Salesforce boasts of a 'holy grail' to connect businesses to customers
Salesforce (CRM) has created a customer solution that co-CEO Marc Benioff believes is the "holy grail" to connect brands and consumers.
During its annual Dreamforce conference last week, Salesforce debuted its Customer 360 Truth offering, which connects what has historically been fragmented customer experiences into a single source.
This "Single Source of Truth" gives the enterprise software giant the ability to have one unified source that houses key information associated with all of its customers. For example, a retailer’s data might contain what a customer has purchased, what they're interested in, what stores they've visited, among other information.
Historically all of this data existed in different places and in different formats, and therefore it wasn't unified. Benioff told Yahoo Finance that it was a “fourth wave” that would allow big brands like Adidas, Louis Vuitton, Verizon to identify their customers.
“If they're selling to me, if they're servicing me, they're marketing me, they have a single source of truth,” the CEO said in a wide-ranging interview, in which he touched on a number of different themes.
“That's a big story here that we've really figured out exactly how to be able to do that for companies in a whole new way,” he added.
In theory, a single source can have large implications, because it helps companies better serve and predict a customer's needs. That ability can be reflected in every customer interaction and experience, and puts customization and personalization at scale.
On top of Customer 360, Salesforce also unveiled its Einstein Voice, which offers the "most important new way" to interface with a computer.
Einstein can be paired with 360 Truth, and can help “guide you and help you run your business and connect with your customers in a whole new way," Benioff added.
Julia La Roche is a Correspondent at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter.
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