How to Automate Marketing, Sales, And Service With Salesforce | Salesforce Explained

What's up, everybody? I'm Brian Tong, your guide to all things Salesforce. And this is Salesforce Explained. It's a series where we talk Salesforce and technology without all the jargon or the buzzwords. So make sure to subscribe to the Salesforce channel and turn on those notifications so you never miss an episode, because this episode is all about automation. And we know automation is a term that gets thrown around a lot. So we're gonna define it for you and share how automation can make marketing style, sales, and customer service easier. And because this is Salesforce Explained after all, I will give you the 411 on how Salesforce products, including my personal favorite, Slack, can help. Now, let's get started. First things first. What is automation? Automation describes a wide range of technologies that make processes and workflows faster and easier. But essentially it reduces or eliminates steps that us humans would normally do manually. The idea is to use software to cut down on how many repetitive or monotonous tasks humans have to do, freeing us up to tackle more complex and creative work. That means a better experience for your customers and lower stress for your teams. Plus, you know, computers crush it when it comes to efficiency. And business of any size can benefit from more efficiency, right? Yeah. And the bigger your business grows, the more valuable automation becomes, because the best automation systems are designed to scale alongside your business and and make things easier as your business grows more complex. So here are a couple of easy examples. Automation can automatically fix errors when filling out forms to make sure your data is as accurate as can be. It can also send you an important notification to whatever device you're currently using, so you won't miss an important update even when you're away from the office. Now, as you can probably guess, there are lots of different types of automation. With Salesforce, you get out of the box automation solutions that let you build your own customer automations. There's also Salesforce Flow, which helps people, processes and systems all work together on the Salesforce platform to deliver amazing and automated experiences. The idea is that everything works so automatically that it seems like magic. Basically, automation takes the work out of overly complicated workflows. And you know what you get when you take the work out of workflow? You get flow. Oh, flow, baby, flow. Okay, you know what? So let's take a look at automation in action across different parts of a business like marketing, sales, and service. So first up, marketing automation. Marketing automation is technology that manages marketing processes and campaigns for you. The tech works across multiple channels so you can target customers with Messages across email, web, social and text. Need a real life example? Hey. Boom. I gotcha. A marketing automation system can schedule email sends, create one off campaigns, manage your subscriber base, and even run automated A B tests of email campaigns to find the message that inspires the most engagement and conversation. Marketing automation also helps with lead generation, nurturing, scoring and measuring overall return on investment on campaigns. There's so many things automation can do for you, you know, Am I right? Like, just think of all the time that Automagic just saved you. Now, next up, sales. It's the same principle. Automate the repetitive stuff to free your sales reps up to focus on what they're great at. Understanding their audience's needs and delivering just the right message to prompt a purchase. Hey, look. Okay, say no more. Yes. And with that in mind, I give you the top three ways sales automation can make a sales REP's life easier. One, an accurate and consistent reporting cadence. Boom. Two, scheduling meetings. Automate this otherwise manual process and save your reps dozens of hours each year. And three, proposal reminders. Set up automated nudges that gently help you push a sale through to the finish line. All right, cool, right? But check this out. When you add AI and and mix it all up here like Salesforce does in our automation software, sales automation gets some very handy, very next level smarts. For example, AI powered sales automation can automate activity logging to keep track of every call and message with customers and prospects. Identify high priority emails and flag them in your reps inboxes and sift through those call and email records to create new contact entries for you. Sales automation software is the tool and artificial intelligence is the assistant that makes the tool work smarter. Man, I could use an assistant to help me work smarter like that. Now let's talk about how automation is used in customer service. Customer service automation helps service leaders and agents streamline and simplify customer service processes that would otherwise be pretty complex. And that's pretty important when you consider that 83% of customers expect to solve complex problems. But by talking to just one person. Now, customer service automation really shines in customer case management. Imagine a customer. Let's say. How about me? All right, perfect. Let's just say I bought a refrigerator from your store and it stopped working. Well, my refrigerator is still under warranty, so I file a support ticket to get it fixed. And ever thought about how many steps lie between me and my newly fixed fridge? A lot. Like, think about it here. You'd have to validate the issue, check the warranty terms Schedule an on site inspection, order parts, do the onsite repair, and then close out the service record. Not exactly the simplest procedure and a lot of chances for errors and delays that can hold things up. Now, if you've got a streamlined, efficient and yes, automated workflow for fixing refrigerators, then you're good. Service calls get scheduled, parts are ordered, and refrigerators get back up and running again. Now, if not, one misstep or bottleneck holding up the process that could lead to unhappy customers and frustrated service agents. So now you know that what automation is and how it can help different parts of a company. So let's talk about how this all comes together. Which brings us to Slack. Yes, the messaging app for all businesses of all sizes. And yes, Salesforce acquired slack back in 2021 and it fits nicely with everything in the Salesforce product portfolio. But you already knew that because you watched my what is customer360 episode. Right, right, right. You did. Anyways, Slack can help automate sales, marketing and service processes by way of integrations. They're available on Slack's own app directory, which has tons of integration options. You pair Salesforce with Slack and that is a marriage made in customer relationship heaven. Now, when you integrate Salesforce with Slack, you can automate a lot of the routine processes that lead to better customer relationships. Teams can get strategic notifications on new deals, support cases, prospect activity, and much more. Slack also takes automation to the next level by making it easy to automate routine functions through custom workflows. So in just a few minutes, you can create all kinds of automated workflows, standardize how you collect requests from your team, report real time information, get new team members up to speed, and a whole lot more. And you don't have to be a coder to use it. You can build those workflows directly in app. That's right, live that. No code life, baby. That's what I'm about. Now. Automation is truly a business's best friend. Today's automation systems can do so much for you. It's like having an extra team or group of teams dedicated to just handling all the repetitive tasks that that can get so tedious and frustrating for your employees. The result is increases in efficiency, decreases in burnout, and a lot of bandwidth freed up to let your employees focus on what makes them great, like solving problems and building customer relationships. And even better news is that you can get started with really simple next steps. So go ahead and click the link on screen to learn how Salesforce flow and salesforce customer360 can best work for you. We'll see you all next time.