Salesforce’s Bova: ‘Customer Experience Is the Battleground Today’

Customer experience is more than just the consumer’s journey with a product. It’s a reciprocal relationship dependent on a range of factors. Those include whether a company utilizes technology effectively, whether a firm knows how to meet customer’s needs in a hybrid environment and whether a company’s employees are satisfied.

These attributes may be more essential in the post-pandemic marketplace, said Tiffani Bova, global growth and innovation evangelist at Salesforce. Bova spoke on Wednesday at the Channel Partners Convention & Expo in Las Vegas.

“We found that 74% of sales leaders don’t feel capable of actually adapting to the current conditions,” Bova said. “They’re not sure how they’re going to deal with the lumpiness or uncertainty from a customer perspective.”

Nothing is more emblematic of changes brought about by the pandemic than how companies use technology. The pandemic revealed surprising statistics. Even though it showed a proliferation of technologies such as Zoom and Slack used by business, according to Bova, 42% of small businesses were not online before the pandemic. Many didn’t have a domain or e-commerce opportunities.

“Small businesses that are going to win in the future are going to be those that use technology better than their competition,” she said, adding that it’s critical to use technology to bridge a company’s various teams.

Implementing technology for the “better” doesn’t mean reverting 100% to face-to-face meetings, nor does it mean solely embracing digital interactions. Meeting customers where they are requires a hybrid approach as expectations are now across the board. It comes down to creating a personalized experience, which ultimately must be orchestrated in real time. And real time cannot be implemented without the push to automate.

“If you can create automation in your business, you will have more control and visibility into your forecasts,” Bova said.

Employers Should Change the Paradigm

Part of adapting to this new post-pandemic environment means employers should review how much time they spend coaching employees. Rather than “tightening the screws” when employees don’t meet quotas, employers should change the paradigm and increase the time they spend mentoring their employees, Bova said. It may be stating the obvious, but employee dissatisfaction directly correlates with poor customer experience outcomes.

Yet, employees complain that instead of meaningful one-on-one time with their supervisors, they are faced with an onslaught of metrics, tracking their productivity as an exercise in micromanaging. In recent years, 63% of employees report they must log more information, Bova said.