It’s definitely THE buzzword at Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. Perhaps that’s no surprise. Salesforce has branded itself ‘the customer company’. But the phrase on every Salesforce staffer’s lips is ‘The internet of customers’.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff sits on the board of Cisco. Cisco has been promoting ‘the internet of things’ for a couple of years, so it makes sense for Benioff to borrow and adapt the phrase to suit his company’s proposition. Once you get past the buzzword fluff it’s a fair assertion.
You’re aware the customer is king (alongside content of course) but saying it isn’t enough. Listening to them isn’t enough:
Marc Beniof urged delegates not to listen to customers but to watch them and give them what they need.
Drew Housten, CEO of Dropbox said his company calls this ‘problems hidden in plain sight’. When speaking about the problems Dropbox has helped to solve he said: “Nobody was looking for a problem they didn’t know was there.”
Paul smith, VP of Salesforce Marketing Cloud EMEA, noted how the B2B2C chain is more prevalent as B2B brands are watching their customer’s customers in order to be head of their customers and serve them better.
In his keynote presentation Vivek Kundra, EVP emerging markets at Salesforce said ‘most comp don’t know their customers; 66 per cent of businesses lack in depth understanding of their customers’.
So stop talking about becoming customer centric, stop asking your customers what they want, get your head around the tech and make the changes your customers don’t know they want yet.
