Salesforce Platform Spotlight: Three Customers Navigating the Pandemic on the Salesforce Platform

Overnight, companies have had to reimagine their businesses in response to COVID-19. Developers are often at the helm of that shift.

Whether it’s augmenting customer service systems with automation and AI, streamlining once manual processes with custom apps, or even learning new skills themselves, this community is tasked with building essential solutions in days — not months — that keep the business going.

Ahead of Salesforce’s annual developer conference, TrailheaDX, we’re sharing the stories of the developers, admins, architects, and entrepreneurs — innovating on the Salesforce platform to deliver digital transformation at lightning speed.

Here are three examples of customers using the Salesforce platform to transform their businesses in response to COVID-19.

How UC Berkeley IGI Became a COVID-19 Testing Lab in Three Weeks

The Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI) at UC Berkeley was founded in 2014 to uncover new innovations to solve healthcare issues and save lives. Nearly six years later, IGI is staying true to that mission. When the pandemic began impacting Berkeley, IGI decided to shift its entire operations to support members of the community with free COVID-19 testing.

Transforming the way IGI uses its lab space during a pandemic wasn’t easy. In addition to retraining staff, changing their physical space, and maintaining volunteer safety, IGI needed to quickly scale up their systems to process patient testing. To expand its capabilities, IGI turned to Salesforce to help manage inbound requests and outbound test results, and process over 1,000 patient tests a day.

We recently sat down with Dr. Jennifer Doudna at IGI to discuss how it has leveraged Salesforce to scale its testing operations quickly and keep its community safe and healthy.

Read on for the full story.

How Academy Bank and Salesforce Streamlined the Lending Process

Academy Bank, part of a family of banks with over $3 billion in assets, helps individuals and businesses of any size with their banking and lending needs. Like many financial institutions, Academy Bank needed to mobilize quickly in order to prepare for the Paycheck Protections Program (PPP). Trust and transparency with customers are paramount to Academy Bank, but their original application process was manual and not all customer-facing associates had visibility into the status of a customer’s PPP loan process.

To solve this, Jeff Berger, Academy Bank’s Salesforce Admin and co-leader of the Kansas City Salesforce User Group, created an app on Salesforce to provide its associates with a real-time, 360-degree view of the application process – from when a customer applies for a loan to underwriting to funding. And with Salesforce’s low-code capabilities, Jeff was able to build this automated loan application tracking app in just five hours.

We got the chance to talk with Jeff about some of the innovative ways Academy Bank has leveraged the Salesforce Platform to quickly pivot its business and rapidly respond to the needs of its customers, employees and community.

Read on for the full story.

How Sun Basket Scaled Up Service in Response to COVID-19

As a result of COVID-19, San Francisco-based meal delivery service Sun Basket has seen an influx in customers and subsequent service volumes. To meet growing demand and continue to deliver amazing customer experiences as it scales, Sun Basket turned to Salesforce.

With Service Cloud and Einstein Bots, Sun Basket is onboarding new agents quickly and leveraging automation and self-service to provide customers answers fast – all while ensuring a smooth transition to work from home for its agents.

We caught up with Sun Basket’s VP of Customer Service, Brett Frazer, to discuss how the organization is leveraging technology to respond to the global pandemic; evolve its customer experience as it grows its operations; and create a positive impact in the communities it serves.

Read on for the full story, and check out how their agents skilled up on Trailhead.

Tune in to TrailheaDX on June 25.