In 2018, Salesforce presented its CDP (customer data platform), Customer 360. At the occasion of Dreamforce 2019, the CRM company launched Customer 360 Truth, a set of services and capabilities, enabling customers to build that famous single source of truth everyone is looking for with customer data platforms.
A single source of truth that, in the words of Patrick Stokes, Executive Vice President of Platform Shared Services at Salesforce, is the foundation for delivering smart, personalized customer experiences across every touchpoint.
The Salesforce Customer 360 Truth services use the Cloud Information Model (CIM), the new open-source data model that standardizes data interoperability across cloud applications and is enabled by the open-source modeling technology by Mulesoft, acquired for $6.5 billion by Salesforce early 2018.
The CIM reduces the complexities of integrating data across cloud applications by providing standardized data interoperability guidelines to connect point-of-sale systems, digital marketing platforms, contact centers, CRM systems and more.
Customer 360 Audiences: going beyond traditional CDP capabilities
The Customer 360 Truth services, include
- Customer 360 Data Manager, that uses a canonical data model and a universal Salesforce ID that represents each customer.
- Salesforce Identity for Customers enabling organizations to offer a single, authenticated login across all of its platforms and apps.
- Customer 360 Audiences to build unified customer profiles, which is really the customer data platform as Patrick Stokes also states in an interview.
- Privacy and Data Governance, that helps customers address obligations regarding the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) regarding data governance and consent.
Customer 360 Audiences builds unified customer profiles across both known data such as email addresses and first-party IDs and unknown data such as website visits and device IDs.
It then creates customer segments and marketing engagement journeys from those profiles and delivers AI-powered insights, like lifetime value and likelihood to churn, making it go beyond traditional CDP capabilities per Salesforce.
Patrick Stokes, EVP, Platform Shared Services, Salesforce, reminds us that having a complete view of the customer is not a new idea, but has been challenging to achieve with the siloed data, disconnected apps and complicated patchwork of sometimes incompatible services which organizations have and can’t connect.
For SalesForce, Customer 360 Truth, is the answer to these challenges with the single source of truth in mind. With MuleSoft Anypoint Platform, organizations can quickly build APIs that connect any application, data, or device to Customer 360 in an application network to create a complete customer view.
Salesforce already announced the changes in June 2019, when it unveiled its Customer Data Platform (CDP) with the next generation of Customer 360, stating that the new platform services which are now rolled out as Customer 360 Truth would enable companies to unify disparate customer data throughout their entire organization and then personalize every engagement based on a single view of the customer.
The latest Salesforce Connected Customer report found that 78 percent of customers expect consistent interactions with a company regardless of the department they’re dealing with, yet only 50 percent of companies tailor their engagement based on a customer’s past interactions.
Alan Webber, Program Vice President for Digital Strategy and Customer Experience, IDC at the occasion of the launch: “Connecting customer data and managing consent is more important than ever in light of changing customer expectations and increasing regulations. As a result, companies are prioritizing data unification in ways that will lead to more loyal and valuable customer relationships. Salesforce Customer 360 Truth will help companies break down data silos and deliver the experiences customers expect”.
