DreamTX Welcome Day 3: Customer Success | Dreamforce 2020 | Salesforce

Good morning, happy holidays, and welcome to another day of DreamTX 2020. I'm Monica Roberts, a solution engineer here at Salesforce on most days. But today I have the pleasure of being your official mc. I'm coming to you here live from my home here in Houston, but I'm gonna pretend that I'm where you are.

Why?

Because I need to get out of here. It's been like a crazy long year, like 365,000 days long, but we're getting through it together. And that's what's most special. Even when we're apart, we're still connecting and finding common ground. Now, of course, I won't be alone. Taking you through today. We have another absolutely fabulous MC on the line. Chris, are you there?

I'm here, Monica, who's got two thumbs and is excited about today, this gal. Big hello to everyone joining us. My name is Chris Duarte and I'm VP of Trailhead Content and Credentialing. And I'm joining you live from here in my house in the town of Alameda in the San Francisco Bay area. Now, I've been with Salesforce for about seven years now, and this is my 11th Dreamforce. Now, it's always so special when we get together, but this year, DreamTX feels a little more special. Maybe it's because it's the holiday season, or maybe it's because we're all getting through this new normal together. Even right now, all of us, we're going digital. Like this event, all of us need to meet our customers right where they're at to help us succeed. Now, this takes some serious drive and dedication, and we want to celebrate that.

Now, one thing we need to mention is that you're going to see a ton of amazing innovation today, but please make all of your purchasing decisions based on products and features that are currently available in the market. Now, this year, more than any other, our core values have guided us. We talked this week about equality and innovation, but today, it's all about customer success. Our customers are at the heart of everything we do. So that's why day three, it's all about celebrating them.

Okay, let's get going, y'. All. Monica and I are going to be here with you all day long. And later, we're going to hear from the one and only Malala Yousafzai back. But for now, we're kicking things off with Salesforce's EVP and CEO of Australia. In New Zealand, it's the one and only Pip Marlow.

What do you say, Pip?

Well, thank you very much. Really excited to be here with all of you today. It is day three of DreamTX. My name is Pip Marlow. I'm the EVP and CEO here in Salesforce in Australia, New Zealand. On today's theme, it's all about customer success. And it's something I'm personally so passionate about. But reflecting on this last year, it's clear that success takes a lot of different forms. It could be about overcoming a challenging and tough lesson. It can be about tapping into your strengths and achieving a milestone that you never thought was possible. For us at Salesforce, there's always been a consistent. It is about leveraging the power of the community. This next session is all about that. It is about stopping and learning from a growing part of our global trailblazer community, the Salesforce champions. These are the line of business owners who make a year long commitment. They're lending their leadership, their influence and their advocacy to build an even stronger and more successful salesforce ecosystem. Let's stop and take a look. Are you a trailblazer?

Do you like helping other people blaze their trails too?

Sounds like you could be a champion. Being a champion is all about advocacy. The champions program has enabled me to have a platform in which I can bring others up. So champion helps show people the way.

And have the chance to pay it forward.

It's just a great feeling to be recognized as a champion.

Steve.

I kind of want to get pinched because I still don't believe it.

Right.

Be a champion and you should become a champion. Here are some things to expect. Countless hours of. Just staying up at night. No, I'm kidding. Let me just be serious.

Things that you'll need to be a future champion are dedication. Desire to connect with other people.

Always being an advocate. Selfless. I can't say that word.

A desire to give back.

You need to be endlessly curious. The benefits to your career are immeasurable.

Having a social media account with 188,000 followers tweeting my information and my photo was a little surreal.

It will look phenomenal on your resume and your boss will just be greatly appreciative.

Just having that validation has been great.

And it still can't make my cowboys win a football game. Hey, it's okay.

Learn, share, belong.

Step into the spotlight.

I love that. I always find it so inspirational to hear directly from our customers and these incredible champions. That's why I'm really excited about this next session. It's giving a voice and a stage to our Salesforce champions. I can never think of a better way actually to share stories of success in all forms that it can take. As I mentioned earlier, we're going to allow these customers the stage to bring their own authentic voice and bring their stories to life. But we need a little help in doing that. So I'm excited now to be joined by our very own Chief Digital Evangelist. Please welcome Vala Aspar.

Thank you for joining us today. I am Vala Afshar, Chief Digital Evangelist here at Salesforce. Right now you're about to hear some amazing transformation stories from three of our Salesforce champions. These trailblazers are growing part of our community of business leaders who use their knowledge, influence and advocacy to strengthen our Salesforce ecosystem. I am so pleased to be joined by three amazing Salesforce champions who will share their personal journeys and how They've leveraged Salesforce Customer360 to help their career, their company and their community. We have with us Yosna Bitra, Director Digital Marketing at Arc Science, Justice Sekkani, Director of IT at Hennepin Theatre Trust, and John Fernandez, Senior Vice President of Marketing at glia. Thank you all for being with us today. I'm going to start the first question about our personal leadership pivot. This year has demanded a lot from us. We are challenged every day to be a different kind of leader, more accessible, empathetic and vulnerable, all in a virtual world. I'd like to start with asking you to share a personal leadership pivot you've made in the last 10 months and how that impacted your business or team members. And I'd like to start with Josna.

Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here. During the crisis of this magnitude. It's very important to lead with empathy. We have been constantly pivoting and responding to the times. Right now it's very essential that we are mindful of the challenge at hand and show compassion to the customers and to the community at large. During the initial stages of the pandemic, when the surgical masks and the PPE were a scarcity, our healthcare professionals were challenged and they were at utmost risk. So I was able to conduct a mask making workshop and donate the handmade masks to the local hospitals, clinics and Title 1 schools. And native Americans were the most vulnerable and were hit hard by the pandemic. I got an opportunity to connect with the local leaders of various Native American communities and discuss about their issues and needs. I conducted a essential items donation drive for the elders of the Gila River Indian community. And recently during the winter and since the winter started So I have conducted a winter clothes donation drive for the unsheltered Native Americans. So when I think of where we were when the pandemic started and where we are currently, we have pivoted drastically, both in terms of business transformation and in terms of community support.

Thank you, Jasna, for sharing your brilliant leadership pivot. Justice, what are your thoughts on your incredible leadership pivot during this year?

You know, first of all, first and foremost, thank you to Vala, just for the great introduction, and thank you to my esteemed peers here, Salesforce Champions, as we all collectively come together virtually to just share our respective experiences. For me, being a leader is all about being an exemplary leader. And that to me, from what I've learned from experience, is what leads to that measurable impact. So when the global pandemic was conceptualized back in March, it was one of those realities where we were constantly convincing ourselves that this would be a short term impact. And, you know, we'll be back in a couple of weeks, we'll be back in a couple months. And local state government would continue to advise. Obviously, they were trying to figure out, you know, they're trying to resource or trying to, as JB eloquently stated, locate ppe. We're trying to keep our economy up and running. And for me, one of the big significant things that I had gleaned from this whole new abrupt transition was mental health. And, you know, we're all at home now, we're all distance learning right now. I'm in my basement, my kids are upstairs. You know, we've had a conversation and I said, listen, Dad's gonna be down here doing what he needs to do. If you can please just give me one hour, I will, you know, I will do whatever you need me to do. And these are the kind of conversations I'm not having with my kids. This is the reality of what we're in. But what I've been doing as an exemplary leader, to go back to one of the core pillars of what is significant about my leadership style and approach, is connecting and checking in with peers, connecting and checking in with those in the community that I respect and gravitate towards and mentor and just connect with and going beyond the surface level, right? Going beyond the, hey, hope all is well, trust all is well, and actually connecting and trying to understand how things are going. How are your kids doing throughout distance learning? Because these are pivotal members of our society that are contributing members of our society. So if we don't check in and understand that, as JB Eloquently stated, leading with empathy and really trying to be character driven and understanding beyond that initial layer. I mean, we want to ensure that the people that are running our businesses, that are running our local society, that are infusing our global economy respectively through all these organizations across industries are doing well. And it's okay to not be doing well. Right. And if you're not doing well, then let's have a conversation about it. Let's connect you to resources. Let's just, let's do something collectively together, because we're all in this together.

Justice. Well said. John, your thoughts?

Look, I'm a hopelessly data driven nerd in the morning.

Me too.

And the killer for me on March 16th was all that data I had on March 13th applied to a universe we no longer lived in. And so I was stuck without data. I had to stop leading with my head and really start leading with my heart. Right. I was not okay in a house with my wife who's trying to work and our two year old twins running around. They loved spending more time with us, but we had work to get done. My team wasn't okay, my founders aren't okay, my customers were okay. So a lot of it was just talking to people, spending time with them, making sure we had that connection from inside of our homes like we still are and making sure that I got a story that sure, I didn't have the wealth of data that I used to have, but I had a wealth of contacts and was able to be agile, you know, on a daily and even an hourly basis. You know, something we called sort of cadence compression. Things we used to do yearly, we're now doing quarterly. Quarters became months, months became weeks, weeks became days. And so we had to become much more quicker what we were doing and we all understood the quality was going to suffer. But just get what you can done, make an impact, prioritize the right things. And for me, that was the key of not just looking at a tableau workbook and having it tell me the magic data that it did all those months ago.

But.

But figure out what's the right thing for the people at the right time.

All three of you talked about connections and customer. Connections are incredibly important. You're all driving customer experience transformation in innovative ways. What's your strategy to bring your company and customers together in a more intelligent way. And how is that going? And I'll start with justice. You talked about connections. How are you doing this?

Yeah, thanks for the great question, Vala. You know, as an IT leader today for my Organization, it's unbelievably paramount that we be intentional and strategic with our technology stack. The tools that we're using have to be synergistically aligned. They have to be inextricably talking to one another. So right now we're using Quip for productivity, we're using financial force for our erp, we're using Salesforce as our platform and we're unleashing the power of that every day. We're using a lot of great tools. We're using Pardot for email and marketing automation. And since joining the organization, that was my goal, that was my vision, right? Salesforce has created this phenomenal platform that we can leverage and just go based on standard functionality to enable our business processes. But from there we can also enhance the overall user experience based on partners that are real tight with Salesforce that have developed solutions that further extend the functionality and capabilities of what has already been known as the power of Salesforce. So a lot of things that we've put in place since I've joined the organization proactively are what is allowing us to get to our customers more intelligently, more effectively. And it's doing it in a way that's very sustainable and it's doing it in a way that's very efficient. And to be quite frank with you, it makes me look like some sort of magician. And all I'm really doing is saying thank you to Salesforce Justice.

Brilliant work and you are truly a superhero. Well done. Well done. Yasna, how are you connecting in a meaningful way with your customers?

For me during this time, this has required more flexibility and adaptability than ever. We have been quickly adapting and as a marketer it's essentially important that we are sensible in our communications and using the right tone and voice. We don't want to bombard the customers with too many product related emails when there is so much going on in their personal lives. How we have responded has been different for each company and for each customer. So for an educational nonprofit organization that I've been helping with, the Vermont Law School, all the in person classes, campus tours and all the events for the 2020 were canceled and most of them were made virtual. With a lot of changes happening, we had to be agile now communications and make sure that the students or stay connected with the faculty and they're not missing out on any important updates and also ensuring that we have minimum disruption to their schedules. And for a larger retail customers while we stopped sending email communications that are related to the new products, but instead we started Sending communications related to the COVID updates, the changes in the delivery information, the shipment details, or the curbside pickup information, while also making sure that we're not sending too many emails as well. And also we are mindful of the challenges the customers may be going through. Navigating through the short term constraints while also focusing on the long term goals of the organization has been interesting and challenging.

John, this is great advice from Josta. Flexibility, precision, speed, relevance. How are you connecting with your customers?

The biggest focus we have to have with our customers is get to the why as soon as possible. You can't go there until you know the who, what, where and when. And so the important thing was that we use Customer360 to know that this customer is the same. We're not asking those questions internally. I'm sitting in Missouri, my account executive's in Texas, my customer solutions rep is in New York, my business development reps in Estonia. We all need to be able to look at the same thing and describe it the same way and get to the why. And the why for our customers was so severe. We sell to financial services. First thing that happened back in March, stock market tanked. If you work at a bank or a credit union, that's the first thing that's on your mind. Branches are all of a sudden closed. And not only are the branches closed, but some of the most at risk members who now can't come into those branches. Branches, they don't know how to use the online portal. They need a lot of help. They're not as savvy as we are. And the customer support reps themselves. We always thought of disaster recovery, of what happens if a natural disaster comes in. You have to work in a different building. But what happens when you can pack 30 people into a building, heck, you couldn't even do three. And they're working from home. And so the why was so critical. And we basically focused our entire organization on helping our customers out. You need more licenses, you need to get set up. You need us to create some custom code. We're doing that. Don't worry about the commercials. Well, this will all work out at the end, right? Let's just help them. And what we got by helping them was not just the benefit of helping them, but an understanding of what does this universe look like. What are the laws of physics now? It used to be when an apple fall out of a tree, it went down. Now it goes up. We got that knowledge by having that foundation in Customer360. Added to the stories we got from our customers each and every day.

I love the generosity that's common thread with all of you. Three champions and some of the most successful Salesforce champions I know are advocates. They passionately advocate about the stakeholder success. I know everyone here is passionate about talent development and advocacy for others. Each of you, as Salesforce champions, make a commitment to at least one act of advocacy each quarter for an entire year. Who have you advocated for recently in your company or your community? And what was the impact? And let's start with justice.

Yeah, thanks for the great question, Vala. If there's one thing that I get so much fulfillment from, it's advocating for others or putting others in a situation in which they can thrive. Right. Removing this whole mentality of surviving and repositioning to thriving. There's an individual, young individual by the name of Logan Wilson. He's 19 years of age. He is the son of Salesforce MVP Stacey Cogswell, who is my co host on a podcast, Campfire Stories, that I share with today. Her son has been working at a car wash. And just, you know how it is. You know, you're 18, 19, you graduate high school, you're just. You're moving with the flow. Right? And obviously he's seen his mom do well in the Salesforce community. He's seen his mom travel the world with opportunities to be a consultant and give back to so many companies. And obviously with being a co host on a podcast, he's seen a lot of great things being in the same household as his mom. So Stacy reached out to me not that long ago and said, hey, would you, would you be open to being a mentor to my son? And I said, absolutely. And for me, it wasn't necessarily about the educational components in terms of being a subject matter expert in the community. Obviously, we led him to Trailhead, and he's got 25 badges today. He's been in the community for no longer than 30 days. 25 badges. He's a mountaineer and he is just trucking along. But one of the things I've been very blessed and privileged to have is my network, my connections. And it's been one of those things that I continue to really, from an imposter syndrome perspective, I don't know how I got here. So one morning I had a parent teacher conference for my son virtually. And after that, Logan had sent me a message just to reach out to me and tell me about his progress and where he was at, what he was doing. Just looking for validation. Right. Without even realizing he's looking for Validation because you know, he's young, he's just. He's just wanting to be affirmed. So I just felt so inspired by that that I wanted to do something so grand, grand for him that he would feel reinvigorated. Not reinvigorated, but more so invigorated to go at it and keep going at it. So I put out a tweet out there, a call to action, and I just said to all my followers, if I've ever done anything for you, provided any value, you will support Logan, please, by just reaching out, give him kudos, give him congratulations. And I sent it to Benioff on the side and Benioff reshared that on his Twitter and ended up following Logan. And his mom called me and Logan was shaking and he was like, I can't believe it, mom. Benioff is following me, he's got a million followers and he's resharing me. And what it all boiled down to was what can we all do to enable someone to have the level of self esteem, to continue achieving things based on acknowledging their boundless potential. And as an advocate, as a Salesforce champion, it is my job. No, it is my responsibility to ensure that I'm putting folks in position so that they are being recognized for their ability to just show up as themselves. This wasn't about Logan deploying a lightning implementation. This was just about him demonstrating that he's convicted and committed to learn something new. And as his mentor, it is my job to serve as a catalyst to ensure that he achieves self actualization based on what that means for him.

Well done. Well done. Yosna, you're an incredible advocate for immigrant immigrant women. I'm an immigrant, so I appreciate you. Tell us how your advocacy has helped impact others.

Firstly, I'm extremely grateful for this Salesforce Champion program as this gave me a bigger platform to advocate for others, to share my knowledge and to continue to give back. Though this year has presented many challenges, it has been a great year with respect to establishing new connections, strengthening our relations and learning new skills. I was able to conduct a 12 day boot camp with MVPs and champions as speakers which was attended by 500 plus attendees all across the world. We could do that because just because that we are able to still get connected, stay connected virtually. Keeping in mind the current situation, I made sure that I began every meeting with a positive note. I was also able to kick off a new series of sessions focused on soft skills. That is the Impact Force series. This is a series of sessions focused on Improving the presentation skills, communication skills and also inspire from each other as soft skills play a vital role in our career progression no matter where we are in our Salesforce journey. With that in mind, have kicked off these sessions. I'm so glad that I have great support from the community MVPs and champions. And this is my passion project which is inspired from the Trailblazer Summit and the Champions Elevate Program and my next one, the Women Empowerment Group. As an immigrant woman and as someone who have gone through hardships during the initial years of my stay in U.S. i realized the importance for a dependent woman to be less dependent, build confidence and get used to the system. Share so I created a Women Empowerment Group in my local community with focus on knowledge sharing and public speaking and I also extended this and introduced them to the Salesforce and started helping them. Starting with the introduction to the Trailhead modules, helping them in their certifications and landing in their first jobs, I have been much busier, more engaged and able to give back more than ever.

Fantastic. Thank you. Yasna. John, your advocacy initiatives, please One of.

The great things we've been doing at Glee over the past few years has been supporting the Bowery Mission in New York City, which feeds houses and clothes. A lot of people and people were hurting before all of this, but they're hurting even more now. And what we used to do was go on site. I'm a big guy, so I end up carrying a lot of frozen food around, helping package it up, doing all those good things. We reached out and we're like, what can we do? We obviously can't go into it. What are the things we can do to help? And they're like, hey, you can package stuff remotely and send it, mail it to us. And so we've been packaging up various care kits, clothing kits and food kits. They were able to feed over 1500 people on Thanksgiving, which I can only imagine was a huge, huge challenge. And making sure we're helping people out, especially in really rough times like these, is really important.

I want to say thank you all so much and to our viewers, thank you for being with us today. If you are interested in becoming a Salesforce champion, sharing your leadership journey and supporting others on theirs, applications are available now. You can apply@salesforce.com champions. Take care and we will see you soon.

Thank you so much. That was incredible. First you, Vela. You have just made magic out of this session. Thank you so much. But to our panelists, John justice and Yotsner, thank you so much for sharing your experiences as Salesforce champions. For me, it was inspirational hearing about the impact that this program has had on your careers, on your ability to achieve just incredible outcomes. Amazing. But most importantly, I loved hearing about your dedication to giving back. It is exceptional. So with that, I'm going to wrap this up. I'm going to hand back over, and let's hear what's next for our viewers.

Thank you, Pip. And thank you to all the Salesforce champions who are going above and beyond. You are all showing us what leadership, innovation and drive looks like and how all of us can bring success to our customers today. Now, I'm your DreamTXMC, and I'm coming at you live with my co host, Monica.

And we are psyched to be here with you. Our community at Salesforce is absolutely magical.

That is the truth. I have never known a more inclusive, welcoming and generous community than the trailblazer community here at Salesforce. And I know I'm not the only one who feels this. How about those champions, Monica? Yes.

Yes. And more. Yes. Like, I have absolutely no more words. Thank you, Pip and Violet and all the Salesforce champions. It's amazing to see what our trailblazers accomplish. They're out here creating paths for others to follow, making the world an absolutely better place in the process. It's, like, crazy inspiring. They're down here in Texas. We have a number of trailblazer communities that create synergies and invite us to exchange in knowledge sharing, which similarly blazes trails for customer success in a big way. Because everything is bigger here in Texas.

Love it. From Texas to around the world, Customer success, a global phenomenon. I want to give a huge shout out to everybody. All of our trailblazers tuning in around the world in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific, Japan and Latin America. We see all y' all and we thank you.

Now, what's amazing about the trailblazer community is that it affords you the opportunity to be a multiplier. Multipliers make an exponential impact in the world by sharing their skills and passions. They inspire the entire community across the globe. And that's huge. All right, so, Chris, we've wrapped up our welcome session. Where to next?

Oh, Monica. We have so much in store for them today. Episodes, product demos we're streaming across five channels. All of it's crafted just for all of you. And good news, it's not all work and no play. No, no, no. We have music, games, guests, and the Dream Tx band. They're going to create a Dreamtx soundtrack for all of you live here on the show like you've never heard before. So get ready.

Ready now. Speaking of good news, there's even more to look forward to in 2021. Did we mention recently we announced our intent to acquire Slack? We want to create an operating system for the whole new way that we work in this all digital world. Now if you're tuning in right now from a social channel, be it Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube or Facebook, this is your cue. It's time to head on over to dreamforce.com to catch the rest of the show. So let's get to it. Here's your first episode of the day. Select your channel to the right of our window and enjoy.