I had the pleasure of attending the Salesforce World Tour in Washington, DC this year. If you’ve never been, this event series is hosted annually by Salesforce to bring together customers, partners, and industry leaders to explore the latest innovations in technology and learn how to get the most out of the Salesforce platform.
The agenda included a keynote from Salesforce leaders including Co-Founder and CTO Parker Harris, and case studies from NASA, Formula One, and the Small Business Administration. Each keynote and case study showcased how Salesforce can help businesses in every industry. This event really provided relatable use cases that I found super insightful.
As I reflect on the event, here are three things I learned:
1. Experience Cloud takes the customer journey to the next level.
Salesforce Experience Cloud is a platform that allows businesses to build custom-branded, engaging, personalized digital experiences via self-service portals, knowledge bases, and communities. By empowering teams to personalize pre-built apps and low-code web tools, they’re able to tailor the customer's experience whether it’s via web, mobile, social or chat.
My favorite demo during the keynote showed two examples of how NASA used Experience Cloud. The first was building an outside-facing app where event attendees can register, sign up for the sessions they’d like to attend, view venue maps, rate the event, and access a list of FAQs. If attendees need further assistance, they can directly connect to a customer service professional via Service Cloud and have their case addressed in real-time. Not only did I find the UI impressive, but this makes it easier for staff to improve the experience before and after the event by leveraging the analytics and reporting.
The second half of the demo showed how they created a STEM internship management platform where students can sign up and apply for the program. In my opinion, the best part of this is that on the back-end, a custom object in Sales Cloud will immediately capture all of their data, route them to the appropriate internship coordinator, and enter them into their specified application process. On the front-end, portals can be personalized for each user, providing a tailored experience that improves engagement and drives loyalty.
2. Einstein GPT Will Safely Help People Work Smarter, Not Harder.
Right now, everyone’s talking about generative AI and various GPT models. It was no surprise that EinsteinGPT was highlighted during the event given that it’s the world’s first generative AI CRM technology. It creates personalized content across every sales, service, marketing, commerce, and IT interaction. Before this event, I was worried that AI was going to replace human interaction but was happy to hear that wasn’t the case. Salesforce leaders emphasized that human oversight is a critical part of the process and the AI is simply to help people, not replace them.
The most reassuring part of this new feature is that this out-of-the-box functionality uses real-time data that never leaves your ecosystem. This speaks volumes from a security perspective because you don’t have to worry about your client’s information being exposed outside of Salesforce.
Lastly, I love that Einstein GPT helps increase employee productivity. The new app for Slack provides instant conversation summaries, research tools, and writing assistance. Within minutes, salespeople can create personalized emails that incorporate client news and schedule meetings. During a customer chat session, service professionals are immediately empowered with customer history and specific responses to incoming questions with links to the referenced documentation. Marketers can generate a landing page, web forms, and content to increase specific campaign response rates and engagement. Developers can even use it to auto-generate code. I was so excited to get real examples of how Einstein GPT will reduce manual labor across the board and also create a sense of magic throughout the process.
3. Salesforce for the Public Sector is More Secure and Collaborative Than Ever.
The public sector, which includes government agencies, non-profits, and educational institutions, was definitely a main focus during the stop in our nation’s capital. Salesforce’s Government Cloud now maintains a FedRAMP ATO along with Impact Level 5 for the Department of Defense. Better security means gaining a better understanding of the data that you have, protecting it, and being able to monitor it over time.
These new compliance frameworks are also designed to help streamline their operations, engage with their constituents, and provide better services. With 57% of government employees saying that their jobs are being digitized, implementing these tools makes it easier to collaborate within their ecosystem. By reinforcing employee tools, they will be more engaged and aligned with the companies they work with, resulting in better outcomes for the public, which was music to my ears.
In conclusion, if you have an opportunity to attend a Salesforce World Tour event, I would strongly recommend it. In the meantime, you can watch various sessions from the different events on demand.