Salesforce is extending the capabilities of its Social Studio platform to now include marketing, service and sales functions.
Social Studio, which itself is an integration of Salesforce’s social media listening (Radian6) and publishing (Buddy Media) solutions will now have a single unified interface for all its social media functions. In addition, it will allow social media managers to directly route conversations or engagements that occur on their channels to the appropriate customer service or sales teams.
“We’re looking to expand social across all areas, it still tends to be an island within an organization,” says Gordon Evans, VP product marketing at Salesforce. “This integration takes the burden off the social media manager,”
The added functionality lets the social media management team listen and access in-depth analytics across all its social media channels, acting as air-traffic controllers who can direct engagements to the appropriate teams.
For example, if a customer tweets for help with a product, their tweet can be sent to the customer service team for an immediate response. If the customer wants information about price or product features, the tweet can be sent to the sales team as a lead. All of this routing can be done through a single click on the listening interface, and can also be set up to be done automatically.
Salesforce’s biggest asset in the marketing cloud wars has been its social media capabilities, so it makes sense that it would make it the main connector between its major cloud properties. Ever since this years Dreamforce conference, we’ve seen Salesforce move its strategy towards becoming a “Customer Success” platform, where its goal is to get companies to use all its cloud properties together, especially when it comes to forward facing consumer interactions. At Dreamforce, it released an Analytics Cloud and now its working hard to integrate the Marketing, Sales and Service clouds so that enterprises never have to leave its ecosystem.
However, it is leaving the door open for outside integrations as well. Senior VP of product management for Salesforce Marketing Cloud Gregg Johnson says that technically it is possible to integrate external service and sales platforms with Social Studio, but it is optimized to work best within the Salesforce cloud family. It’s a big ask for companies to put all their eggs in the Salesforce basket, but if the company can demonstrate exponential value for its combined offerings, it could be a very powerful proposition.
