Salesforce Service Cloud CEO: Pandemic’s ‘Digital Fixes’ Are Here to Stay

Quick take: At this year’s Salesforce Service Change Makers event, companies including Airbnb, Smile Direct Club and OneUnited Bank shared how they’re using technology to build trusted customer experiences.

Driving the news: Clara Shih, CEO, Salesforce Service Cloud, kicked off the event by sharing insights about the future of service in The Great Reopening of Society.

She shared that “temporary” digital fixes rolled out by companies in response to the pandemic are now experiences that customers and employees can’t live without. They not only want them to stick around; they want them to get better. In fact, 60% of consumers say online experiences will become more important than in-person ones.

What they’re saying: Service Cloud customers shared how they’re meeting new customer expectations and trailblazing the future of service with digital-first, proactive approaches:

• Andy Yasutake, Head of Community Support Products for Airbnb: “A guest could have very different needs from a host, a host could be anything from a new host to a super host or even a professional host…you can’t have this one-size-fits-all service experience…Actually creating experiences that solve for all these different personas truly end-to-end is one of the biggest challenges but also one of the most exciting things.”
• Alvin Stokes, Chief Customer Contact Officer at SmileDirectClub: “Our leadership team is very focused on thinking like the customer. We are always listening to calls and watching videos to better understand how our customers interact with us. We do everything in our power to make the process easy and simple with both the human element and our emerging technologies top-of-mind. Because the leadership team is engaged at every level, we can study our processes to learn what works and what doesn’t work. The feedback is applied, and the team builds technologies and automation that ensure that we are delivering the right experience.”

Teri Williams, President & COO of OneUnited Bank: “Our customer service is completely different than other banks. A lot of our customers bank with us completely online. In terms of the pandemic, we doubled our customers in a year. 90% of our customers come to us digitally. We struggled with that growth – and that’s where we have employed Salesforce. The efficiencies we gained through Salesforce are enormous. We actually did 50 years of business in a year.”

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