World Economic Forum Book Club discussion

We open today's chapter with Merrill Lynch - a Salesforce client - who were the first massive business to sign with the company. Unfortunately, in 2013, they were unsatisfied with the product. Employees were not using Salesforce. Marc Benioff had to step in, and they hired someone to talk to their employees, but also to quickly fix some of the issues they were facing. After sorting out some issues, and making the platform much more user-friendly, they were once again a happy customer.

Dreamforce, Salesforce's annual conference, is a place where our author likes to "consider big ideas and pursue better versions of ourselves". Companies have to constantly evolve, and help "our customers to continue making progress".

Home Depot is the next example mentioned in this chapter. They became one of Salesforce's customers in 2007. Salesforce wanted to help them, prepare them "for the digital disruption" (this was back in 2007) but they did not want anything to do with it. They believed that their mindset "was all about the stores" - to which Benioff said: "Do they realise Amazon has no stores?". After brainstorming a few ideas, and working with them closely, Salesforce came up with a software application which linked up its associates all over the country to consult one another. In 2018, this 'hive' had 190,000 active users! Finally in 2014, the company had stooped seeing tech as a threat, but as a "tool to help its own customers".

Towards the end of the chapter, our author lists the 4 keys to customer success:
- technology will never stop evolving, and you should use these tools
- you have all the tools you need to help your customers
- customer success depends on every stakeholder
- the gap between what customers really want from business and what's possible is vanishing

Listen to what customers really want!

What did you think of today's chapter? Post your questions for Marc Benioff below!!