Salesforce.com achieves outstanding customer satisfaction

Salesforce.com [NYSE: CRM], the market and technology leader in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), has revealed results from customer satisfaction surveys conducted by independent research firm CustomerSat. More than 4100 Salesforce users from around the globe responded to the surveys. Of the respondents, a full 94 per cent said they “definitely will” or “ probably will” continue to use Salesforce solutions .

“Salesforce.com continues to set an incredibly high standard for customer loyalty, a requirement of our subscription-based Software-as-a-Service model,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO at salesforce.com. “We value the loyalty of our customers and applaud the ROI they have been able to achieve, both of which reflect the tremendous value of our Force.com platform, award-winning applications, and our maniacal commitment to the success of Salesforce users.”

In conducting the July 2007 and February 2008 surveys, CustomerSat received 4165 responses from a random selection of Salesforce users. Along with ongoing use, customers were asked about their likeliness to recommend Salesforce to a colleague and their history of recommending Salesforce. Here also, 94 per cent of respondents said they “definitely will” or probably will” recommend Salesforce. In addition, 74 per cent of those surveyed have already recommended salesforce.com to colleagues.

The survey also found that executives are achieving their desired business goals with Salesforce. Of the 1192 executive-level respondents in the sample:

• 90% had improved customer data quality and data management
• 89% improved sales pipeline visibility
• 87% had improved customer service and support
• 78% had reduced sales, service, marketing or other operational costs
• 78% had increased customer satisfaction
• 77% had acquired new customers
• 71% had increased marketing campaign effectiveness
• 71% had increased customer retention
• 71% had enhanced cross-sell and up-sell opportunities
• 70% had increased sales revenue

In addition to achieving their business goals, the survey specifically asked executives to quantify the impact of Salesforce upon productivity and profitability. On average, Salesforce delivered:

• 43% increase in sales productivity
• 41% increase in sales revenues
• 29% increase in profit margin
• 25% increase in win rate

The ease of use of the Salesforce service continues to be the main reason why executives choose salesforce.com. It’s also a key driver of customer satisfaction, along with related attributes such as interface consistency, interface readability, ease of learning, and ease of training new users. The reliability of the Salesforce service is the number one driver of customer satisfaction. The remaining top 10 drivers of customer satisfaction with the Salesforce service are breadth and depth of features; performance and speed; and ease of administration.

“I’ve said it before and I’ll reiterate today that we challenge our competitors to be as transparent with their customer survey ratings,” added Benioff. “We’re confident no other company will be able to match our outstanding level of customer satisfaction.”