Why a 360-Degree Customer View is Crucial for Your Customers and Operations

A 360-degree customer view allows you to access and update all information related to a customer and their interactions with your company in one place. This improves customer experience coordination and efficiency across your departments.

From the customer's perspective, their experience with your company is ONE entity. Conversely, your company is divided into several departments, MULTIPLE entities that are not always synchronized.

To provide the best possible experience, or at least one that positively differentiates you from the competition, your different departments' customer interactions need to be consistent, uniform, practical, useful, and enjoyable.

If your company can't review and validate this entire experience, your different departments might achieve their individual goals but still deliver a poor overall customer experience.

Most companies experience the opposite of a 360-degree customer view, having a plethora of systems that do not communicate with each other:

• A separate system for sales

• A separate system for billing

• A separate system for customer service

• A separate system for marketing efforts

• A separate system for partner relations

The consequences are a flawed or even bad customer experience and departments unable to increase their efficiency because they lack access to information collected by their peers.

It's a system that allows you to see and update all information related to your customers and their interactions with your company. This system allows each department to review other departments' customer interactions, giving them access to the necessary information for managing their next task or customer interaction optimally.

From the customer's perspective, this means that: "Customer service knows what orders I've made in the past, what I've been billed, or if a seller is currently working on an opportunity with me. This information can help customer service manage my case more quickly." "The sales department knows that I have a technical support case open with customer service. Thanks to this information sharing, if a seller calls me, I won't have to explain the situation yet again." "The marketing team knows what products I've bought. So, instead of sending me spam about products I already have, I will receive emails about complementary products or services."

You've experienced this situation, and you hated it. It was maybe this year, or last year… You called a company's customer service because you had a problem with one of their products or services. You explained the situation, and they said they were taking care of it. A few days later, still without news, you called them again. And for some reason, even though you're speaking to the same customer service department, you have to repeat the whole story. You then said something like: "But I called you a few days ago. The information should be in your system. I shouldn't have to repeat myself."

The 360-degree customer view is a key element that Salesforce has been ahead of the market on for years and continues to be. With its different modules, it's one of the only platforms, if not the only one, that comes closest to the 360-degree customer view.

Following a typical customer journey, from discovery to purchase and delivery, Salesforce is capable of managing and integrating each step of this journey.

Here's a short list of Salesforce modules, including those mentioned in the above image and others that we couldn't include due to space constraints. Note that each module is customizable and programmable according to your company's needs, regardless of the industry.

• Salesforce Sales Cloud

• Salesforce Service Cloud

• Salesforce Community Cloud

• Salesforce CPQ

• Salesforce Marketing Cloud

• Salesforce Pardot

• Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud

There are others, but we'll stop here.

To enhance your operations' efficiency, Salesforce can also integrate the following systems: ERP / PRE Systems Accounting Systems, Electronic Signatures Other systems and applications from third-party companies via apps or API integrations.

Finally, Salesforce's "App Store," called AppExchange, contains more than 3,500 apps from third-party companies that can also integrate with Salesforce.

This is the toolbox that Salesforce has to help you create your 360-degree customer view and thereby improve the customer experience offered by your company.

Think about it. If your organization is not using a platform that allows the improvement of your internal operations and the customer experience through the 360-degree customer view, you may well be falling behind your competitors.