Healthy customer relations are the keys to a successful business. You must build and maintain healthy customer relations to thrive in the market. This gives you the desired traction and helps you earn the ROI you are looking for.
Salesforce lets you personalise your customer interactions with the help of its customer data platform (CDP). Salesforce CDP helps you track your customer relationships across their buying journeys. From acquiring a prospect until it is converted into a loyal customer, Salesforce CDP ensures that you nurture the contact well.
Customer Data Platform
A customer data platform is a software solution that helps you create a centralised and consistent database of prospects and customers. It allows you to store all relevant details about your contacts in one place. This lets you understand your customers’ requirements and personalise your processes based on them.
Salesforce Customer Data Platform (CDP) is a cloud-based application that stores user-level data about your customers within the Salesforce CRM ecosystem. A customer data platform (CDP) is a technology that allows you to tailor your communications and services to your customer’s needs, requirements, and choices. CDP consists of three major components—a customer database, real-time interaction management, and marketing automation—that allow you to collect data from prospects and customers. The marketing automation component will enable you to create targeted marketing campaigns for your audience that are personalised based on each user’s interests. With real-time interaction management, you can track your interactions with your customers and their responses in real-time to make the right decisions at the right time.
Key features of the Salesforce Customer Data platform
Now that we are well-versed in the concept of CDP, let us have a look at some of the essential features of the customer data platform that Salesforce offers:
- Data gathering and ingestion
A customer data platform gathers relevant information from multiple sources and stores it on a centralised platform. This ensures that every user has the exact source of truth while interacting with their customers. Salesforce CDP identifies information related to an individual customer or prospect from multiple sources and presents all of it to you at the click of a button.
This makes it easier for your team members to extract essential data regarding the customers they are dealing with. From your sales reps following up with your leads to your service agents handling cases, Salesforce CDP brings data from multiple sources onto a single, unified database.
- Single customer identity
It was difficult for businesses to maintain consistency while handling multiple datasets regarding the same customers. The Salesforce customer data platform resolves the issue by creating a single customer identity. It connects all data sources to create an individual profile for every prospect and customer your business handles.
Salesforce CDP blends different “versions” of a customer into a unified view to have only one identity to look after every customer.
- Audience segmentation
The precise segmentation of your audience is another crucial feature that the Salesforce customer data platform offers. The software solution helps you define your target audience and reach out to them across multiple platforms.
Out of several profiles within your database, CDP helps you segment a specific bunch of contacts that are ideal for a particular campaign. For example, if you are launching an email marketing campaign, you may want to target your email subscribers for conversion. If you plan to give discounts to loyal customers, you would like to target contacts with a purchase history.
Audience segmentation ensures that the right message reaches the right person at the right time. It gives a focused approach to your marketing and sales processes, giving you the traction you want.
Benefits of Salesforce CDP In building healthy customer relations
The Salesforce customer data platform can be used by organisations operating at all scales. You can choose the tools that best suit your needs and drive engagement according to your business objectives.
Here are some of the significant Salesforce CDP benefits that help you build healthy customer relations:
- Personalisation of services
Personalisation is one of the pillars of the Salesforce CDP. The software solution helps you look into the specific needs of each of your customers. It gives the impression that your contacts are your company’s only clients.
The customer data platform shows you the buying journeys of all your customers. It gives you information regarding the searches they make, the products they choose, and the actions they take while interacting with your business. This data helps your team members approach your prospects and customers, considering their individual preferences.
- Suppression of services
A customer database doesn’t always give you a list of contacts to target. At times, it also gives you a list of references you should avoid targeting. This is how the Salesforce customer data platform helps you with the suppression of your services.
Sometimes, the most helpful way to maintain healthy relationships with specific customers is not to approach them. If a customer has recently purchased a product or service, sending them promotional messages for the same offerings doesn’t make sense. Similarly, if a prospect has clearly shown disinterest in your products or services, it is better to avoid sending them promotional messages regarding the same offerings.
- Valuable insights
The Salesforce customer data platform provides valuable insights regarding your customers and their interactions with your business. From purchase history and website visits to lead sources and sales forecasts, the CDP puts all relevant information about your customers at your fingertips.
Quick summary
In a nutshell, Salesforce’s Customer Data Platform helps you build and maintain customer relations. It increases customer satisfaction by improving sales and marketing efforts, reduces churn by allowing you to glean invaluable information from your existing customers, and ensures that your customers are up to date with the same information you have at any given time. From providing access to essential information to streamlining customer data collection and sharing processes, the customer data platform brings numerous benefits for companies that use it and the customers themselves.
