What is Salesforce?
Salesforce launched way back in 1999 and has since become the most popular customer relationship management (CRM) tool on the market. It successfully implements an extensive range of features into a sleek platform that remains relatively user-friendly.
The robust system can help you manage your company's relationships with customers, prospects, and opportunities by giving an in-depth analysis of interactions between customers and your business.
As a work took, it features a range of tools such as Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Analytics Cloud, and Service Cloud, all of which can help grow your business through analysis and optimization of business and customer relations. The CRM platform also uses a robust API, meaning that it supports the integration of third-party platforms allowing for a more personalized experience.
All in all, this product offers users a fantastic product that's powerful and highly customizable, making it suitable for any size business.
Table of Contents
Features
When it comes to functionality, Salesforce delivers a lot more than most other CRM platforms on the market. For example, it features a range of sales and marketing tools such as:
- Sales Cloud
- Service Cloud
- Marketing Cloud
- Commerce Cloud
- Analytics Cloud
Sales Cloud
The platform includes Sales Cloud provides your business with a task management system that management can use to help close deals, manage existing contacts, and track opportunities with potential customers.
Organizational features include:
- Account and contact management
- Opportunity management
- Lead management
- Analysis of sales data
- Automation of repetitive tasks
Service Cloud
The service cloud helps with providing excellent customer service to your customers. The service cloud allows you to track customer activity across multiple channels, highlighting which channels may need improvement.
Service Cloud also makes it possible to automate service processes, enhance overview and streamline workflows by providing data on every customer on any device.
Intuitive features include:
- Lighting service console - Organizes customer information for support agents.
- Case management - Resolve support cases faster.
- Workflow and Approvals - Customize and automate customer service or approval processes with a drag-and-drop interface.
- Omni-channel routing - Automatically match support cases to the agent with the most relevant skillset.
- Telephony integration - Integrate with CTI systems. Log notes when customers call and manage calls from within the console.
- Social customer service - Monitor and respond faster to customer posts on social media.
- Automation - Free up support agents by automating tasks to resolve customer issues more efficiently.
- Account and contact management.
- Custom reports and dashboard.
- Asset and order management.
Marketing Cloud
The marketing cloud makes it more straightforward to make smarter data-based decisions. It can help drive sales and close deals through multi-channel communications.
Marketing Cloud features include:
- Journey builder - Build 1-to-1 relationships with customers across all channels.
- Email studio - Create and optimize personalized email campaigns.
- Customer 360 Audiences - Analyze all your customer data in a unified platform
- Mobile studio - Personalize mobile interactions such as SMS and push notifications.
- Social studio - Engage with your customers on social media.
- Advertising studio - Target 1-to-1 advertising using your CRM data
- Datorama - Unified platform for all your marketing data
- Interaction studio - Track, manage and optimize customer experiences.
- Data studio - Take your marketing to a new level using data from the world's most trusted premium data ecosystem.
- Google Analytics 360 - Get the most from your Google Analytics data.
- Pardot - Bring together your sales and marketing data into a unified platform.
Commerce Cloud
Сommerce cloud is an all-in-one Business to Commerce solution. It helps to create innovative and personalized shopping experiences across multiple platforms.
Commerce cloud features include:
- Connect shopping experiences to marketing, sales, and service teams
- Build professional commerce experiences and personalized marketing campaigns
- Boost conversions and recommend products using AI
- Reduce costs, save time, and customize sites by industry type
- Automate processes for smooth delivery and payment
- Connect eCommerce sites to customer service teams
Health Cloud
Health Cloud is built specifically for healthcare. Therefore, it is ideal for building better relationships between caregivers and patients while benefiting both parties.
- Care features include:
- Personalized experiences for each patient
- Connect with patients with a single engagement platform
- Higher level of customer satisfaction
- Lower costs of operation
Analytics Cloud
Einstein Analytics and Tableau power the Salesforce Analytics Cloud. The analytics cloud can help you make better business decisions based on your customer and marketing data.
- Data analytics features include:
- Drag-and-drop style analysis tools
- Spot behavioral patterns through visual representation of analytics
- Share insights across teams
- Integrated data management
Import Process
Salesforce makes it straightforward to get started by providing the ability to import data from third-party platforms such as Gmail.
Popular Integrations
The standout feature of this CRM is its ability to integrate with other platforms. For example, it can be used with AppExchange, allowing integration with Zapier, Outlook, and many other popular applications. In addition, the powerful API makes it possible to connect Salesforce to almost any third-party application.
Trailblazer Community
The Salesforce community, also known as "Trailblazer," is full of great information invaluable for admins. In addition, the group includes guides on various topics, making it easier to get the most out of the Salesforce platform.
User-friendly productivity features
This system includes built-in project management is feature-rich and straightforward to use. As a result, this CRM makes it easier for your team to build and organize workflows.
Customer Support
The company is considered the market leader in its CRM technology, many users have complained about its customer service. Customer service waits can be extensive. However, they tend to be very helpful and knowledgeable when they reply.
While customer support may not be the best, the Salesforce community can be a great alternative. The community forum has many knowledgeable users who are happy to help less experienced users with queries that they may have about the software.
Pricing
The SaaS pricing is somewhat confusing and the main drawback of the platform. As a result, the company offers a range of subscription tiers outlined below.
Essentials - $25 per user, per month
- 5 Users
- Account, contact, lead, and opportunity management
- Email integration
- Mobile app
Professional - $75 per user, per month
All of the essential-level features, and:
- No user limit
- Lead registration
- Rules-based lead scoring
- Collaborative forecasting
Enterprise - $150 per user, per month
All the professional plan features, plus:
- Workflow and approval automation functions
Unlimited - $300 per user, per month
The Unlimited edition offers all of the enterprise features.
- 24/7 support
- Configuration services
These subscription costs should be considered a starting point. Salesforce can be considerably more expensive depending on which add-ons you want to use. Relative to other CRM products, this service is quite costly.
The pay-per-user model is also not the best option for most small businesses.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Great UI
- Scalability
- Usability
- Salesforce AppExchange
- Robust API
- Always expanding
- Free Trial
Cons
- Pricing
- Not the best customer support.
Is Salesforce Suitable for My Business?
All in all, Salesforce should be considered one of the best CRM tools on the market. This rating is because the modern UI packs an extensive range of features while remaining reasonably easy to use.
The management tool also supports a wide range of integration options, making it easy to bring together all of your business operations into a unified platform.
The platform comes with a great range of features out of the box, and the use of the AppExchange makes it straightforward to add more features as your business continues to grow.
The only complaints are that the customer support could be more responsive and the pricing tiers transparent.
There is a 30 day free trial for anyone who wants to test the software.
Curious to learn more about which CRM is the right tool for your business and how integration could boost your existing workflow? Let's talk about what integration can do for your business, contact us by filling out the form below!