Service Cloud Keynote: Customer Success in the New Age of Service | Salesforce

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How how do we transform customer service? It's the question you all have been asking several times to me this week and it's the question that we are going to answer this morning. But before I do that, I want to start by thanking you. This is the largest collection of customer service professionals ever assembled. It's amazing. Over 6,500 of you are here in the room today, tens of thousands of you online, all joining to answer that one question. How do we do it? Well, the good news here at Salesforce is our trailblazers have come before us that have really driven amazing transformations. Trailblazers like Judy Tank from OpenTable who have used self service to bring agents and her customers together on the same page like never before. Trailblazers like Millen Mathura are using the power of bots to drive frontline productivity and savings for his organization. And then trailblazers like Nicole Solt from Lipper Components who are so passionate about the future of customer service that she has self organized training and learning and development programs to develop the skills of tomorrow. But if it's so easy, you ask yourselves, why don't more people do it? It's because customer service itself today is going through its biggest change and transformation ever in the fourth Industrial Revolution. What we know is those organizations that are differentiating their brands and their experiences do so by doing more than just putting customer service in the back office. You know, when I started my career 20 years ago, I worked in the contact center. I put myself through school, answering phones and getting yelled at by customers. It was a place that you went when you had a problem with a product or service you may have purchased. But today we know that those organizations that differentiate their brands and their experiences do so by putting service at the center of every moment of that customer journey. But to do that, you need to really tap into new trends and new technologies and new initiatives. And we're going to go through these today for you to help you understand how to do it. And it starts with integration. Integration today is the number one challenge for great service experiences. In fact, many of you, over 80% of you today, have systems and data that's just locked in your back office, disconnected from that service experience. And what it does is it creates an incomplete picture of how to serve your customers when the data is locked in silos. What that means is you can't take advantage of modern innovation for automation and AI because again, you only have a partial truth of who you're serving on the front line. It's also what we must realize, that customers today are highly digital. When customers experience and engage your brands, they're expecting to do so in the most consistent manner possible. And one of the most frustrating experiences we all have as customers is, is when we get a different answer online versus on the phone versus in person. And so our opportunity to drive consistency in the age of digital is super, super important. And then finally, one of the things we must realize is the workforce itself is changing. Over 80% of us today no longer spend our day at our desk. In fact, none of you here today are at your desk. But I know you're still working, I know you're still connected to the office, I know you're still accountable to your customers. And that's how we're going to structure our keynote today. Focusing on helping you how to transform service and drive success. Helping you to connect every system, helping to empower your agents with automation, helping you to embrace digital and transform service. And lastly, how to elevate your workforce and maximize productivity when working from away from the office. And to do that you need amazing platform of transformation. That's what we have here at Salesforce. The number one platform for service. What makes us so unique is we combine customer service, self service, field service, digital engagement, all in one product, all in one platform to help you transform. That means agents have for the first time consistent experiences when working with customers online and on the phone. It means you have common workflow that helps you route information across every work in your organization like never before. And it means that now for the first time, you have the power of analytics and Einstein and AI to make sure that your service interactions experience are accurate, intelligent and engaging. But platforms always need great ecosystems to maximize their value. And this is where all of you help us transform and deliver the most pervasive ecosystem in the world. Whether you're a complex B2B organization, you need deep case management or a high skill organization in B2C that just operates in a 247 always on manner, we have the platform for you. If you're a highly regulated industry or if your business itself is the mission to serve as a not for profit, we have the platform for you. And if you are one of our partners and innovators building on top of this platform, helping companies transform, this is how we work together to transform service for the next generation. And it's having Huge dividends in the world of service by a wide margin. Now, this is not a slide about the competition. You can see we're doing okay and others are not doing as well. But it's always about the value and the impact that we have together in the world. And when you think about what we power with service cloud today, over 315 million daily interactions running on service cloud. Using the power of AI to generate over 3 billion of predictions to power your frontline productivity and savings. This is how we have major impact. But I mentioned to you today it's all about the how. It's not just about the why and the what. And I want to introduce my colleague, my friend, my partner in crime, another Patterson to the stage, Sarah Patterson, to take you through our first chapter about connecting every system.

Thanks, Bill. So how do we transform service? The first step starts with connecting every system to get a complete view of your customer. But we all know that this is really hard to do, otherwise we would all be doing this already. And this is hard to do because data is everywhere. Your marketing system, your marketing teams are probably using a different system to track what your customers are doing than your customer service teams are using. You bring third party data into the mix and this gets really complicated really fast. But at Salesforce, we have known how core this is for you, providing great service. And that's why it has been core to our strategy since day one. And it all starts with the customer success platform. This is the platform that we have built our market leading, sales, service, community, cloud products on to allow you to have them seamlessly work together and get that complete view of your customer. But the world has gotten more complicated. You start to bring in marketing, you start to bring in commerce, you start to bring in different ways to connect with your customer. And this gets very complicated. And your customers, well, they're not necessarily cooperating with you to make this any easier. So let me give you an example to bring this to life. How many of you in the audience do online shopping? I thought I would give you an easy question after the Metallica and Janet Jackson concerts. All right. I do all of my shopping online. This is the only way that my two little ones at home actually have anything to wear that fits them to school. And I am a retailer's worst nightmare. Yes, me, because I use one email address when I think I'm going to get spam. I use another one when I actually place an order. And I never give out my real phone number unless I have a problem. It's no wonder companies are struggling to connect who that customer is and to be able to provide transformational service. But we want to solve this for you. And that's why you heard Parker launch this on Tuesday. We are launching the Salesforce customer 360. And what we are going to do is with this new capability, we are going to help you create one unified ID to know who your customer is. Even if they are your most demanding customer and confusing customer like me. More than this, we are going to help you create engaging experiences connecting service and marketing, service and commerce. And we're going to have these experiences available out of the box for you later this year. All right, this is fantastic. But what about your third party data? Well, you have always been able to connect in third party data on the Salesforce platform. But when I meet with customers, and I've met with a lot of you here this week, you, you continue to tell me this is hard to do. And that's why we brought MuleSoft into our product family earlier this year with the MuleSoft AnyPoint platform. When you buy this, you get access to hundreds of pre built APIs in their library that you can set up with clicks. Easy for you to pull in all of your third party data from loyalty systems, order management systems to truly get that complete view of your customer. All right, now the next step in how is taking all this information that you pulled together and now putting it in front of your agents, enabling them to see that complete view and act on it. That's where the Lightning service console comes into play. This is built on the Lightning platform So it is 100% configurable for your business needs. This means that if you are in a business where you get a high volume of questions from your customers, where is my order? How do I reset my password? This is the console for you. If you're in a business that deals with highly complex questions from your customers, maybe they take weeks to resolve and need to pass between different teams that need to see different information. This is the console for you. And even if you are in a highly regulated industry like financial services and you're dealing with some very complex questions from your customers, like dealing with someone who's had their identity stolen, you can configure this to empower your agents to provide incredible service. All right, I've been talking about this a little while. I want to invite onto the stage a customer to tell us how he's using this platform to transform service. So please join me in giving a warm welcome to the VP of Support, Transformation and Training from IBM, Bob McDonald. All right, Bob, welcome to Dreamforce.

Thank you, thank you very much.

So IBM, you are a huge global company and you have transformed your service and are envisioning the future of enterprise contact centers. Tell us a little bit about what you see.

Well, first off Sarah, thanks for giving us a chance to tell the story. Our transformation story is basically being driven by our clients expectations and our clients requirements. As we look to today's technology chatbots, I consider table stakes in what you bring in the form of AI. We believe AI is needed to be introduced at every junction of the service delivery mechanism. And then when you're talking to your customers, have AI be a complement to that process. We chose service cloud basically because its extensibility allows us to build on that platform and bring the IBM Watson technologies into the service delivery process and provide that better experience to our customers. And we're really seeing this at every part of the process from our portal to our web chats and even on the desktops of our agents as well.

I love this, but we often get asked by our customers that they want to hear the results other customers are having with our product. Can you share any of those with us today?

Yeah, I've heard that a few times this week myself. We've absolutely seen fantastic results. We've gotten a lot of assistance from our colleagues in Bluewolf and in just 18 months we rolled out 12,000 agents onto service cloud. And we've also introduced Watson chatbots which right now are deflecting 30% of our cases on a regular basis. So we're seeing results and we're not stopping there. We're about to in the next couple of weeks move over to Lightning. And we've also had a recent field service Lightning, successful pilot in Australia.

So you've got these incredible results. You have rolled out all of this to your company. What are you most proud of?

First of all, I'm most proud of the team that I get a chance to work with. They've done a fantastic job. But as we look at the way we roll out service cloud, we do believe we're servicing two client sets. We believe our support professionals are equally important in meeting their requirements to meet our customers expectations. We need to satisfy their needs. So when we looked across the service cloud platform, we saw an opportunity to bring Watson capabilities and build a solution that does skill based routing and case prioritization that right now is being deployed across those desktops. Of the 12,000 support professionals, they are seeing a 45 minute per day productivity gain. Across those 12,000 agents, every agent getting 45 minutes of productivity gain every single day. But you know what? I'd rather not talk, no disrespect, I'd rather not talk about it. Let's show you what we have because I honestly believe code talks. So I'd like to introduce a colleague of mine who was able to build the solutions that I've been talking about here to Daniel Botero has been building these Lightning consoles components and I think Daniel can show you what we have rather than just talk about it. So Daniel, come on up and let's show them what we have.

All right, thank you, Bob. And let's give a warm welcome to Daniel Botero, the lead engineer from IBM on Watson. All right, Daniel, thank you for joining us here.

Hi Sarah. First of all, thanks for having us here. And I'm very passionate about technology and the main reason is because opportunity like this one, where I have the chance to communicate with the community and to share how we build things and how to use them. And I strongly believe that these opportunities are for everyone out there. And that's why I volunteer in nonprofit organizations. I'm organizing of meetups and lately I have been working on a project to surface IBM latest technologies to the new generation.

I love this. So you are sharing your passion for technology with your community and teaching them how to code using IBM's latest technologies and you are actually going to pay it forward also with us here today by taking us through a live demo in Lightning. So let's pull up the demo and Daniel, take us through it.

Thank you. So at IBM right now we're working on optimizing the service console for our agents. And with Lightning it's very easy to customize, set up and iterate. So let's get started by clicking the gear icon and selecting edit page. The app builder is open and here by drag and drop you can customize the page layout as you wish.

So the key word that I heard there was drag and drop because I don't know how to code but I love a custom experience and so it's great that you can create that without being an engineer like yourself.

Yes, that is correct. Let me show you how. On the left side we have a list of all the components that you can drag and drop. The first group are pre built components like community 360 which will give your agents extra information about your client's activity in their website. Below that list we have custom components like Watson Discovery for Salesforce by IBM that right now it's available to all Salesforce customers in the App Exchange.

All right, so Watson Discovery, this is something that you and your team built. You've got a captive audience here. 10 Tell us, how can this help everyone's business?

So Watson Discover is an efficient way of finding the right content across all your data. And it doesn't matter what the data is with this component, that data can be locally in Salesforce Knowledge Base or it can be in third party applications like Box or SharePoint. And now by having in the service console, the agents have the power to find the right content and solve those cases faster than ever.

I love this. So everyone here is now gonna go and install this from the App Exchange, right? Yes. Okay, now let's take a step back. And at IBM, sometimes your customer questions are really complex and they take a little while to resolve. And sometimes you've got to pass those between different case teams that need to see different information. How do you handle that without cluttering up what the agent's seeing?

Once we move July in Sara, this is going to be very easy. So let's go back to your scenario. A case just scale up to a 3 agent and some sales opportunities is relevant for this agent, but that information is not relevant to a tier one agent. But we don't need to worry about that with the Lightning experience because we can select what we want to show or hide from the page layout. And I believe this looks pretty awesome. And just by clicking Save, we can send it to production.

That is awesome. All right, so we just created this custom experience here in Lightning, and like Daniel said, sometimes you need to send this between different agent teams for them to solve the case. And what's great about building this on Lightning is that you get access to all of these great productivity features like macros. Now, macros help you automate routine tasks that your agents have to do over and over, like escalating a case. So let's run that macro and see how the case layout changes. All right, as we watch that, Daniel, we've got a lot of people in the audience here who might be on Classic and considering a move to Lightning. What tips do you have for them?

So, first of all, working with Classic, it's very easy. So if you have some coding skills, please go ahead, try to create your custom components. But if not, you don't need to worry about it. It's as easy as drag and drop. And as we do it in IBM, work closely with your final user, understand their needs, because their feedback is very important.

Awesome. All right, thank you for Sharing this with us, Daniel, it's your first Dreamforce and you've demoed for us.

Thank you.

Give it up for Daniel and thank you to Bob. That was absolutely incredible. Maybe it could be you demoing here next year. All right. What's phenomenal about this is that we just saw how IBM, one of the largest companies in the world, is transforming their service with service cloud. But we are making this available to any size company, any size support team. We have taken the best practices we've learned from helping companies transform service, and we have put all of those into our Service Cloud Essentials edition. This is your easy way to get started if you're a company that has five or 10 people working in support. All right, our next step in the how is going to be delving into the world of AI. And to do that, I am excited to welcome to the stage my colleague, Martha Walchuck.

Thank you, Sarah. All right. Once you connect your business, you can put service at the center. And at the heart of service are your agents. They are your everyday superheroes. And you've asked us, how can we empower them? Because, look, today their job is hard. Right now they are sitting behind a desk, they've got multiple windows open, they are toggling between those different screens and trying to remember every step that it takes to close all those different kinds of cases. It's overwhelming and it's only becoming more complex. And as service leaders, you've asked us, how can we use AI to empower our teams? What is the right strategy? Because we have KPIs to meet and we understand that. And in working with you over the last couple of years, we figured out that the strategy comes down to three key things and it's based on the complexity of the work. It starts with automating those common questions you get all the time. Take those off of your agents plates. And as they're working on more complex cases, you need to assist them with the right information at the right time. Let me give you an example. Right now, agents use knowledge to close all kinds of different cases. But the trick is often finding the right article. And with machine learning, we can scan the current case, compare it to past cases, and how articles have been used to serve up the right article from the moment the agent starts to work. And at the highest end of the complexity spectrum, and in this world of the fourth industrial revolution, you need a new way to educate your team. And that is the power of Trailhead. And we have built all of this right into the platform for you to Take advantage of. And it starts with automating those common questions. Deliver them right inside of a self service experience. And and with Lightning Flow, you can guide your customers through common questions, how to return an order or how to sign up for a loyalty program. And we know your customers want to talk to you on real time channels. You can now build automation declaratively right into those channels. In fact, you could build it once and deploy it across messaging, across chat, and now even into smart speakers with Einstein Voicebots. And this is about empowerment. And automation can do a lot of things in terms of answering simple questions and gathering information. But you need your agents, they need the context. With the platform, you can seamlessly hand a conversation from a bot right to the right agent to help your customers. And now that they are working on those more complex cases, you need to assist them with guidance and AI in the heart of their workspace. You heard Sarah talk about easily configuring the lightning console. And you can guide your agents with Lightning Flow step by step. Think about this for new agents who are just onboarding or for any industry where you have regulations you need to comply with. And Einstein is also at work here. It's kind of like that veteran agent coaching your team. It's learning from past cases, pre filling fields, triaging cases to save your agents time and recommending articles. And one of the most difficult things is making the right step for an agent. Remembering the promos. Is this the right time to make an offer? And now with Einstein next best action, you can combine your business strategy with machine learning to serve up the right step for your agents. And look, we get it. With all this new technology and those increasing customer demands, you need a new way to train your team with trailhead. There are trails available right now for how to deal with new technology and also to help them with those soft skills. Think about how to de escalate tough situations that's available for you right now. And we know that for your business you have your own needs. And with my trailhead, you can create your own trails. All right, so one incredible company that is the leader in the hospitality industry is Marriott. And they are embracing this strategy and they are laser focused on empowering their employees. So let's roll the Marriott film.

Travel is about the humanity of the world. People travel to see their families, to celebrate moments that are once in a lifetime. We want to be part of that. We want to make those experiences as frictionless and seamless as possible.

We started as a root beer stand in 1927 and now we're the world's largest hospitality company with close to 7,000 hotels and 30 brands. And we still want to make sure that people feel the human aspect of our business. We had a real challenge on our hand. Our agents had to navigate different systems, screens, applications, and they needed to do it fast across so many brands, countries, languages. It was very onerous on them. But always core was this idea of taking care of our people so they can take care of our guests.

The way you do that is through hiring amazing, talented associates who serve from their heart. And then you back those associates up with Best in Read technology. The beauty of the Salesforce platform is it gives us a 360 degree view of our customer.

So whether it's preferences in pillow type or food and beverage or experiences they want in the local marketplace, Salesforce is the tool enabling our associates to deliver a superior guest experience.

Anytime you can surprise and delight someone with service, you need information to do that. And service cloud is the heart. And we have the right information at the right time delivered to our associate at the moment of that customer interaction. Because the customer interaction is the moment of truth.

Salesforce has empowered us to be able.

To service our guests at a higher level.

I'm smiling and I know that they're smiling.

It's a win win on both ends.

The fact that we have one system rolled out globally is enabling us to innovate and execute in a way that we never could have done before. Guest expectations have changed. They really want a highly personalized experience that meets their needs. And mobile is really a key enabler of deepening that relationship.

What makes Apple Business chat and service cloud so powerful is when a customer engages with Marriott, we're engaging back with one of our associates. It's actually servicing the customer real time.

Our goal is to create, create raving brand fans to incredible experiences. Not just experiences within the four walls of our hotel, but along the entire travel journey.

That's what Salesforce can do for our team, is they can help them spend time creating the magic moments of travel. Hospitality is powered by people and our people are powered by Salesforce.

It's an amazing film Marriott. One of the ways they're transforming the guest experience is by bringing the convenience of smart speakers right into some of their hotel rooms. And this week when I walked into my room at the Marriott, I took one look around and I thought, there's one thing missing to make this week a success. More pillows. You gotta rest these feet at the end of the day, right? So all I needed to do was ask Alexa, tell Marriott to send up three more pillows.

Yes. Would you like foam or feather?

I love how easy this is for me as a guest. But more importantly, it enables Marriott to empower their associates to respond faster. Now the question we've all been asking. How? Well, let me take you behind the scenes and show you how we built this. Here you're looking at the builder experience. It lets companies like Marriott declaratively build interactions like this one once and deploy them on multiple channels, from smart speakers to messaging channels. Here is the dialogue for the question that I just asked. And Myriott can add a step for any guest whose profile is blank and ask if they want to save the preference for future stays. And in a couple of clicks, we've saved it. So let's give it a whirl. Alexa, tell Marriott I'd like foam pillows.

Yes.

A Marriott associate will bring them shortly.

Would you like to update your preference.

In your guest profile?

This is incredible. And allows Marriott's associates to respond faster and remember preferences like this for future stays. But innovation like this doesn't end just inside the room. So let me take you back just a couple of weeks ago when my five siblings and I decided to surprise my parents and Don and Molly with a trip to celebrate their 45th wedding anniversary. Now I can assure you, after raising all six of us, they definitely deserve it. And I can also assure you that I'm going to find out what it's like to be grounded as an adult because I didn't exactly ask if I could show this picture or tell this story. Hi, mom and dad.

Love you.

All right, so when my siblings and I were talking about how we could make this really special, I thought, well, let me ask the Marriott team. They'll know. So I picked up my phone and I went to the Marriott app. Here. Marriott is embedding service for guests around the world. And when I tap on help, there are topics and knowledge articles available to me. But at the end of the day, I'm a millennial, so I want a message. And they've embedded that here. When I tap, I am greeted into a conversation. It's referencing the reservation I made, but I have a question and all I need to do is ask. And here the Einstein platform's at work. It parses my question using natural language processing and it returns back the Marriott moments that are available now. That one in the center for Cooking class is right up my parents alley. They love to cook. Then I see we have a little problem. My mom is allergic to shrimp, so I Want to see if there's any way to change the menu? So I just ask. And this is the power of the platform. After Marriott has answered my question and gathered my information, this is the point where an associate needs to get involved. And it was seamless for me as a guest and it's seamless for associates. So let's check in with one of those very talented associates, Vince. Here you're looking at Vince's Lightning service console. Now notice across the top, he's working on multiple conversations because that's the power of messaging. And he has been pushed my case based on his skill set. And when he accepts it, he has everything in one screen on the left, he has all of my contact information, my preferences, and he even has that reservation that I made. Now this lives in a third party system and we've used Mulesoft to bring that in here to Vince's view. So let me take you behind the scenes and show you what that looks like. Here we're looking at the Mulesoft visualizer. Now this may look a little bit different, but at the bottom it allows companies like Marriott to view and understand their application networks. They can see their APIs and all their integration assets. We've got connections to the reservation system and the profile system and we can bring those in to the data and the process that live in Salesforce. So we can search for, serve it up to agents like Vince at the right time. Now let's go back to the console and take a look. What's happening at the center here is that conversation that's been seamlessly handed to Vince. He can scroll through and he knows exactly what it is we need to change. He doesn't have to ask me to repeat myself. He can use quick text to let me know he's on the job. And then lightning flow is at work here. It's suggesting the next action for him to take. And he is guided step by step through the process to make sure that there will be no shrimp anywhere on the menu. And in just a couple of clicks, he can offer me the new menu options. I'm going to go tacos, Mom. I know how you love those. All right, so three simple steps and he's done. But Einstein is coaching him. Here, take a look at the left. Einstein is bringing in Marriott's business rules along with predictions to, to recommend to Vince to offer me a complimentary dessert tasting for my parents. This may just get me off the naughty list. And it was just that easy for Vince. He could really focus on the conversation with me. Now we better let Vince get back to work because I'm all set. I'm probably going to be trouble free. So let's give a big shout out thank you to Vince and Swati. These are just a few of the ways that Marriott is integrating technology into the guest and the associate experiences to empower them. And another incredible thing that they're doing is embracing this world of digital. And to talk more about that, I'd love to introduce the queen of digital, Meredith Flynn Ripley. Meredith, take it away.

Thank you, Martha. I think I'm going to take Martha to all of my meetings and do those intros. Thank you. So I am truly passionate about digital transformation because you see, I was an entrepreneur for a lot of my career and then CEO of a company whose technology powers a large amount of our digital engagement offering. And I love working with customers and talking to them and helping them understand how to embrace all of these digital channels. Because when it comes to digital, we are all living in these channels an incredible amount of time. And we're not just living in one channel, we're living in many channels. We expect service. It's a given now. So how does a company embrace this? Well, at Salesforce our mantra is innovation is everywhere. And we've created the first conversational platform for service. One unified system that combines self service with a full digital channel portfolio powered with bots. Now with this platform approach, how do you start self service, a natural extension of your website. Build that mobile portal quickly and easily and then with our new CMS capabilities, it's gonna be even better looking than before. So that's step one. Step two is determine your channel lineup. Understand your customer's channel and device preferences. We recommend doing a channel check. Talk to your IT professional. Find out how many customers are accessing your website via a mobile browser or desktop. What are the communications applications they're using today on a regular basis and then it's as simple as being in all of them. Chat, social messaging is seeing incredible growth Now. We were thrilled last year to announce our partnership with Apple Business Chat and we were excited to see the Apple Salesforce partnership be expanded earlier this week. We're also thrilled to welcome WeChat to our service cloud family and we're going to be adding many more digital channels into the service cloud console world. So think about the next time your customers are on a mobile device calling you. If you actually give them an option via a button right there to message you, over half will choose that.

That is huge.

Call deflection to a preferred Channel and a more cost effective channel. Think about the impact that's going to make on your business and then layer in the bots Martha showed you with our bot builder, you can build that bot to handle that top customer interaction once and then literally turn it on. In all the channels, our customers are seeing upwards of 65% of their top customer interactions being handled entirely by bottom. And then when it needs to seamlessly transfer to the agent, really reinforcing our product philosophy of bots and agents working together as a team, really this is a learning journey that we're all on together. And of course, one of the best ways to learn is when we bring our customers together to share their experiences. So I am actually thrilled to welcome to the stage yet another Patterson, the true digital channel trailblazer. The EVP of Contact SVP of Contact Center. Shannon Patterson from Marriott.

Thank you.

So this is your first Dreamforce.

It is.

I don't know how you top this.

Right.

We were thrilled to have Marriott on the stage with us last year talking about plans for digital transformation. And I know it's been a huge journey in midst of combining Starwood and Marriott properties. That project was 20 million lines of code. That's crazy.

Amazing.

You've still embraced the digital channels. So most companies would kind of wait on that. What does Marriott do to make that possible?

Well, I think it was pretty clear to us after the Starwood acquisition that our members were not going to wait for us. And so we knew we had to move forward, integrating but innovating at the same time. And in my area, specifically the customer engagement centers, we had already kicked off a transformation and had started working with Salesforce to innovate. And it was perfect timing because as we brought on the legacy Starwood organization, they were thrilled to have this new platform and it really allows us not just to enable our associates, but also to meet our customers and the channels that they want to be met in.

Wow. Yeah. So we've heard this a little bit about this unique definition of a customer at Marriott.

Right.

Like you treat your associates and your employees as customers and you have a really unique perspective because you started at Marriott as an intern, you have a 22 year career. I think almost all of your titles have digital and transformation in them. So how does it work?

Yeah, so you're right. I started at Marriott as an intern. I was a summer intern, never left. I loved it. It's amazing culture at Marriott. I met my husband there, my four daughters went to the daycare there. It is to say I bleed Marriott Red is an understatement. But really, Marriott, at the heart of our values is the fact that if you take care of the associate, they will take care of the guest, and the guest will keep coming back. And I need to take this as an opportunity to recognize two of our heroes. I love that term, Martha. So we have Teresa and we have Courtney. These are two of our frontline associates.

So I have to.

So Theresa, you saw highlighted in that beautiful video, but Courtney, I met Courtney. Courtney works out of our San Antonio office as well as Teresa, but she was literally running up and down the aisles screaming about how amazing the Salesforce platform was. And she is, you know, one of many associates that feel that way. But really, we approach everything with the lens of how do we make it easier for our associates and know that therefore, it'll help our. Help our guests in our. Our members.

That is awesome. So you have accomplished so much. By the way, her daughter is adorable. We were FaceTiming and her daughter is in the video.

She thought Meredith was a family member, so she was, like, right here on my shoulder trying to get in the.

Shot, learning all about digital transformation.

Her mother.

So you've done so much. What is. I know it's not the end, though. So what is on your future roadmap? What can you share with folks?

So another core value at Marriott is success is never final. So we are aggressively moving ahead with Einstein.

Right.

So another thing we do is we look and we see what can we do to help our associates. And we're seeing significant volumes with things like password resets.

Right.

Lower value things. How do we automate that in a way that allows our agents to spend more time with members doing higher touch, providing amazing service? And then I have to give you and Martha credit. Like, I feel I've learned so much about Trailhead this week, and I'm actually really excited to go back and think about how we can use that as well.

Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing your insights. I know you're inspiring everyone here. Thank you for all that you do. And let's give Shannon a big round of applause.

Thank you.

Awesome.

So we've seen how Marriott is extending their data with AI and automation, with human conversations across all these digital channels and making a huge impact on their customer satisfaction and their employee satisfaction. So to learn more about how any company can meet their changing employee needs, I am psyched to welcome to the stage my awesome colleague, Dana Cherry.

Thank you, Meredith. So many of the innovations that you have all learned about here today and this entire week, don't only apply to your service agents who are sitting at their desks managing multiple cases across multiple monitors. They also apply to those employees who are out in the field. Those employees who are face to face with your customers every day on the ground delivering service. But oftentimes, the tools and technology that they need to use gets overlooked. But that can't be the case anymore, because guess what? Field service has changed. Field service has evolved beyond the traditional notions that we have all come to believe it. And we need to be sure to empower and equip those employees who are delivering service on the ground with their customers. Equip them with the right tools and the right information and the right insight to deliver the service that your customers and all of us have come to expect. And this is the case across industries. Again, field service has changed. Field service has evolved. Whether it's that home health care nurse who needs to know the patient care plan for the patient they're going to visit, or that engineer who's going to the 60th floor of a tower to run diagnostics on an elevator, or that wealth advisor or financial advisor who needs to know what plans to offer to their customer when they go to their home. All of these employees are field service employees. All of these employees are face to face with your customers every day. And that's becoming increasingly the case. And we talk about the how. How do you equip these employees? How do you empower them to deliver those transformative experiences? Well, this is why we are so excited about Field Service Lightning, because Field Service Lightning gives you the tools, gives you the capabilities to equip your employees with the right information, the right guidance, the right tools, the right technology to get the job done. With Field Service Lightning, you can surface IoT insights about any connected device so that when your employee arrives on site, they can know exactly what's going on with a product and be able to deliver the proactive service that your customers expect. And as you're going to see shortly, with predictive travel time, you can look at Google traffic patterns to intelligently predict how long it will actually take for your employee to get to a job and reshuffle any of the work to accommodate that. Now, to show you some of these incredible technologies through the eyes of another one of our trailblazers, I'd like to introduce the Container Store. So just last year, when I was nine months pregnant, I waddled down to the Container Store just up the street along with my husband. And yes, all six foot six of him waddled with me too.

In solidarity.

And we went to the Container Store to purchase bins. Bins for all the baby clothes that we had just to mass but had nowhere to put in our one bedroom apartment. Because this is what the Container Store does. They provide the innovative solutions, organization solutions and storage solutions to help customers maximize any size, space and save time. And I'm just one of millions of customers that's had this experience, this transformative experience. Another one of those customers is in our demo and that's Allison. Alison just moved to the Bay Area and she loves her new place, but her closet isn't big enough for her expanding wardrobe. So guess what? She goes to the Container Store and she purchases a new alpha brand closet. She then visits the Container Store portal and here she's greeted by this incredible experience. Now this was built with our community cloud content management system and you can use that to build and design a custom solution with for self service for your customers. From here she can click on a recommended article to get more information about that closet installation and she can also book her appointment directly from the screen. Field Service Lightning Appointment Management is serving up the jobs that she can select from the appointments that she can select from based on location, the skills needed, the time, any other key business rules. So now let's take a look at what that job looks like for our dispatcher. This is our dispatcher console and this is where our dispatcher has a complete view of all the work that's happening in the field, whether they're being done by employees or third party contractors or even crews. Now apply this to your business. How could you use this for your mobile workforce? In the center of our screen is that new job, that closet installation for Alison's closet. And when we hover over it, we can see a prediction, a a prediction that this job is going to get done 23% faster. But again, how? Well, Field Service Lightning is packed with intelligence capabilities and here it's looking at past service appointments to predict how long it will actually take to get this job done. It's also looking at Google traffic patterns to again predict how long it will actually take to get to this job. Now let's take an even closer look at that work order. When we look at this work order for this appointment, we can see more information, more information about our customer over on the left and knowledge articles to support this job over on our right and at the top is Einstein Work order classification at work. This is recommending additional products that might be needed for this job. It's looking at past work orders and it's intelligently predicting what additional parts might be needed to help our installer do this job. So we're going to go ahead and add those additional products and we're all set. But guess what? We're fast forwarding because guess what? It is closet installation day, everybody. It is the day that Allison has been waiting for. And she gets a message, and she gets a text message reminding her about this appointment, this 9am appointment.

But guess what?

She went to a concert last night and she's not really feeling up for it. So she goes ahead. I'm sure many of you can relate. She goes ahead and she responds to this message and she's trying to select a new appointment time. Fortunately for her, she can select an appointment time here and it's going to be reflected back in Field Service Lightning. So she's now just pushed that appointment to the afternoon. All right, now we're getting closer to that new appointment time. Now we're getting closer to one o'.

Clock.

And she gets another message. This message is letting her know exactly who's coming to her home and exactly when that installer will arrive. Everyone, imagine the increase in customer satisfaction that you can provide by letting your customers know who's coming into their home and exactly when they're going to be there. And doing this in their channel of choice. Who am I kidding? All of our channel of choice, text messaging. This is powerful. Now let's check in with our installer because our installer, Leah, has just arrived. Everybody wave to Leah is our third party installer. She is our third party installer at the Container Store and she has just arrived at Alison's home to do the job. Now, she manages her day with the Field service Lightning mobile app, and from here she can get a complete view about that job even if she has no cell service. So to get started on that job, guess what? Lightning Flow for Field Service is on her side. Because with Lightning Flow for Field service, you can build all the steps needed to guide any worker through any job. This is great for any user, but it's especially great for those newer users or those third party contractors who are just getting up to speed on your company or on a job. Now, Leah's going to go ahead and do that safety check because we know first things first is safety. Next, she's going to go through the steps of that installation and she's a speedy worker. So she gets this done in five seconds flat. Now, to indicate that that job is complete, Leah's generated a service report that even includes pictures of the completed project, that completed closet installation. She's then going to capture our customer signature directly inside the mobile app right there on site. Now, the flow does not stop there. Our customer Allison, is very happy with her closet. And guess what? Leah has another step in that flow, letting her know to offer Alison another quote for a custom closet. It turns out that Alison also wants to upgrade her guest bedroom. So Leah, our installer, generates that quote and we have turned that customer service appointment into a upsell opportunity, folks. We've just transformed what is traditionally known as a cost center into a profit center. Now that is transformation. So this is how the Container Store will use the customer success platform to continue transforming how they equip their employees and how they impact empower their mobile employees to deliver incredible customer experiences. Now with that, I would like to introduce EVP of technology for the Container Store to tell us more about what they're doing. John Thrailkill. John, Hi. I'm great.

Hello.

Thank you for being here. Thank you for being a trailblazer. John, the Container Store has a great campaign going on that's focused on where space comes from. Can you tell us more about the vision for that campaign and how customer experience plays a role in that?

Absolutely. Our purpose as a business is really about making sure that our customers can accomplish the projects they want to accomplish in their home, maximize their space, and make the most of what they have.

Awesome. You guys have been on a journey with Salesforce for over three and a half years. Tell us, what were some of the challenges you were facing before you started that journey, and how have you brought customer service and field service to life?

It's been an amazing journey and really it started with a very simple approach to just email and chat and trying to find a way to do a better job with that than with a previous provider we had. The reality is that when we first started, we never would have predicted that we were going to then expand that relationship into other parts of our business and then to now have the chance to do something like field service. Lightning has been transformational, as you can see from that demonstration. The fact is that that is the weakest part of the entire experience for a customer if it's not done right. And all the work you do in marketing, all the work you do in product development, all the work you do with great store employees and to get that customer to make a purchase, everything can fall apart if they don't have a fantastic experience with that installer in their home. And so that, to me, is really a culmination of all the work of all these great people, and that's why we're so excited about this.

That's awesome. You touched on the seed and grow portion of what you've been doing.

Yes.

You've been at the container store since 1991. Tell us about how you've evolved, especially as we talk about the evolving workforce.

Sure. You know, and very similar to Shannon, this is the only real job I've ever had out of college. It's pretty amazing. And I started as a salesperson in our stores and never would have predicted that I would have had the career path that I have had. The great thing is that along the way, I've always had the chance to take. Take on new responsibilities, new opportunities that have come up. And I think that's the key message, I would say, especially to young people getting started, is you need to be open to what's in front of you and not always assuming that the path you're on is going to have some definite ladder to it or an end to it. The best jobs that are out there are the ones that haven't been invented yet, and I've been lucky to have three or four of those in my career.

That's powerful stuff. And there are some great parallels to how organizations can be thinking about growth and development in their own workplace. Tell us. Give us some advice. Give the audience some advice about how to do that transformation.

Well, the first thing is coming to something like this and experiencing Dreamforce, I think in the right way is key to opening your mind to what is out there and to possibilities. The challenge of business and all businesses is success, is the fact that you get good at something. And then you think, well, we should just leave this alone because we've got it now, and let's just ride that as long as we can ride that. And what you have to do is constantly open yourself up to new ideas, to crazy new ideas, and to listen to that little voice in your head that says, should we try this and try it, Test and learn from those things. Find a way to improve the business, even if it's something you think you're doing very well at.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here, John, and thank you so much for being a trailblazer.

Thank you.

With that, I'd like to welcome back to the stage, Bill Patterson.

You know, you have just seen this entire service platform in action. You've seen customer service, you've seen field service, you've seen digital, you've seen self service, all working together seamlessly to transform the business of our customers, customers of all of our trailblazers. And I've got some news for you. The platform is only getting better. Over the last set of releases, we've released hundreds of new features in this platform. And one of the great things about this ecosystem is the partnership we have with you to keep that feedback and keep that innovation pipeline open between you and your organization and us and our engineering teams. So many features we released, I can't even read all the fonts on this slide. Fantastic. But I'll end today where we started. This is the largest collection of service trailblazers in the world. And our ask is to continue to keep this trailblazing community growing vibrant and developing into the future. How you can do that is to continue your learning online with trailhead, attend other networking sessions and events that we have here at this conference, and if you can't maximize your time because everything else is so busy here, join our community. This is where we get the best of insights from you, get your feedback, incorporate that into our innovation pipeline and we continue to develop and grow this great opportunity together. Sadly, today all keynotes have to come to an end. But I have a great message for you. We're going to end in the best way possible with puppies and with ice cream. Join us after this event, immediately following here at the Marriott, at the Service Lodge, where we can actually network with each other, inspire one another and continue to challenge one another to transform this great opportunity called customer service. Thank you very much for attending and best of luck into the future.