The Future of Commerce | Leading Through Change | Salesforce

Oh, hey.

Didn't see you there. I was just getting ready. You know, we first started this series back in March. With the shelter in place, order in full effect, that meant getting on air each week was a definitely DIY situation. Do it yourself. I had to learn how to do my own tech setup at home and and how to do my own makeup too. And I don't wear makeup regularly, so I had to do a lot of research. And it kept coming back to eyes, lips and face Cosmetics. Elf simple, affordable, cruelty free and vegan. And they also stand with Black Lives Matters, which means a lot to me. And hey, let's be real. It doesn't hurt that they're from the bay right here in Oakland. Good morning. Hi, I'm Leah McGowan Hare. And welcome to another one of our live weekly conversations as part of our Leading Through Change series, a chance for you to hear from leaders who are doing their best to get through these challenging times. Before I turn it over to today's host, Salesforce EVP of Product marketing, Shannon Duffy. I want to preview the next hour. Shannon will be interviewing Elf cosmetic VP of Digital. And if you have any questions for Shannon or Ekta, please submit them in the Q and A section. Or if you're on Twitter, please use the hashtag Leading through Change. Now we'll have a special presentation on how the world of retail is being reimagined and how businesses can keep up. And as we do every week on Leading Through Change, we want to help those who need it the most. Millions of people already rely on the United Nations World Food Program for their food they need to survive. And Covid is making conditions even worse. The pandemic could double the number of people suffering from severe hunger by the end of the year. To help prevent a hunger pandemic, the world Food program is scaling up to reach 100 million people across 86 countries with life saving support. If you can, please go to salesforce.com wfp and join us in ensuring the world's most vulnerable people have enough to eat during this critical time. Through July 31, 2020, Salesforce will be matching donations up to a total of $150,000. Again, that is salesforce.com WFP with that, over to Shannon.

Thank you, Leah. And thank you all for joining us today during this unique and difficult time. So Leading Through Change is all about just that. How can we learn and how can we lead together through everything we are facing? And never in our lifetimes have we faced so many challenges all at once. The COVID 19 crisis, an economic crisis, an equality crisis with the horrific murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ashman Arbery and Rayshard Brooks. Just the latest examples of the inequalities and injustices endured by black Americans that we all have to address. And it's a challenging time. It's a scary time. And it's unlike any other time that we have faced ever before. And for those of us in business, we know the world turned upside down in March. All of those plans that we had, we had to throw out and start all over in completely new and uncharted territory. And one company that I am also a huge fan of that has been leading through the way through this is ELF Cosmetics. Ever since they launched in 2004 as a digital disruptor brand, they have always focused on listening to consumers and letting them decide. And never has the focus on digital been more important than over the past few months as E commerce has been crucial for all brands. But that's not the only space where Elf is a leader. They have been speaking up and speaking out against racial injustice. They are committed to doing their part to bring about change. And if you go to the website, their website, you'll find a list of resources for their community to get informed and involved. And I am so excited and so thrilled to welcome their VP of digital, Ekta Chopra, to join us today. Welcome, Ekta.

Hello. How are you?

I'm great. It's so good to see you. Thank you for joining us.

Thank you for having me.

So, Ekta, I just want to jump in and start on the subject of racial injustice. We have been talking about it a lot on the show and other shows about how we are all united against racism, violence and hate. And what role do you think commerce plays in these efforts to support justice and equality?

Yeah, I mean, I think if I think about my leadership, which includes our fearless leader, Trang Amin, who's been very open about racial injustice, he in fact, was the first one to come out in support of Black Lives Matter. And I would say that the biggest thing that really helps us stand for this is all starts with him. It starts by removing our own biases first. And oftentimes we don't even know that we have these biases. And until uproars happen, right, so we become complacent and nonchalant. As a woman of color in a field that is male dominated, I have had to face all these injustices as well. I'm truly grateful to work for a brand that truly stands behind every eye, lip, face and paw that Statement in itself gives me chills every time I read it. Not because I work for the company as a human being, it gives me chills. Our leader, Turangamine, as I said, was the first leader to publicly come out and support this cause. We carry this sentiment throughout our business practices. In commerce especially, it is key to stand for all the voices, faces that make us who we are. From content to storytelling, influencer communities, products that we offer, the different shades and colors that represent all communities. We, we make a conscious effort to play our part.

I love that and I love mission. That's so powerful. So you guys are doing great stuff in the space. What advice do you give other leaders for how they want to be inclusive as well with their business practices?

I would say it all starts with listening. Listen to your community and their voices. Reflect on every part of your business to determine where there are biases and practices that are not inclusive. Question everything that you do. If you need a guided plan, hire consultants that focus on this thing in itself, the diversity best practices. If you can hire a diversity and inclusivity leader, that's even better. But you know, it depends on how big the org is. So for in the instance of elf, our CEO is just that he's constantly behind this cause.

I love it. I love it. What I love about ELF is it's not just the push for racial equality where you've been speaking out. You've also been helping produce hand sanitizers to protect people. So that had to been a huge pivot from, you know, eyes, lip and face to hand sanitizer. Can you tell us a little bit about how you pivoted?

Yeah, I would say the credit really goes once again to our leadership. And you know, the change cannot happen without great leadership and alignment all across the board. Our marketing leader, Cory Marches OTO always puts consumers at the center of everything that we do, which includes being very in tune to the communities that we serve. We leveraged data and insights to inform our messaging and product strategies. We threw away any plans, any go to market plans that we had and quickly pivoted and adopted to what our consumer needs were. We launched a page called ELF Cares that shared ELF inside out. It was about everything that we were doing to support the community, what we were doing internally to keep the mental well being of our employees by having these fun town halls, et cetera. We gave, we were the first ones in like day one, we decided to give $1,000 to each one of our employees as a stipend. We donated to the local food communities and we're doing all these weekly town halls to stay connected and this allows us to be agile and adapt to new things. And you know, we were talking about sort of our consumer comments every week. The good and you know, sort of they were so heartwarming. And so it keeps the momentum going and making sure that we're doing right by our consumer.

That's amazing. It sounds like you found some opportunities during crisis. That's incredible. So you've always been a leader in the social space since your guys inception and you're an innovative, you're always trying new things and you've also been always ahead of the curve on digital efforts. So how has that helped you during this COVID 19 pandemic?

Yeah, so in this case I would say a big shout out to my friends at Salesforce. Right. And we have been on the Salesforce platform for more than two years now. Our digital transformation started with Salesforce. All the hard work and investments have paid off. Our overall digital business has grown tremendously across the full ecosystem. As we even looked at our future investments, it's doubling down on digital even further. A great example was our mobile app which was launched with Salesforce. We launched this at Elf.

Speed.

Speed at Elf is very critical. We saw the app sales triple with little or no marketing whatsoever. Our downloads tripled. Our augmented reality feature got millions of views because consumers could not walk into the store anymore. So they tried on makeup on the app itself. I would say that once again, if you don't have a digital strategy today, you're already behind the curve and probably not going to survive. If you had plans, please accelerate them because it even becomes more crucial now. So I would say that Elf definitely has been ahead of the curve.

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. And one of your decisions that was well ahead of the. You guys decided to close your brick and mortar locations a year well before the COVID 19 pandemic. Can you talk a little bit about how that impacted your business as you invested in digital?

Yeah, I would say that it was a very conscious decision and a tough one because you know, we didn't, we didn't know how our consumers were going to react. But in fact, you know, we just took all those resources and dollars and made an effort to make our digital experience really amazing. Something that was around connecting your consumer journey. Every single touch point to making sure that we were harnessing consumer data and learning what our consumers wanted. Informing our messaging strategies, our product strategies, and then personalizing each experience, every eye, lip and face comes to life on our digital Experience and then offering an amazing consumer experience that brought in augmented reality and amazing video content. And ELF Discovery, which is our content hub where you can learn how to play with your makeup and have some fun. So I think, you know, it all started with taking those resources and dollars and actually expanding our universe as a digital footprint.

That's amazing. So we don't know. People say there's no. We'll never get back to normal. Like, whatever, right. It's going to be the new normal, and we don't really know what that's going to look like. So what do you foresee in the coming years and what do you hope to get out of this? How do you hope things might change?

I think heightened awareness, never taking anything for granted and focusing on what really matters. Your health at the center of everything, and then family as well. Self care is so important. Being conscious about inclusivity and committing to being the change that we need to be. Each person needs to be responsible for change. So I do think 20, 2020 with COVID with racial injustice, you know, highlights with political, you know, environment, I think it's all about heightened awareness and not, you know, just not taking your freedom, your liberties for granted. And I do think that is something that, you know, is going to be a lesson that we should carry forward and also try to be really aware of.

I love that. Yes, we can't take anything for granted. So finally, today's the last day of June. We made it to June. Gay, gay us. And June is Pride Month. And we just did a leading through change on Pride with Megan Rapinoe and Janelle Monae. And I know ELF is huge supporters of the LGBTQ community. You got a Celebrate Pride makeup bundle to check that out and you partner with some YouTubers on some videos, like, talk about that strategy. And most importantly, what does Pride mean to you and the ELF team?

Yeah, I would say that once again, it starts with our mission, which is ELF is for every eye, lip and face and paw. What that means is that we're inclusive to all diversities, all genders, all preferences. And that is at the center of our marketing strategy on how we do campaigns and so forth. So Pride, each year has been very important to us, from creating bundles to partnering with the right influencers and of different diversity genders once again, and making sure that that voice, that tone comes across digitally to support every eye, lip and face by donating to the right causes. So all of that sort of nicely tied together is something that we continue to do. And especially during the month of Pride. It's about sort of once again raising your voices and standing together with some of the voices that have never been heard before. And ELF stand by that.

I love it. I love it. It's elevating the voices. So, last question before we go back and see if we have questions from the audience. You were telling me in our virtual green room a very beautiful story about one of your products being used by some of the nurses in the field. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about how ELF is helping first responders and the people, the healthcare workers that are going through this pandemic?

Yeah. Once again, we are very in tune with our consumers. And there we. Our daily reports around the consumer comments and everything. And one such story early on came through where, you know, sort of a nurse had sent in her. Her picture with marks all over because she had to wear a mask all day. And, you know, that was a moment of reflection. You know, sometimes we think, oh, we're not making a difference in the world. We just sell makeup. No, we are. Her comment altogether was she's been using our famous ELF putty primer and to sort of hide those marks. And she was like, it still makes me feel beautiful, and I feel like I can still come into work and put that on and not stress out about how I look, you know, and it was just such a touching story. And we get so many of these comments on our social as well as our email and people just calling us and thanking us, and it makes me so proud that I am making a difference and I am helping those first responders, you know, so. So I do think that getting close to those consumers once again and serving them just makes me so passionate and excited about what I do.

I love it. Your mission for every eye, lip, and face, putting your customers at the center, listening them, connecting with them digitally. Amazing, amazing story. So I am going to go back to my friend Leah and ask, do we have any questions from the audience?

Absolutely. And first, I just want to say thank you, Ekta. I love that story about the first responders. Made my heart swell. And I love that, you know, you are making an impact. So that's what. So please continue to walk in your purpose because you are making an impact. So thank you.

Thank you.

Our first question is from Anil on the live stream, and this is for Ekta. What strategies have you and your commerce teams adopted in the sudden shift to work from home? How has the commerce cloud played a part?

Yeah, I would say a couple of things. My whole development team and My whole team, digital team, is remote. I maybe have one or two people that were on site. So we were already in the practice of working remotely, leading teams, agile teams globally as well as all over us. For us, the shift was very good and it was very easy to make the broader organization. I would say tools like Zoom Slack have been really helpful in terms of commerce. It's in the cloud. We can run our business from anywhere. My business teams had no issues whatsoever. We didn't skip a beat. In fact, we were even more conscious about staying in tune and making sure we were looking at insights on a more constant basis and pivoting our strategies as we needed to. For instance, like, skincare has all of a sudden become a bigger category for us because people are not really focusing on color cosmetics. They're focusing on skin and doing, you know, do it yourself and making sure that they're taking care of themselves, self care. So that's how we sort of stay in tune and being remote has not impacted us in any negative way.

Awesome. Our second and unfortunately final question is for Shannon Joe on the livestream asks. The pandemic has accelerated decision making within digital transformation and many organizations are pulling advertising out of the digital platforms and reinvesting in their customer experience. Are you seeing any other trends in which commerce leaders should be paying attention?

I think customer experience is the number one trend and it will always be the number one trend. And I see Ekta nodding. I mean, the customer experience is all about why your customers choose you, why they continue to choose you, and why they advocate for you. And so regardless of the point in time or what's going on, it's all about how are you listening to your customers, how are you. You putting them at the center of everything you do, speaking their language and communicating with them in real time.

Awesome. I think we have more, but I think we have. I'm only allowed for two at this point because of our timing, so I'm going to turn it back over to you, Shannon.

Awesome. Thank you, Leah, Ekta, thank you so much for joining us today. We appreciate what ELF is doing to lead and support our communities. And thank you for sharing how ELF is innovating in their business, has chosen Salesforce to be their technology partner and is continuing their mission for every eye, lip and face. So thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you, thank you for having me.

And let's take, let's showcase some of this innovation, shall we? And to do that, I would like to introduce my colleague, Amanda Hacker, senior director of Product management for Commerce Cloud. Here at the Salesforce, Amanda and the team have put together a wonderful experience that shows our vision for retail in this new, dynamic digital first world. So, Amanda, take it away.

Thank you, Shannon. In the wake of the pandemic, retailers have had to reimagine how they engage with their customers, especially when it comes to leveraging in store inventory. In many cases, store closures have forced retailers to accelerate their digital transformation plans. And they needed to do this to meet new consumer demands for delivery options like Curbside Pickup. In this demo, we'll show you how Salesforce has been able to help our customers quickly adapt to this new normal by providing flexible fulfillment options, leveraging the power of Commerce and Salesforce order management. In this scenario, our shopper, Sydney, is browsing the Northern Trail Outfitters website and she's looking at picking up this jacket because she needs it for an upcoming camping trip. Because she needs the jacket immediately, she wants to pick it up at a store nearby. With this site built on Commerce Cloud, she's able to easily identify that this item is both in stock and available for pickup at the location in San Francisco. So she selects the San Francisco location, she adds the item to her cart, and then she goes ahead and completes checkout. Once this order is confirmed, we will see how it's routed into the store and and how we've enabled Store Associates to seamlessly fulfill online orders that are Curbside pickup. Now we're in our new order management console which is natively built on Salesforce, and the moment Sydney's order is placed, it's available in this console view. From here, we have a 360 degree view of Sydney's profile and her order details. We have visibility into how the order was routed into the store and even the payment information. Let's take a closer look how we routed this order to that store in San Francisco. Because Salesforce Order Management leverages Lightning Flow, which is a point and click solution, retailers have been able to easily adapt their routing processes and introduce new steps needed to launch a program like Curbside Pickup. Now that our order is routed to the store, let's take a closer look at the fulfillment process for Store Associates. Here we are in the Store Associate app. On this homepage, they can easily identify all orders that need to be fulfilled in their store. And as an associate, I can drill into all new orders that are awaiting assignment. Once we do that, we see the order that Sydney just placed on Commerce Cloud. And from here, as an associate, I can drill into the order details and I can prepare her order for pickup. As soon as Sydney's order is ready for pickup will trigger an email notification to Sydney with instructions on how to pick up the order once she arrives at the store. Because this email template is provided by the Salesforce platform, it can easily be configured to provide different instructions based off of the fulfillment process. You may have one instruction for curbside versus different instructions for pickup. Now, once Sydney arrives, just click that button and this will send a notification to the Store Associate app letting them know that she's outside waiting for her order. The store associate will grab her items, bring them out to Sydney and drop them off. Once they do that, they'll mark the order as fulfilled. And now that it's fulfilled, let's go back to Salesforce Order Management to see that view of the order lifecycle. Back in Order Management, we can now see that Sydney's order status is updated, fulfilled, and we've been able to go ahead and capture the payment for her order now that she's received her items. As we wrap up the demo, I also want to show how we're able to bring analytics to the retailers as they're launching these new programs. Launching a curbside pickup program requires a lot of oversight. Using the data in Salesforce Order Management, you can easily see how each location is performing. You can see fulfillment rates, cancellation rates, and even trends for products that are most popular in the store. I hope you enjoy taking a closer look at how Salesforce and Commerce Cloud have been able to allow our retailers to flexibly adjust their fulfillment processes. Now with that, I'll pass it back to you, Leah.

Thank you everyone for joining us today. You can find more about Leading through change@salesforce.com blog. And for more on the future of commerce, make sure you check out our July 16th show on how trailblazers are able to actually grow their business in this digital first world by reinventing their relationship with their customers. So relevant and so important today. Again, this is on July 16th and you can register now on the link on your screen. So please check that out because you definitely want to be a part of this digital transformation and taking it to the next level. Now before we wrap up, one more reminder. Join us in making sure millions of people worldwide do not go hungry, you know, during during this crisis. And if you can, please go to salesforce.com WFP and join us in helping this organization. Now through July 31, 2020, Salesforce will be matching donations up to 150,000. And I know this is a hard time for many of us, so if you're able to give. Give whatever you can. It will be greatly appreciated and will go a long way. And once again, we're talking about the basics of food. So please, whatever you can give, very much appreciated. Now we'll be back with our next leading through change after the 4th of July. Please be safe out there. Please wear a mask. Please take care of yourself and each other with that. Thank you.