From a business perspective it creates an opportunity to offer increased service levels, introduce customers with new offerings and much more. From a customer perspective you expect the business to know a lot about your interactions with the business and offer new service levels.
Through utilizing a combination of the functionality in Salesforce and Anypoint Platform this is now a reality, which sets a new standard for customer interaction.
A single 360 customer view
Having a single 360 customer view means that your business has a way to easily display all the interactions you have had with a specific customer or its employees. This information can be used to offer increased service levels, which in turn adds to the customer experience and increase the probability for a continued successful relationship.
The information can also be used to introduce new products or services for customers based on previous experiences, data or behavior. A 360 customer view includes to keep track of all customer interactions, from just browsing through the website product catalogue, to actual orders, returns and potential claims.
It can also include preferences, gender, style etc to be used in profiling and marketing activities. In todays digitized society, both private and commercial customers expects their trade partners to keep this view on the relationship with their customers in order to customize offerings and improve service.
Access to data is key
The largest inhibitor for a 360 customer view today is access to data. As a paradox, data is also generally considered to be core of the digital transformation. Reasons for this paradox is that today data is often locked in silos.
As many as 89% of IT leaders reported in the MuleSoft Connectivity benchmark report that data silos are inhibiting digital transformation initiatives.
Introducing Salesforce Customer 360 is also dependent on access to data. As Salesforce is a cloud based SaaS offering, you will need an efficient tool/approach to gain access to on premise data in ERP-, production- and other legacy systems.
This is where an API led approach to connectivity and the MuleSoft/Anypoint Platform fits in. MuleSoft offers ready made connectors for integration with Salesforce and deployed correctly the capabilities of the platform can not only be used to connect with Salesforce, but also to enable access to on-prem and SaaS based systems for other applications.
This means that by the use of API building blocks you can securely unlock data and put data at the core of your digital transformation to enable a 360 customer view.
A true 360 customer view?
Utilising the Anypoint Platform to enable access to on-prem data and to make data available in Salesforce is a good start to your customer 360 view initiative. However, the truth is that to offer a true 360 customer view and to be able to analyze all the generated data and to utilise it, you probably will have to include a larger set of applications.
These can include web shops, retail systems, logistical partners, payment partners etc. To cater for all these applications access to data, you will have to leverage the power of APIs in your organisation.
With the MuleSoft Anypoint Platform combined with the experience and knowledge of implementation partners like Redpill Linpro, you will be able to build an application network with each node adding value and communicating through APIs.
APIs will also offer reusable access to data, which means that both several existing and new applications can access and share data for you to build a true customer 360 view for your organisation.
How to get started?
Utilising the power that Salesforce and the MuleSoft Anypoint Platform jointly offers to create a single view of your customer interactions is a perfect starting point. Maybe you have already invested in one of these technologies and wish to increase the value generated?
Through our joint experiences and innovative packaging, such as the Integration as a Service offering for the Anypoint Platform, we can add value and a new view to your work with integrating your business, offer a 360 customer view and create the foundation for further digital innovation with your organisation.
