provide positive customer experiences in 2021. Companies can schedule personalized emails and social posts to create a first-class customer experience with informative and interactive content, while also using call-to-action (CTA) buttons to divert attention to other resources that provide value.
Marketing Cloud also offers valuable insights on customer data, including interactions, engagement, sales, mobile user stats, and more. Teams can use these insights to monitor customers’ experience while also building and improving their marketing campaigns.
Analyze past successes
Analyzing data and successful sales conversations that led to past conversions can be highly beneficial in developing new strategies to improve customer experience. Salesforce gives users access to customer insights to track campaigns, performance metrics, dialogues, and prospective leads to see which were successful and what value they brought to customers. Businesses can then strategically assign accounts, teams, and opportunities to replicate and improve these efforts.
2. Take advantage of mobile tools
Since mobile devices are here to stay, Salesforce allows businesses to update their websites to include designs that meet smaller parameters and accommodate current shopping trends. Businesses can use Mobile Publisher to build mobile-friendly, customized applications for their customers and teams.
While mobile optimization has been an ongoing strategy for many businesses, the current pandemic has presented a new need for tools to help teams collaborate while working remotely.
Salesforce offers many mobile tools to improve team management and scheduling, which can enhance productivity and help employees stay on task. The platform also hosts apps for nearly every department — HR, operations, IT, sales, marketing, accounting, etc. For example, Salesforce Anywhere is a new app that sends remote teams real-time alerts from coworkers and customers.
3. Sync integrations into your CRM
For a more streamlined approach, Salesforce businesses can integrate different processes into their platform to sync operations. Using these integrations with Salesforce can help customize the sales process while improving customer service procedures and overall experience.
Sales management is incredibly important for teams to generate and secure more leads. To improve this process, businesses can integrate credit card processing software into their Salesforce platform. This allows salespeople to accept payments directly in the CRM. This integration expedites the payment process by cutting out the hassle of transferring prospective sales to accounting team members.
Businesses can integrate other helpful tools with Salesforce, like Slack, Google Workspace, Dropbox, and more.
Integrating Salesforce with the Internet of Things (IoT) allows teams to connect their CRM to various devices using the internet. These connections allow customer data to transfer across devices, which can help businesses track consumer trends in real-time and quickly address needs. Examples of IoT can be as simple as controlling your home’s thermostat from your smartphone or as complex as manufacturers using product sensors to compile data and analyze their performance. You can also connect IoT to Field Service to improve customer experience and make data available across devices.
Additionally, users can apply third-party applications to their CRM using the Salesforce AppExchange, to find useful apps across departments to meet the strategic needs of their business in 2021.
4. Introduce self-service portals
According to Salesforce, 60% of businesses expect to incorporate self-service options in the next 12 to 18 months. These portals give customers access to various services to rapidly resolve issues. In 2021, these portals should really take priority in your Salesforce strategies.
Nowadays, shoppers expect quick responses from businesses, but that’s not always feasible for companies with high demand. To reduce any issues, Salesforce users can incorporate self-service portals. Here, consumers can settle issues on their own, rather than waiting on a customer service representative.
Self-service portals can cover everything from password resets and incident reports to service requests and information inquiries. Some benefits of using this feature in your CRM include:
- Reduced customer service costs
- Improved productivity
- More personalized user experience
- Increased site traffic
Most importantly, Salesforce self-service portals can improve the customer experience and your brand reputation, which can help generate higher sales for 2021.
5. Capitalize on AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a popular tool in recent years to help businesses predict future buying trends, automate processes, and gain insights into data. This will be a valuable component of future Salesforce strategies. Luckily for Salesforce users, Einstein AI easily integrates AI to reduce time-consuming tasks, simplify customers’ experience, make better predictions, and improve overall productivity.
Einstein AI helps businesses automate data storage and predict future lead opportunities using valuable account insights, email and calendar syncing, contact records, and more. Teams can also introduce chatbots into their sites and social channels to improve customer communication.
Conclusion
As we kick off the new year, there’s no better time for businesses to take advantage these Salesforce strategies and new offers. With a variety of platforms, solutions, automation, and integrations to choose from, your business will find the right tools to achieve all your 2021 goals.
Guest Author Bio
Heather Scurti is a Creative Content Associate for Century Business Solutions who loves using her writing expertise to produce informative content about the world of credit card processing and B2B relations. In her free time, Heather enjoys staying active outdoors and spending time with her four-legged best friend.
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