In today’s business landscape, a successful enterprise must adopt a system that seamlessly integrates all departments and their respective business processes to enable them to interact and collaborate effortlessly. This is where Salesforce has established itself as the market leader in the CRM space.  Salesforce CRM sometimes popularly referred to as the Customer 360 platform, is a user-friendly solution with virtually limitless flexibility that connects teams across departments in an organization and drives growth. As a result, companies that use Salesforce see improvements in growth and efficiency. But to get the most out of what Salesforce CRM has to you need professional expertise. While most of the Salesforce products are centred around sales and customer service, Salesforce can be used for almost anything. And while the key Salesforce functions haven’t changed much – consultant, administrator, architect and developer, the specializations required based on the unique business needs of an organization have become quite apparent. One needs to have specialization on some of the key aspects of Salesforce to make the implementation count. Consultants don’t just bring in the necessary skills and experience for implementing the CRM platform. They also add significant value in being able to understand the customer. Not only in terms of business processes within the organization but also outside of that realm, such as the people who drive those processes. And they are an intrinsic part of the customer’s growth journey onwards of implementation. While businesses can provide the Salesforce implementation team with data and insight, certain things can only be understood by a specialist. This is where the Salesforce consultant role becomes important. They are trained with skills like attention to detail, analytical thinking and problem-solving along with hands on expertise on the platform. Why Is Salesforce so Popular? Salesforce upgrades its product offering three times a year. Which means every year they add new features and functionality to help existing and new business innovate rapidly. Salesforce is founded on a Customer-360 vision and promotes a collaborative work culture that brings people together and promotes productivity. The Salesforce online community provides help and support to the entire developer community to solve any business challenge The Salesforce platform has virtually limitless flexibility and businesses can create any number and kind of custom apps and integrations to support their business Salesforce allows you to automate routine business processes which frees up employee time to focus on core tasks. Salesforce is powered by an advanced AI engine which delivers qualified analytics on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of your business. Here's where Salesforce Consultants add value across various phases As Part of an Implementation Team CRM implementation is a time-consuming effort and requires coordinated team effort. It would be a wise decision for a business to hire a specialist with extensive experience in Salesforce implementation since the Salesforce platform is complex and offers virtually limitless customization possibilities. Consequently, Salesforce consultants are in high demand across businesses that need the Salesforce CRM implementation. Here are the phases that require the services of a Salesforce Consultant: The Pre-Implementation Phase Before preparing a draft of the Salesforce implementation plan, a Salesforce consultant needs valuable insight from within the company. Information on the type and number of employees, the working structure of the company, regular business processes and workflows, are all important to understand how the organization works and what are its vital parts. The consultant needs to work closely with the business leaders within the organization to understand goals and expectations and current challenges and workflow bottlenecks During the Implementation Consultants play a vital role during the implementation phase as well. They are the link between the technical team – architects, administrators and developers who install and configure the platform and build and deploy custom apps, and the company. Their role is to maintain good communication between the two groups and ensure everything is well captured. After the Implementation The implementation is not over until the customer starts seeing results. After all, the technical implementation is just side of it. Once the technical tasks are completed, the implementation team also needs to train the users on the platform. Typically, this is another key responsibility area of a Salesforce consultant. It requires good communication skills, teamwork and leadership skills. Businesses are evolving continuously. And the software that they use needs to keep pace with it. Businesses need to add and upgrade their apps and workflows on an ongoing basis to stay ahead of the curve. If you are already using Salesforce in your organization, the presence of a Salesforce Consultant will help you to upgrade rapidly by building and deploying apps in an agile framework. And do to that you need a strong team of specialists. Moreover, just like every other complex platform, Salesforce also requires maintenance time to time. This is another key responsibility area of a consultant. As part of the organization Salesforce consultants also work in organizations that don’t do implementation for others. They just have enough in house needs. These are regular businesses that use the Salesforce platform and a small team of consultants to oversee the implementation, upgrades and maintenance activities. In this context, a Salesforce Consultant’s function is to make sure system performs perfectly and the users are able to use it easily. On top of that, they also discover methods to further enhance the customer experience through the use of the platform and make sure teams continue to communicate with each other. Shortage of Salesforce Professionals Currently, there just aren’t enough people trained in Salesforce to meet growing demands of this ecosystem. One of the key reasons is that Salesforce isn’t your run-of-the-mill software. It’s a specialised and complex product and unless you're a service provider or you are a part of an organization that uses Salesforce, it’s unlikely that you know much about it. Many of the Fortune 100 companies use Salesforce. IDC published an article in October 2017 saying that over 3 million jobs are expected to be there in the Salesforce ecosystem by end of 2022 through its network of partners. Salesforce has been growing at a brisk pace year on year, and so are their customers, consequently driving up the demand for Salesforce professionals to support that growth. And the skills one acquires as a Salesforce professional are highly transferable in case one wants to switch over to another industry. Developing Salesforce Skills Irrespective of your available budget, there are multiple options available to help one get familiar with Salesforce and develop skills in a certain are: Developer organisations— Sign up immediately for a free developer licence and start practising Trailhead, which is a Salesforce powered only community where one can get hands-on exposure to Salesforce and learn the technical and business skills one needs to succeed from anywhere for free. Girikon is a dedicated Gold Certified Salesforce Partner. Our relentless focus on understanding the unique needs of our customers combined with our rich expertise and experience on the Salesforce platform allows us to deliver value driven solutions to our clients. Contact us today to know more.

Before we dive into how SMS from Salesforce can drive hiring, let us understand how SMS works and what can do it to engage prospects and customers. What is SMS marketing? In general, SMS marketing or text marketing, implies an opt-in stage for customers to choose how they wish to be contacted. This is where users either leave their phone number on a web form to choose how they wish to be contacted or send an SMS message or short text to an automated system to receive future updates, discount coupons, or any other information they have chosen to receive directly on their mobile device. When the customer leaves a phone number or sends the initial message, an automated marketing software solution saves the customer’s phone number in a database. Marketers use an automated SMS marketing system to send relevant marketing information to these users as and when they choose. Users of course retain the right to opt out of these marketing messages at any time. What benefits does SMS marketing offer? One of the biggest benefits of SMS marketing is that people are more willing to trust text over any other type of marketing channel. SMS or text messages are non-intrusive and do not pose any security threat. SMS marketing messages have a very high open rate when compared to email marketing making it one of the most effective marketing methods available. Another key advantage of SMS marketing is that it enables you to engage with prospects or customers quickly. Response times to SMS messages can be less than a few minutes, compared to several hours or even days that it takes in the case of email. Industry research suggests that people have their phones with them most of the day, which means it is very likely they will see a text message within a few minutes of receiving it. How can businesses utilize SMS marketing? SMS marketing is not just about sending text messages. It can be interactive in nature and if you want to tap into new prospects or upsell to existing customers, there are some best practices that you can follow. Deliver value Text messaging is non-intrusive and personal. Generally speaking, most people exchange text messages with friends, colleagues and relatives. So, if they have chosen you to be a part of that circle, then you need to make your interaction with them worthy of that invitation. Segment your audience based on relevant parameters such as prospects or customers,  geography and age groups, build your messaging content and send only relevant messages. When your audience sees a text from you, they will be inclined to open it. Similarly, deliver exclusive messaging content for the deals and information you provide. If your audience gets the same messaging content in your emails, ads, or your website, the text messages lose their value. Ensure that opting in makes sense to your audience. Pay attention to timing When is the best time to reach out to your prospects and customers? Probably not during regular working hours, especially if your business isn’t even operational during those times. And you are not operational on weekends, then the same rule applies for those off days. Track the periods when your users are most active on your mobile app or site to establish the ideal times to send messages for pushing promotions and other information. Moreover, ensure that when users opt in for your text alerts and notifications, your system sends an immediate acknowledgement. If customers opt in and but don’t hear from you for long periods, they are more likely to lose interest. Track results and act upon them If you want your SMS marketing campaigns to be effective, you need to keep track of how it’s doing. Track how many customers opt-out with every incoming message and use that to ascertain what type of content generates the best results. Applying SMS Marketing in Salesforce to hiring On many occasions, manpower requirements in organizations are sporadic and immediate. Hiring of a qualified workforce in a brief period of time is one of the most challenging tasks that HR managers have to deal with. To fulfil these imminent requirements, organizations and recruitment firms need to have a quick and effective recruitment process in place to close job openings within a fixed period. This is where SMS Salesforce for recruitment can be a game-changer and transform the entire recruitment process. Here’s how businesses and recruitment firms can incorporate SMS messaging in their recruitment process and fast track it. SMS Salesforce for recruitment Check Job Status of Prospective Candidates with SMS Salesforce for recruitment Before reaching out to any prospective candidate, it’s important to be aware of their job status. This would help prevent unnecessary expenses incurred in reaching out to irrelevant candidates. With bulk SMS messaging, organizations can send text messages to millions in one go and check if a prospective candidate is looking for a job or job change. This is just one of the ways to use SMS Salesforce for recruitments at scale. Run Surveys to Deliver Relevant Job Postings to Prospects The more you know about your prospective candidates, the more effective your outbound campaigns would be to hire the relevant candidates. It allows you to send relevant job openings to your prospects. With SMS Salesforce you can run an automated campaign of a series of text messages to run surveys and automate the process of candidate profiling. Moreover, you can segment prospective candidates based on parameters such as years of experience, annual remuneration, work profile and location and create targeted lists. And you can send the most relevant job openings to the candidates on these lists. Schedule Interviews with URLs Once candidates evince interest in the job openings, you can request for their resumes for screening. Following that, using automated SMS messaging from Salesforce, you can send regular status updates about their job application. And to add to this outbound messaging, you can send a web URL to schedule interviews. Send Confirmation Texts By sending URLs in your SMS messages for scheduling calls or interviews, you give the necessary convenience to your candidates to apply at their convenience and trim the time and effort associated with repetitive manual calling. Once a prospect provides a convenient date and time, you can automatically send a confirmation message and avoid any confusion later. Send Reminders and cut down on No-Shows No-shows for scheduled interviews lead to wastage of time and effort of HR managers, recruitment firms and interviewers. Salesforce SMS APP for recruitment can help in reducing candidate no-shows. Automated reminder text messages can be sent to remind candidates of their upcoming interviews. Share Results of Interviews Once an interview is over, candidates are eager to know the result. Recruiters and managers are inundated with calls and messages from candidates to share results. SMS from Salesforce allows recruiters to trigger SMS texts to send out the results automatically as the status of candidates changes from interviewed to selected. This saves a significant amount of manual work and time for recruiters. Collect Documentation for Onboarding Not only SMS, but now even WhatsApp has also become an important channel for effective communication. Now recruiters can collect all relevant documents through WhatsApp. This allows them to simplify the process of document collection and complete the onboarding. Accelerate your hiring process and close job openings with SMS from Saslesforce Recruitment is a time bound activity. And needs a fast and efficient process for being effective. SMS Salesforce for recruitment empowers recruiters to connect with candidates faster at every stage of the hiring process. They also cut back on calls and emails normally associated with the recruitment process. Moreover, it allows recruitment firms to close the open job openings within specified timelines. To know more about how Girikon can utilise the power of SMS Salesforce to accelerate your recruitments, talk to one of our experts today.

What is a subscription-based business model? Subscription business models are those where customers pay recurringly for continuous access to a product or service. Subscription business models can accelerate growth by virtue of creating recurring revenue. This means as a business owner you get revenue again and again over predictable intervals such as monthly or annually as and when your customers renew their subscriptions. What are the benefits of subscription-based business models? Subscription business models protect you during circumstances created by economic uncertainties. They create a stream of predictable revenue from a stable base of returning customers allowing you to plan for longer into the future. Here is some further detailing of the benefits. Fast Tracked revenue. As your business attracts more customers, recurring revenue from subscriptions grow exponentially. It’s always more convenient to manage existing customer than to attract and retain new ones. Subscription results in better retention drives revenue growth more efficiently and easily. Predictable revenue. You don’t need to plan quarter to quarter. Businesses who offer subscriptions, more often than not, start each quarter with a predictable expected revenue closer to the preceding quarter and then build on top of that. Business agility. Once you establish long-term relationships with your customers, you get access to valuable continuous data that will help you to get a better understanding of your customers, and consequently empower you to server them better as you go. Armed with aggregated customer data of their past interactions with you, you can learn about them faster and respond with new appropriate offerings. And the more this happens, the more efficient and unique your offerings will become. What are the different kinds of subscription business models? There are several kinds of subscription business models, but essentially, they all mean the same thing which is, you charge for access to products instead of charging for the products themselves. Here’s a look at three of the most popular ones: Subscription model: Revenue is set for each subscription cycle which could be weekly, monthly or annual. The charges payable are predetermined and based on a fixed date cycle. For example: a fixed monthly subscription fee for a music or video service. Consumption model: In this case, revenue is variable. The amount that is chargeable and when it is due is based on usage. For example, a cab service. Hybrid model: In this model, customers are offered a mix of subscription and usage. In this case revenue has both fixed as well as variable components. For example: over usage data fees on your internet usage on top of a fixed monthly service fee for a fixed data usage cap. How can I implement a subscription-based model for my business? To implement a subscription model, you need to adopt tools and processes that allow you to create a consistent buying journey, while knowing that customers move through different channels and make modifications to their subscriptions with each of them over time. Once you create a consistent journey, track new metrics to ensure you are on the right path. Here’s how you can get there: 1. Empower customers to subscribe and pay over any channel With a subscription-based revenue model, you are constantly interacting with your customers, and they are not always available for a conversation. And in today’s pandemic reality, they increasingly want to engage on their own term. In fact, recent research suggests that they now prefer digital self-service and remote customer service rather than face-to-face interactions. Businesses need to make it possible for customers to renew and/or upgrade their subscriptions and pay instantly on the channels of their choice. This could translate to having a website or a mobile app, to enable that service. It’s a known fact in today’s digital business context, customers don’t just want to choose digital channels for interaction. They want to be able to cross them.   As a business, you want to know how you can deliver a seamless and consistent journey across channels. For instance, a customer might initiate a purchase on your online store, but then being routed to a sales rep when they stall or hesitate at checkout. A good subscription management mechanism can help. It combines customer relationship management tools, and along with the power of self-service, provides access to the same data to all teams. Once they have that, they can pick up customer conversations from where they left off. As a business, you want every touchpoint with the customer to be amazing. And in order to deliver an exceptional journey, you need to integrate all customer data for a compete view of your customer. Subscription management provides a mechanism way to connect customer data that delivers a seamless journey and provides a great customer experience at every touchpoint. 2. Deliver value to customers Subscriptions don’t mean much if they are delivering value to your customers at every step. You’re consistently asking them to renew and pay for their subscriptions. IF there is no value in the offering, customer won’t renew their subscriptions. Consequently, they’ll fall through the cracks and your growth will hit a roadblock. There needs to be a paradigm shift in your thinking from delivering products to delivering value. How can you consistently deliver value-as-a-service to your customers? For instance, Spotify doesn’t sell music. They offer entertainment-as-a-service. Likewise, an e-retailer doesn’t just deliver great products. They deliver an exceptional buying and customer service experience-as-a-service. Value is unlocked as customer’s access and use the product. This brings customer service teams into focus, who will need to ensure sure adoption and customer satisfaction is high to the point of being delightful. A customer relationship management system that provides complete visibility of data and a certain level of automation is vital. Visibility helps you keep an eye on and act on adoption and usage patterns. And you can jump is to support and assist a customer to fix an issue early before it becomes a nuisance. For instance, with automation you can make it easy and fast for customers to start using new products or services they’ve purchased. 3. Understand recurring revenue with new metrics Customer acquisition is a thing of the past. It doesn’t hold the key anymore. Customer value, which leads to customer retention, which eventually drives recurring revenue, are the key metrics now. How will you improve customer retention without measuring it? Let us first look at customer value metrics. You can measure customer value by tracking exactly how much your customers are using your subscription offering. One of the key metrics is to track is average revenue per user, which is as simple as it sounds. Gross revenue divided by number of users. As your business evolves, with more processes and automation in place, you will become more and more effective at targeting customers with the appropriate offerings, all while retaining them and getting them to renew their subscriptions. And once that happens you will see an improvement in the average revenue per customer. To measure growth in top-line revenue, you need to monitor monthly and annual recurring revenue. These are significant since increasing them translates to your revenue streams becoming more and more predictable and that allows you to plan ahead. Ready to open new paths to revenue growth? A subscription-based business model is today’s new reality of a digital-first approach for business. However, it can only succeed if its authentic. Customers are smart. And you can’t fake value to them.  They will renew only when they get real, consistent value for their money. It’s both a challenge and an opportunity to get close to your customers, not just know them better but understand them better, and offer what they want in the way they want it. Girikon is a Certified Salesforce Consulting Partner and can help you to re-imagine your offerings and envision a whole new customer journey. Contact us today to learn how a subscription-based revenue model can deliver value to your customers and drive revenue and agility for your business.

Customers are always connected. They are always adapting to the latest technology, quickly. The Salesforce platform is a set of unified platform services that easily adapts to your ever-changing business needs. Powering and connecting all your business processes to unify the customer experience. So, sales can sell smarter and faster the way they want landing their next big customer from anywhere. Service can then tailor their process quickly creating aps specific to the customer needs like setting up custom intelligent alerts to help find smart solutions even before they know there is an issue. Which keeps the customer happy. Marketing can take them of personalised journeys recommending helpful products along the way and IT can integrate third party apps and IoT device data quickly adapting to the latest advancements to better advance the customer relationship. A trusted secure platform that lets you tailor any app or process for anyone in any department using low code solutions with lightning that are instantly mobile. Increasing productivity for employees and connectivity with customers and you are easily able to innovate, building more complex apps with intelligence working with emerging intelligent technologies like Artificial Intelligence making you more intelligent about your customers. You can even plug in thousands of pre-built apps and components from the Salesforce AppExchange and empower everyone from serious coders to the not serious ones. With help of thousands of developers and administrators through trailhead on the worlds No1 enterprise platform letting you easily innovate around each and every customer. Create, automate, deploy and secure apps with the world’s leading low code platform. Build scalable apps without any code development tools. Connect your employees, processes, and systems seamlessly to automate workflows and deliver a personalised customer experience, all with best in class security and governance practices. No need to code any more. Fast track work with clicks to build integrated flows in Slack, your digital HQ. Have them execute complex processes on the Salesforce Platform. Deliver experiences. Drive productivity. Automate processes, build smarter, robust apps, and secure data across the customer lifecycle. Improve efficiency and trim IT spends with the Salesforce Platform. Automate easily. Automate tasks with low-code tools and seamlessly connect your entire organisation. Build apps. Build and test apps easily with the latest tools in change and release management. Scale securely. Safeguard your data and conform to compliances with an enterprise grade security and privacy framework. CLICK TO BUILD Go to market fast with powerful tools to build apps and workflows. Build and deliver intelligent, engaging customer experiences that respond to changing business with clicks not code. Use the power of AI to deliver insights from apps that are connected to your Salesforce data. Drive actions such as intelligent recommendations to enhance growth and productivity with AI-powered automation. What is a Low Code approach? It's a modern approach to building apps and software that necessitates little to no coding. It’s more than a buzzword. It's coding re-imagined. It’s an alternative approach to orthodox software development that is visual. With a low-code development platform, teams can use intuitive graphical user interfaces (GUIs), and use “drag and drop” and “point and click” functionality to customize software. Since one doesn’t need specialised coding skills, business users can utilise drag and drop functionality to assist programmers to create custom apps and workflows for customers, partners and employees. By bringing app development closer to business users, low code plugs the gap between business and IT. Sales, service and marketing teams can play a more involved role in software development. Consequently, IT teams have more bandwidth at hand for more pressing technical tasks. The spread of app development from tech to business can lay the foundation for a digital transformation across the enterprise. SHIP WITH CONFIDENCE Build on a trusted platform with in-built security and performance. Deliver engaging digital experiences with intrinsic security and trust. The Salesforce Platform lets you seamlessly integrate disconnected systems and data siloes with API-driven services and event-based interactions. Deploy apps faster with simplified open technologies on a fully managed scalable platform. Here are the platform services that come with Salesforce Mobile   Make every app mobile friendly.   Blockchain   Build trusted partnerships.   Artificial Intelligence (AI)   Personalise every experience.   Vision   Visualise your business with AI.   Voice   Deliver a conversational experience.   Security   Deliver trust across every touchpoint.   Privacy & Identity   Manage customer and consent.   Community   Bring your customers closer.   Builder   Build and innovate faster than ever.   Flow   Automate every experience. EMPOWER EVERYONE Empower your entire enterprise to respond to change and upgrade skills on the go. Enable teams to create engaging digital experiences in a code-less framework using customisable components and services. Nurture collaboration across any device with a unified model and tools that work better together. And empower team members to upgrade their skills to drive the growth of your business. What exactly is Low Code? It's a modern approach to app development that necessitates little to no coding. Low code is not just buzzword. It's an alternative approach to orthodox app development that is more visual than manual. With a low-code development framework, teams can utilise easy to use graphical user interfaces (GUIs) such as drag and drop functionality to customize apps. Since you don’t need specialised technical or coding knowledge any more, business users easily assist coding teams to create custom apps and workflows for your customers, partners and employees. By bringing app development to business users, the low code approach reduces the gap between IT and business teams. Sales, service, and marketing teams can play a more involved role in app development. This allows IT teams more bandwidth to prioritise pressing technical tasks. The evolution of app development from IT to business can lay the foundation for a digital transformation across the enterprise. TURBO CHARGE SCALE AND INNOVATION WITH HYPER FORCE Grow your business on a trusted, scalable, robust platform. Hyperforce is the next-generation infrastructure architecture of Salesforce. delivers Salesforce products and services reliably and securely on all major public clouds allowing you to augment your customers’ success by rapidly scaling your drag-and-drop driven low code apps to new markets. HYPERCOMPLIANT Store data in one place while staying globally compliant. Enjoy the flexibility of the location of your data to comply with local regulations even in the public sector. HYPERSCALABLE Implement faster with an infrastructure with limitless flexibility. Scale your infrastructure easily. Hyperforce allows resources to be deployed quickly while you have the flexibility of system elasticity. HYPERSECURE Safeguard sensitive data with built-in trust. Hyperforce allows you to prioritise customer data security with the built-in trust that is the cornerstone of the world’s most trusted cloud platform. It works behind the curtain to ensure the security and privacy of your data, so you have the necessary bandwidth to focus on innovation. HYPERCOMPATIBLE Build future-ready apps with backward compatibility. All existing Salesforce apps, customisations, and integrations (whether they are on the cloud or not) will run without disruption on Hyperforce. Summary Salesforce is the world’s leading Enterprise App Development Platform that streamlines your business reach and functionality. You do not need to deal with developers any more to create apps with the Salesforce Platform. With the simplicity of drag-and-drop functionality, just about anyone can build and deploy apps that automate processes that augment the customer experience. And for coders, the Salesforce Platform is language agnostic, which means you can build customs apps using any language. The apps you build can be deployed on any device or on the web, whether simple or complex, and integrate with almost any data source. With Salesforce, you can find new ways to enrich the customer experiences and streamline business processes. Your imagination is perhaps the only thing that may limit you. Girikon is a Certified Salesforce Consulting Partner and can help you start building apps in a code less framework. Girikon is a Certified Salesforce Development Partner and can help you start building apps in a code-less framework. Contact us today learn how you can get started now.

At the peak of COVID-19, merchants were making decisions in haste to provide the products and services that customers needed. Today, when the world is far more at ease, these makeshift solutions are now intensifying as shoppers have a plethora of options driving expectations to an all new high. Additionally, their patience is very limited now. In fact, research data across over 2000 retailers suggests that 80% of shoppers are very likely to abandon them after three bad experiences. Merchants need deeper the insights into customer behaviour to scale up their business. Here are top 4 trends that have been observed across the world on how the retail landscape is changing. Trend 1: Shopping journeys get more complex During the 2 years of COVID, three types of digital channels grew their transaction share by almost 40%: brand websites, retailer websites and apps, and online marketplaces. This of course includes transactions through their apps as well. In the process, associated channels like delivery apps, social media, and messaging platforms have also become prominent players in the digital commerce eco system, with a growth of over 20%. As the range of shopping channels continues to expand, shopping journeys have got more and more complex. The purchasing journey has become fragmented and complex. It is imperative for brands and merchants to develop a one-on-one relationship with customers across platforms namely social media, messaging platforms, and video to stay relevant. Social media, influencers, and messaging apps have become hugely popular today for product discovery. For making a purchase, social media, digital wallets and email are the leading digital destinations. And when buyers need customer support, they mostly turn to chatbots and social media. Trend 2: The store goes digital Although transactions through brick-and-mortar stores decreased significantly during the pandemic, the physical store still plays an important role in the shopping journey. In fact, reports indicate that over 80% of the global merchandise sales happened at physical stores in 2020. The primary reasons shoppers prefer to visit a physical store are firstly, to touch and feel the product, secondly one gets immediate delivery of the merchandise and finally to avoid logistics costs. However, shoppers today are blurring the lines between digital and physical channels while they are in the store. Many shoppers today research about a product on the retailer’s app while still being in the sore before making a purchase. To compliment this trend, brands and retailers are connecting the in-store experience with an increasing number of digital touchpoints. The role of the store associate is growing as well. At the peak of COVID, store associates evolved from the routine scanning and bagging to becoming customer service reps, product recommenders, and brand influencers. And these roles are more than likely to stay, which makes the role of the store associate in the customer journey far more intriguing. Trend 3: The loyalty game has gone a few notches up Loyalty programs are continuously evolving based on shopper expectations. Although a points-based loyalty program is still the most preferred method today, data indicates that younger generations are seeking a more experience-based journey that establishes a deeper connection with the brand. Millennials today value exclusive access to limited products and richer experiences far more than ever when it comes to loyalty programs. Shoppers are also seeking rewards for their transactions. They are willing to take a further step such as downloading an app or writing an online review and sharing personal information like their birthday or phone number for a more personalized experience and loyalty benefits. Trend 4: Brands and Retailers and brands fast track unified shopping experiences Most customers expect brands and retailers to recognise their unique needs and expectations, but only a portion of them have the capability to turn data into personalized offerings in real time across channels and touchpoints. To address this customer expectation, and to address the challenges associated with delivering that expectation, retailers and brands are adopting a threefold approach: HIRING MORE DATA SCIENTISTS Retailers are actively working to hire more data scientists. And this trend is expected to grow further into 2023. This trend that brands and retailers have the opportunity to overhaul their loyalty programs to meet the rising customer expectations and their openness to share personal data. ADOPTING A UNIFIED ENGAGEMENT PLATFORM Many retailers and brands today are already in the planning stage for such a platform, which allows them to access and monetise customer data by engaging with them at a deeper level. UPGRADING POINT-OF-SALE TECHNOLOGY Going forward, the pint of sale (POS) will become a critical part of a unified customer engagement platform. In fact, new retailers are already adopting this approach and are moving to a cloud solution. The in-store digital experience is key for engaging with customers and driving sales. Here are some tips on now to enhance customer experience. Empower associates with the tools that drive sales As we mentioned before, store associates are adopting extended functional roles such as customer service, ecommerce, and social media experts to engage with shoppers. To be able to wear multiple hats successfully, store associates need access to customer data along with user friendly digital tools. This is where a CRM platform like Salesforce comes into play. Associates can access complete customer profile with information on purchase history, buying preferences, demographic data, customer satisfaction score, and more. To get associates up to speed quickly, Salesforce provides digital learning platforms like myTrailhead that bring associates up to speed on how to handle every aspect of digital and physical transactions. Brands and retailers can reskill associates for routine store tasks such as picking, sorting, packing, and shipping to support the fulfilment journey. Store managers can learn to use digital tools to analyze data, access insights and act on them faster than ever. Maintain real time inventory levels The greatest enemy of customer satisfaction is out-of-stock inventory.  Most shoppers are interested in pre-ordering new or out-of-stock items. This is especially true for fast moving items. Stores can manage inventory levels with a flexible and robust order management system. The order management system connects data across your warehouses and stores to give associates the most accurate status of current inventory. That translates to happy customers. Offer multiple digital payment options Customers need more payment options, period. Having just a credit card machine won’t do. In the era of digital, stores need payment types that are minimally invasive and streamline checkout for customers. Level up store fulfilment During the peak of the pandemic, there was a scramble to buy online or pick up in store. In fact, some retailers even turned some of their stores to micro-fulfilment centers. Make sure to: Clearly communicate important details to customers, such as where to pick up their items from and when. Clearly communicate to customers what identification they need to provide to pick up their orders  Establish a seamless connect with customer service channels so that shoppers can easily chat with an agent to resolve any issues Offer personalized product recommendations to customers based on their purchase Augment customer service across channels with a personal touch Customers love the physical experience, personal touch and immediacy that is intrinsic to in-store shopping. It will be wise extend that experience to your customer service channels. And one of the best ways to achieve this is to train associates by having them help out customer service agents during peak season. Another important consideration is to encourage self-service for customers. Keep your help centre up to date for customers to find their way around. Integrate workflows that guide customers through tasks like how to initiate a return to a nearby store. Use AI-powered chatbots to scale support during sales or holiday seasons. Lastly, adopt asynchronous modes of communication like messaging apps. They keep the conversation going and provide a history of past interactions. Train associates and empower them to resolve customer issues over digital channels and incorporate customer feedback to evolve the experience. Develop a loyal customer base, especially in the era of vibrant social media. Girikon is a Gold Certified Salesforce Consultant and can help you set up a strategy to connect with your customers like never before. Questions? We’ll guide you to the right path CONTACT AN EXPERT

With Salesforce, retailers can deliver intelligent customer experience at each stage of the shopping journey. From awareness to purchase to service to loving your brand, one to one advertising helps you extend your reach using artificial intelligence to find new shoppers with characteristics that match your existing ones. And once you reach them, you can personalise their shopping journey with relevant content on the right channel at the right time. When a customer engages with your brand, they receive recommendations of products they powered by artificial intelligence. Shoppers have a personalised experience, faster payment, and fulfilment options. After making a payment, shoppers can get help on any channel including text and video chat. Service agents can see a complete view of the customer and even help with additional purchases during the interaction. Shoppers can also visit customer communities to get their questions answered. In the store associates can personalise shopper experience with recommendations based on a 360 degree view of the shopper. They have product availability, tasks and communications from headquarters all on their mobile device. So, they can spend more time on the floor giving shoppers a faster personal and connected experience at every touchpoint. Connect every aspect of your business with a unified intelligent platform. INTELLIGENT ADVERTISING Drive awareness and acquisition with smarter targeting. Execute all your advertising such as display, search, and social from a one integrated platform. Discover new customers and manage multiple campaigns across advertising ecosystems with Advertising Studio from Marketing Cloud. Visualise and get reports on ad performance with just a few clicks, empowering you to reach out to shoppers with the right offerings at the right time. Advertising Studio form Salesforce Marketing Cloud connects advertising with your marketing and CRM data to create personalised one to one customer journeys. Now all your data securely stored inside Salesforce including sales, service, marketing, and commerce interaction can be used to power your digital advertising. From customer acquisition and re engagement, to media optimization allowing you to directly advertise on Facebook, Google search Instagram, witter and YouTube. even use Salesforce DMP to reach the entire display advertising eco system. Easily find and reach out to new prospects, lookalikes of your best customers and use these high qualified audiences to drive successful Facebook campaigns. immediately capturing quality leads for your business right inside both sales and marketing clouds. And with journey builder you can coordinate advertising with other channels including email sales and service, to increase RoI and customer satisfaction while excluding your existing unqualified customers. 1-TO-1 JOURNEYS Personalise every customer journey with Marketing Cloud. Make marketing smarter. Deliver personalised journeys to customers that are scalable and push the right offer at the right time on the right channel across mobile, social, email, mobile, and more. Marketing Cloud Email Studio is the enterprise email marketing solution built on the worlds no 1 CRM. It allows marketers to drive smart personalised messaging at scale while seamlessly connecting commerce, sales, and service for a coherent customer journey. With Email Studio each message can be tailored using at user friendly user interface, with drag and drop functionality, allowing you to easily customise content for your prospects. Now you can personalise unique content for each customer. Einstein AI is fully integrated into the retail solution from Salesforce, which means email marketers can intelligently predict the customer needs, enabling them to recommend the right product at exactly the right time.  With automated triggers, retailers can touch literally millions of customers, by sending them personalised messages even during peak times. Email studio allows you to easily switch between using prebuilt templates or code when creating the right look of your message. You can review each email once it’s ready, to ensure the right content is created for every member. After sending emails, marketers can target and attract new prospects by advertising across the internet or on their mobile. Real time analytics tracks and monitors campaign performance throughout the whole customer journey so that you can optimise campaigns to consistently engage customers. Email Studio allows you to approve content, monitor performance, and manage users from anywhere. UNIFIED COMMERCE With Commerce Cloud, convert shoppers into buyers, faster. Reinvent the store with unified digital commerce. Deliver a seamless buying experience seamless across the mobile, web, social, and physical stores. Enable multi-channel order management functionality that allows customers to buy from anywhere and merchants to sell and fulfil anywhere. Commerce Cloud digital is a platform that empowers you to scale your business across all channels -mobile, social, web social and physical stores. You can easily and quickly deploy sites and augment sales fast with a huge library of pre-built features, managing multiple sales channels from one single console. With a robust development platform built on the world’s most powerful CRM, open APIs and a large, certified partner network, you have the power to deliver an engaging online store delivering an exceptional customer experience of your brand in virtually any language from anywhere. Brands, retailers, and marketers can drive their business with a scalable platform that meets your business objectives with tools that augment productivity for the commerce team, creating campaigns, adding content and promotions, and previewing the online store experience for the targeted customer group. You can create unique categories of merchandize for a campaign, a place of your choice, with the products you want and the sequence in which you want them. And use the power of AI improve that sequence. With all this and more, your customers can locate what they want, faster than ever. With every interaction that your customers have with your store, Einstein learns more about them, and gets smarter and more predictive as they interact, throwing up products based on their past behaviour. Making customers feel like you know them because, in reality, you do.  With Commerce Cloud Digital, you have the right partner invested in your success, and you have access to team of experts who will make available to you benchmarks and best practices across the retail eco system, empowering you to innovate and grow your business faster than ever. ANY CHANNEL SERVICE Deliver intelligent service with Service Cloud. Drive real conversations at scale. Drive real conversations with customer on the channel of their choice. Personalise every interaction and empower service reps with the information they need to respond faster to customers and turn into customers for life. Live message feature from Salesforce delivers conversational service to your customers exactly where they need it. On the channel of their choice. And on their preferred messaging app. Leverage bots to power conversations and automate service capability or allow customers to directly connect with a support rep to deliver instant help. With the Service Cloud lightning console, service reps can reply with the help of complete customer information from CRM data to interaction history, so they can smartly give the right answers quickly. Service agents can now be more productive, by managing multiple conversations concurrently. And because customers can use whichever messaging app they prefer, they can easily engage in service conversations, effortlessly. Live message feature allows you to connect with your customers in completely new way. Retail CRM from Salesforce. Today, the shopping experience begins online irrespective of whether it ends in a store or with a package delivered to them. Which is why brands and merchants are taking advantage of Salesforce Retail Cloud to deliver personalised customer experiences across multiple channels. Salesforce CRM for retail allows retailers to make customers’ needs their top priority, absorbing what they want, and responding in real time. Girikon is a certified Salesforce Implementation Partner and we can help you connect sales reps, partners and associated staff with the information they need to deliver the best fit products and best in class service that drives customer loyalty with Salesforce retail CRM.  

Customers are now digital first. And that’s great news because now you can more with every moment your customer has with your brand. The key is connecting these moments and making them count. That’s what it takes to build real lasting relationships. To build an enterprise that customers trust and love. But to get there you need data. You need to unify al the data customers have entrusted with you down to the last detail. Then put that data to use. So every interaction feels more relevant and human and personalised. Drive digital experiences across sales commerce and customer service. Salesforce Marketing Cloud puts data at the center of the relationship and that starts with knowing your customers. Marketing Cloud combines all your data from all your siloed data sources creating a single source of truth for every customer giving you a three-dimensional view of who they are and what they want in the moment even as their needs change.  So now you can humanise every moment whether it’s a welcome email and they become a new customer, an ad for a product they might like, an opportunity for their business, a text resolving their shipping delay, of a special offer at checkout for being a loyal customer. And because it’s powered by Einstein AI, the heavy lifting is done for you. Marketing Cloud helps you optimise your impact too giving you actionable analytics, budget and business goals in real time so you are always making your campaigns more personal, more valuable, more resonant. And with Slack as your digital HQ, you can adapt with agility thanks to your teams, tools and partners being more connected and insights more accessible. With Marketing Cloud you can make every moment count. Do more with your marketing initiatives at every touchpoint. Marketing Cloud Engagement automates pervasive customer journeys with engaging and personalised experiences across channels. Meet them on mobile. Engage customers with personalised communication on their preferred mobile channels. Engage them with email. Deliver targeted scalable messaging and content such as offers and promotions and optimize engagement. Give them compelling content. Leverage prospect data for targeted and personalized advertising across channels and ad affiliate networks. Deliver engaging journeys with simple east to use tools. Make every moment count. Use customer data to predict preferences and automate outreach messaging for pervasive, relevant, effective customer interactions. Connect experiences with ease. Boost productivity by creating automated customer journeys using simple click-and-drag tools. Adapt to anything. Automate recommendations and actions on the go as customers engage with your brand, analyse results in real time and optimize performance. Make marketing engagement effective — and easy. Create seamless customer journeys. Acquire new customers and engage existing ones with relevant, connected journeys. Engage in the inbox and acquire subscribers. Create and automate personalized outreach email campaigns. Keep in touch with mobile messaging. Push relevant content to your customer’s preferred channel and device. Reduce costs by delivering highly targeted advertising. Activate data to suppress customers that don’t need content and personalize advertising across channels. Boost engagement and save time with AI. Boost marketing campaign efficiency by taking advantage of AI-powered insights to push the relevant message at the right time. Optimize all your campaigns in one place. Get a unified view of campaign performance with pre-configured and customisable dashboards for journeys across channels Marketing Cloud Advertising The Marketing Cloud first arty advertising engine allows brands to harness their own customer data to create targeted and relevant audiences for advertising campaigns. Whether you want to acquire new customers, engage brand new email subscribers, re-engage customers or supress ads for customers who aren’t relevant for a campaign, Marketing Cloud can help you find success. All by prioritising data security, trust and scalability. With Marketing Cloud advertising, brands can send their target audiences to Google, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Pinterest and Snapchat. The cool things about Marketing Cloud is that the data your customers have already shared with you is the only ingredient you need to create audiences for all your use cases. Security and scalability are top of mind for marketers. That’s why all the first party data stored in Salesforce never leaves the secure environment of Marketing Cloud advertising. Without being securely hashed. Al you have to do is choose existing lists or data extensions in Salesforce to create your audience. No more manually uploading data using unsecure formats. You can even have you data refreshed automatically with a single click. Whether the goal is to acquire new customers, increase RoI, re engage customer or all the above, Marketing Cloud Advertising will help you create personalised advertising moments for your customers. Here are 7 New Features in the Latest Release of Marketing Cloud 1. Salesforce CDP (Customer Data Platform) enhancements With Salesforce CDP, you can get a holistic view of every individual in your database and then use that data to deliver a whole new level of personalization. Upgrades include: Salesforce CDP Integration with Interaction Studio: Target your customers with unified insights and cross-platform data to enhance real-time decision-making. Salesforce CDP Connector with Commerce Cloud : Augment customer profiles with commerce data such as catalogue and order data and provide personalized experiences based on buying history. Calculated Insights enhancements: Utilise new, advanced analytical functions in the Calculated Insights feature, which lets derive the benefits of multi-dimensional metrics in Salesforce CDP. Now, you can make use of ranking, segmenting, and manipulate date and time related functions such as days since the last transaction. You’ll also have access to a built-in function library, be able to edit names of formulae, and the freedom to enable or disable Calculated Insights. 2. Datorama Reports Advanced for Marketing Cloud Datorama Reports for Marketing Cloud takes you beyond out-of-the-box analytics. It is a precluded reporting and analytics tool for Journey Builder, Marketing Cloud Email Studio and Mobile Studio. With the advanced features of Datorama Reports, you can turbocharge your journey analytics across channels and devices with new dashboard tools. 3. Datorama Connector with CDP Now you can automatically convert raw data into powerful insights and improve your marketing RoI by accessing CDP from within Datorama. Datorama will also support an out-of-the box CDP app to give you instant access to your CDP data. With just a few clicks you will get all the insights you need to have a deeper understand of your audience, how they’re engaging with your brand, and their potential value to your business. 4. Google Analytics 4 tagging and reporting It is extremely easy now to connect Google Analytics data with Marketing Cloud. Also, with the new release of Google Analytics, you can access robust analytics for mobile and email content as well and automatically tag with Journey Builder. Google Analytics 4 metrics are seamlessly integrated into the Journey Analytics dashboard and accessible to all Journey Builder users 5. Einstein for Email Marketing enhancements Marketers often ask – when is the right time to launch a targeted email campaign? What kind of subject line will attract the deepest and highest engagement? The B2B marketing automation platform Pardot, when coupled with Marketing Cloud, offers two new ways to provide to answer those questions and improve your email engagement rates with data-centric insights. 6. Pardot Accounts as Campaign Members Organizations are increasingly adopting an account-based marketing approach to grow their business and retaining customers. Hence, account level campaign creation is now more important than ever. This feature can be used to execute prospecting campaigns with sales reps to identify the relevant buyers in each target account. This is a unique and possibly game changing feature that will allow sales reps to help marketing target the relevant buyers for any upcoming campaign. 7. Advertising Studio enhancements Advertising Studio is a powerful tool designed for data-driven advertising. It offers two new features to help you expand to new channels and access vital insights: Snapchat for Advertising Studio: Now you can use your first-party data in Salesforce to build targeted, personalized advertising audiences for the Snapchat platform. Find new customers that are similar to your loyal customers, re-engage inactive customers, augment customer experience, and boost your RoI. Datorama Audience Insights for the Advertising Studio app: This new app allows you to connect and synchronize your data from Advertising Studio in Datorama to improve your cross-channel audience strategy. Deliver meaningful moments to your industry. Communications and Media Turn engagement into a main event. Reach new audiences and acquire new subscribers with smart, AI based, data-driven marketing. Deliver compelling content to drive usage from broadcasts to recommendations and beyond. Boost productivity by automating campaigns at scale across channels and devices. Financial Services Personalize the customer experience across every touch point in their financial journey. Engage throughout the lifecycle for customers in real time with personalized omnichannel journeys. Personalize journeys with data that reveals buyer preferences and interests like investments and more. Healthcare Keep a track of your customers and patients. Foster trusted and lasting Patient, Member and Healthcare Provider relationships at every point of their digital journey across your business. Engage them with personalized messaging on their channel of choice in real time and optimize campaigns on the go. Life Sciences Develop lasting customer relationships at every step. Consumers now want deeper understanding, more self-service options, and consistent, one-on-one interactions at every touch point of their journey. By delivering a digital-first health care provider personalised journeys across their customers’ preferred choice of channel and device, you can nurture lasting and trusted relationships. Tech Deliver state-of-the-art marketing in the right moment. Boost your sales pipeline. Engage customers and prospects with one-to-one messaging across all touchpoints. With AI based analytics and insights, you can optimize campaigns to deliver relevant, engaging and pervasive content at the right time in the purchasing process. Manufacturing Assemble engaging customer journeys. Foster stronger, more impactful customer relationships. Deliver personalized, digital-first interactions along every touchpoint of the customer’s journey. Engage prospects and cultivate leads with the right messaging, on the right medium, at the right time, and with the right regularity and consistency for service updates, order modifications, new offers, and more. Retail and Consumer Goods Acquire and engage loyal customers. As customers move more and more into the digital ecosystem, brands must utilise a unified view of their customers to deliver cohesive, personalized, pervasive experiences with moments that matter. Girikon is a Gold Certified Salesforce Consulting Partner and can help you unlock the real power of Marketing Cloud for your business Contact one of our experts today.