Slack Supercharges Salesforce Customer 360 for Sales, Service, Marketing, and Analytics

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 17, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), the global leader in CRM, today announced new innovations that combine the power of Slack and Salesforce so teams can stay connected, productive, and get work done anywhere with a single source of truth for their business.

"Salesforce and Slack are creating the digital HQ to help every company get back to growth in today's digital-first, work anywhere world," said Bret Taylor, President and Chief Operating Officer of Salesforce. "This is just the beginning for the Slack-First Customer 360—which will fundamentally reshape how work gets done by connecting employees, customers, and partners and the apps they use on a single platform."

Nine out of 10 companies plan to combine remote and onsite work going forward, but only 33% feel prepared to navigate this new hybrid work world. Slack-First Customer 360 is the answer, with Slack as the hub that empowers everyone in an organization to communicate, collaborate, and take action on information from across Salesforce and all the other business apps, systems, and partners they use.

With these new pre-built integrations between Slack and Salesforce, every department — such as sales, service, and marketing — can collaborate in channels that unite teams and streamline workflows built around CRM data, giving them a single source of truth for their business and a single, shared view of the customer. Business processes can be automated in Slack to make work simple, productive, flexible, and pleasant. And with Slack Connect, companies can now work securely with external partners, vendors and customers, driving stronger relationships and faster results.

Close more deals with Slack-First Sales
Salesforce and Slack are giving sales reps the ability to collaborate on deals in real-time and drive growth from anywhere, with sales reps using Slack seeing an average of 15% faster sales cycles. The new capabilities provide deeper visibility into account details in Sales Cloud and connect the right people to close deals fast - all in Slack as the system of engagement.

• Digital deal rooms allow sales teams to securely collaborate around a customer or deal cycle in Slack. Sales reps can access and update Salesforce records and meeting information right from Slack. With files, conversations, and data in one place, teams can easily prepare for meetings, new reps can quickly onboard by accessing account details in Slack, and external partners and customers can join in directly to close deals fast.
• Automated daily briefs in Slack help reps focus on what matters most by providing them with a personalized daily list of tasks, meetings and priority deals they can take action on.

Resolve cases faster with Slack-First Service
Through Salesforce and Slack, teams can collaborate to provide real-time customer support, bringing customers directly into the channel when necessary. Service agents get instant access to relevant Service Cloud case data, experts and channels in Slack, resulting in an 11% improvement in customer satisfaction scores. These Slack-First innovations help service teams automatically identify and bring the right experts into a case, accelerating customer response times.

• Swarming creates a Slack channel for service teams to collaborate on complex and high priority cases, bringing in the right employees and external partners to solve problems faster.
• Expert Finder automatically identifies the right experts to add to a swarm channel based on availability, capacity, and skills.

Manage campaigns effectively with Slack-First Marketing
A global survey of marketers shows engaging customers in real time is a top challenge, but 76% of marketers agree Slack has improved their ability to make quick decisions¹. Together, Salesforce and Slack give marketing teams and agency partners a shared digital workspace, and with today's innovations, marketers can collaborate on customer journeys and get insights fast.

• Intelligent, AI-driven insights from Marketing Cloud and Datorama - such as engagement being lower than expected - are shared directly in Slack, ensuring teams can take action fast to ensure campaigns stay on track.
• Workflow notifications automatically update Slack channels when changes to a marketing journey (i.e. a new email headline) are made, giving teams the ability to review, collaborate on and approve changes instantly.

Put data at the center of every conversation with Slack-First Analytics
Tableau and Slack expand the visibility of analytics across the organization and enable customers to stay on top of data from anywhere. Today's new innovations help people access data-driven Tableau insights in Slack so they can make smarter decisions fast.

• Automated notifications in Slack help users stay connected to Tableau data they need to act on, such as when a sales pipeline dips below a specified threshold.
• Watchlist digests provide a daily update on selected metrics and trends, while Subscriptions automate dashboard updates in team channels, giving business users access to data and insights in the location where they're already working.

How customers collaborate with Salesforce and Slack
Leading companies are turning to Salesforce and Slack to build their digital HQs:

• IBM: "The hybrid workplace requires the right digital tools to keep customers and employees connected, productive, and engaged," said Arvind Krishna, Chairman and CEO of IBM. "The combined power of Salesforce and Slack is helping IBM deliver more value across every customer and employee interaction."
• Sonos: "In our rapid shift to an all-digital world, we learned we must be more connected, productive, and innovative to best reach and serve customers no matter where they are," said Patrick Spence, CEO of Sonos. "The one-two punch of Salesforce and Slack has been crucial for collaboration between distributed teams, ultimately helping us achieve unprecedented growth during challenging times."

How Salesforce partners drive Slack-First strategies
Partners are crucial to extending the power of both Salesforce and Slack to customers worldwide. Salesforce Global Strategic partners Accenture, Deloitte and IBM, as well as consulting partners Silverline, Slalom and Traction on Demand are investing in Slack across their businesses and practices, and certifying consultants to deliver Slack-First digital transformations for customers. In addition, ISV partners such as DocuSign and Vidyard offer Salesforce-based apps that already integrate seamlessly with Slack, powering connected experiences and workflows across the Slack-First Customer 360.

Success from Anywhere: Your Digital HQ
Join us today at 10:00 a.m. PT/1:00 p.m. ET/6:00 p.m. BST, to hear Salesforce President and COO Bret Taylor and Slack CEO and Co-Founder Stewart Butterfield outline how Salesforce and Slack are creating a powerful platform for the digital-first, work anywhere world.

More Information

• Learn more about Slack-First Customer 360 here
• Learn more about how Salesforce and Slack are committed to giving back here
• Read more about the vision for Salesforce and Slack from the product person leading the charge here

Availability

• Slack-First Sales, Service and Marketing capabilities will be available in pilot in fall 2021.
• Slack-First Analytics is expected to be generally available in fall 2021.
• Intelligent and Collaborative Insights from Datorama is generally available today.

About Salesforce
Salesforce, the global CRM leader, empowers companies of every size and industry to digitally transform and create a 360° view of their customers. For more information about Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), visit: www.salesforce.com.

This communication contains forward-looking information related to Salesforce, Slack and the acquisition of Slack by Salesforce that involves substantial risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. Forward-looking statements relate to, among other things, future events and anticipated results of operations, business strategies, the anticipated benefits of the transaction, the anticipated impact of the transaction on the combined company's business and financial and operating results, the expected amount and timing of synergies from the transaction, and other aspects of Salesforce's operations or operating results. 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(1) Slack Customer Tracking Survey, April 2021

SOURCE Salesforce

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