January 2023
Member Spotlight
Throughout 2023, SECC will recognize one member every month, providing an organizational profile and highlighting the member's accomplishments in the smart energy space.
About Salesforce
Salesforce makes cloud-based software designed to help businesses find more prospects, close more deals and wow customers with amazing service. Customer 360, its complete suite of products, unites sales, service, marketing, commerce and IT teams with a single, shared view of customer information, helping organizations grow relationships with customers and employees alike. Salesforce also builds industry-specific products to accelerate time to value for customers across more than a dozen industries, including Energy & Utilities.
The World’s #1 CRM, Now for Utilities
Salesforce has supported the utility business for years, with over 500 utilities around the globe using its cloud software. In 2018, the company committed more deeply to the industry with an investment in Vlocity Energy & Utilities, a native Salesforce CRM (Customer Relationship Management) Sales and Service platform built specifically for the Utilities industry. The acquisition of Vlocity led to the formal launch of Salesforce Energy & Utilities Cloud in 2020.
Bringing Utilities and Their Customers Together
Salesforce customers are known for creating lifetime customer value amidst changing markets. Salesforce’s utility customers navigate the new energy landscape with personalized service, unified customer data and business agility. Salesforce Energy & Utilities Cloud is differentiated by delivering:
- a growing library of preconfigured, extendable utility business processes that provide efficiency via automation;
- data analysis and intelligence to enable personalized engagement;
- out-of-the-box integrations and APIs that connect to utility CIS and billing systems and ensure real-time data profiles; and
- an industry-specific data model with over 300 utility-specific objects, enabling faster implementation and accelerated time to value.
For more product information, visit our website.
Industry Recognition for Utility Customer Experience
Industry experts at Salesforce develop solutions to help utilities modernize their businesses, save time and lower costs. Utilities invest in Salesforce to move to the cloud and transform the customer experience. In 2021, Salesforce’s comprehensive suite of Energy & Utilities solutions won it a position as a leader in IDC Marketscape’s Worldwide Customer Experience Management Solutions for Utilities 2021 Vendor Assessment. While some may know Salesforce as a CRM generalist, its steady industry focus, combined with ongoing customer innovation on Energy & Utilities Cloud, has resulted in an array of solutions spanning utility operations.
Customer-Centric Utilities Keep Up with Data
Utilities are realizing the promise of a customer engagement revolution that began years ago with smart meter data and is now reaching a peak with cloud and digital technology advancements.
On any given day, Salesforce customers deliver an average of 2.6 billion marketing messages, create four million leads and log 19.7 million customer service conversations. In addition, Salesforce Einstein delivers more than 80 billion AI predictions. That is a lot of data.
Salesforce’s customer data platform connects customer data, so every team has insight into how customers interact with the utility on every platform. Applying automation and intelligence in real-time, utilities can now:
- Consolidate applications and simplify your platform to save costs: On average, most Salesforce companies come in with 976 different software applications just to keep the company running. Utilities streamline with Salesforce to minimize software, hardware and human resources.
- Go beyond the utility bill: As utility business models evolve, utilities are scaling their ability to launch new customer programs and services. A great example is Centrica’s New Energy Platform; see the short YouTube video here.
- Eliminate customer friction: Utilities create seamless customer journeys between mobile apps, chatbots and live service agents. For commercial and industrial customers with multiple products and sites, energy suppliers shorten the quote-to-contract time from weeks to days.
- Drive Utility Customer Growth with Data and Cloud Strategies. To thrive in today’s energy economy, utilities are designing robust new customer offerings and more comprehensive customer journeys. The Salesforce platform helps utilities lead the digital transformation.
- Stop swiveling to get the 360-view: IT staff can use pre-built integration processes and MuleSoft APIs to consolidate data from multiple backend systems to provide agents with unified customer data profiles.
- Support a work-from-anywhere world: During the pandemic, Salesforce customers quickly pivoted their utility service agents and field service teams to work remotely. Within days, their teams had all the needed mobile and digital tools and tech. Salesforce studies showed that these utilities delivered higher service and satisfaction. Remote support and customer self-service capabilities are now a mainstream part of utility operations.
- Engage and empower employees: Now, utilities can easily configure Salesforce’s intuitive service consoles with clicks, not code. With Trailhead, Field Service Cloud and Experience Cloud, utilities are delivering onboarding, training, real-time assistance and certifications for their employees and partners from anywhere, at any time.
All of this is accomplished with the highest global data security standards on Salesforce’s Hyperforce platform, compliant with FedRAMP.
Partnering for an Equitable Energy Transition
Equality and sustainability are two of Salesforce’s core values. Salesforce champions regional initiatives that prioritize front-line communities. Salesforce Impact Ventures invests in cleantech and justice-oriented startups. Salesforce works with energy suppliers to decarbonize the company’s energy consumption and, in 2022, announced that it is officially a Net Zero company. And the Salesforce products and solutions team has created program management solutions for utility clean energy and low-income programs.
Utility customer expectations are evolving quickly amidst a changing climate, an accelerating energy transition and a digital revolution. Salesforce Energy and Utilities is delighted to join the SECC and continue its partnerships with utilities on this journey.
