How Data Cloud is transforming industry applications

What is Data Cloud?

Salesforce Data Cloud aggregates customer data from external data sources and siloed applications, providing a 360-degree view of the customer – a vision promised for the last 30 years. This Customer Data Platform enables data-driven insights and actions directly within the Salesforce core platform, using clicks, not code. Although this added complexity requires a more rigorous and intentional implementation process, with 80% of the project focused on planning and 20% on configuration, the benefits to business teams are substantial. The unified customer profile enhances the ability to personalize insights into customer behavior and actions, fostering personalized engagement and Customer Experiences. Data Cloud serves as the foundation for AI Agents (Agentforce), enabling customer interaction that boosts customer satisfaction and reduces operational costs.

Customer360

The promise of a Customer Data Platform (CDP) like Salesforce Data Cloud, Customer 360, etc, has always been the north star for Salesforce. For most organizations, customer data is siloed across multiple systems, not just Salesforce, and often codified in different formats. Salesforce Data Cloud provides a unified customer profile with clicks, not code, harmonizing data (unify, manage, cleanse) from these external data sources. This creates a unified platform, making the data visible to low-code and pro-code tools like Flow and Apex, enabling actionable insights and supporting informed decisions. This comprehensive data solution fosters seamless integration and insights into customer behavior, enhancing Customer Experiences.

Data Cloud, the Customer 360 platform, and Agentforce are fully integrated. This seamless integration is made possible by the metadata framework that underpins Salesforce. It connects Salesforce Data Cloud with the core platform, creating a unified platform and making it available to Agentforce. Metadata serves as a significant differentiator, driving configuration, simplifying integration, and enabling insights into customer behavior. This framework allows Agentforce to deliver better, more personalized experiences and supports enhanced User experiences and customer interaction.

“Agentforce understands your business. You’ve taught Salesforce your business with metadata – with custom fields. It knows that there is a ‘High Value’ custom field. It interpreted that.” – John Kucera, SVP Product Management, Salesforce

Connecting data

What makes Salesforce Data Cloud powerful is its ability to connect external data sources, harmonize the data, and make it available to the core platform, surfacing it to AI—Agentforce. Positioned at the center of everything Salesforce does, Data Cloud enables real-time insights and data-driven insights that support Customer Experiences and informed decisions. Data can be copied into Data Cloud or managed through Zero Copy for data lakes like Snowflake, Google, Microsoft, or AWS, creating a comprehensive data solution within a unified platform.

Zero Copy means that the data remains in its original location, but it’s available in real time, making Salesforce Data Cloud a real-time data platform. For many of your external data sources, a subset of their data is copied in near real-time into Data Cloud through easily implemented, seamless integrations. This enables actionable insights that support enhanced workflows, helping business teams make informed decisions based on data-driven insights.

“Data Cloud is the heartbeat of the Salesforce Platform.” – Rahul Auradkar, EVP & GM of Unified Data Services & Einstein, Salesforce

Extending the metadata framework

At a high level, the data is stored in objects called Data Lake Objects (DLOs). For Zero Copy external data sources, the DLO is a reference to the data location. Data Model Objects (DMOs) are virtual objects related to DLOs and are used to harmonize and normalize the data, creating a unified customer profile. There are over 100 standard DMOs that you can extend with custom fields, or you can create custom DMOs. When building Flow or writing Apex, you can reference the DMO fields just like any other metadata, making the low-code experience seamless. This approach supports data-driven insights and informed decisions across your business teams, enhancing Customer Experiences and aligning with business goals.

Industry clouds

The power of the Salesforce platform is that core metadata can be easily extended to meet specific industry requirements. These configurations allow for personalized engagement tailored to specific customer needs, enhancing Customer Experiences across industries. Salesforce Data Cloud connects to standard objects, industry-specific metadata, or customer-configured metadata through seamless integration, making it a unified platform relevant across industries.

Data Cloud can also connect to industry-specific applications and external data sources, bringing data into the core platform via many out-of-the-box connectors. These connections are easy to set up using clicks, not code, allowing business teams to quickly adapt to business challenges and align with business goals.

Data Cloud is relevant to every industry

Data Cloud can harmonize any data held across multiple systems—e.g., product data, finance data, or content—but its most common use case is unifying a single customer record. This focus on customer journeys aligns with its roots in marketing, where the tools are designed around individual engagement.

Here are some customers in different industries where Salesforce has success stories:

• WYNDHAM Hotels & Resorts: 55% increase in franchisee-resolved customer care cases.
• General Mills: 40% increase in “buy now” clicks in user content.
• Mascoma Bank: 45 minutes cut of manual data per loan.
• FISHER & PAYKEL: 3,300 hours per month saved through automation.
• Ford: 650 hours eliminated worth of customer service phone calls.
• ASTON MARTIN: 52% reduction in duplicate data to 2.14 million profiles.

Whilst Data Cloud is relevant to every industry and nonprofit below are some example use cases for different industries. If your industry is not listed, you can use these to brainstorm the use cases for your industry.  To help you Salesforce has launched a library of use cases.

Here are some use cases for different industries

Financial services

• Seamless omni-channel experiences through unified profiles
• Implement fraud detection and prevention strategies
• Upsell and cross-sell targeted product packages for lead generation
• Optimize ad spend and segmentation
• Enhance customer retention and loyalty
• Ensure compliance with industry regulations
• Drive engagement through credit card onboarding
• Target customers using geo-based awareness campaigns
• Engage customers through well-being programs
• Re-engage customers with abandoned cart strategies

Healthcare

• Personalize patient experiences
• Optimize clinical trials
• Ensure regulatory compliance
• Monitor patients in real-time
• Optimize supply chain operations
• Detect and report adverse events
• Increase omnichannel engagement
• Drive direct-to-consumer sales
• Optimize customer attribution models
• Maximize resource utilization

TMT (Technology, Media, Telecommunications)

• Manage subscriptions effectively
• Engage customers more intelligently
• Provide personalized product recommendations
• Upsell and cross-sell effectively
• Manage sales efficiently
• Predict and reduce customer churn
• Detect and mitigate network connectivity issues
• Ensure data governance and compliance
• Enhance customer service
• Proactively manage ‘bill shock’ scenarios
• Bundle offers to increase customer value

Automotive

• Increase Omni-channel vehicle purchases and services
• Provide fraud detection and prevention in financing and insurance
• Upsell and cross-sell premium features and services
• Enhance customer loyalty through personalized service plans
• Ensure compliance with automotive safety and environmental regulations
• Streamline vehicle leasing and financing processes
• Provide geo-based targeting for local dealership promotions
• Re-engage customers or service and maintenance appointments

Retail

• Identify at-risk customers based on customer trends and buying patterns
• Provide proactive customer service addressing issues before they escalate
• Generate personalized onboarding journeys to improve customer satisfaction
• Analyze customer data to create customized onboarding and service strategies
• Drive engagement through personalized shopping experiences
• Reduce fraud and increase the use of credit cards and loyalty card services
• Optimize merchant operations across the end-to-end process improving efficiency.
• Accelerate innovation of new business models and processes

Data Cloud is a force multiplier for sales and service

Salesforce Data Cloud is an invaluable tool for sales teams, as it provides more accurate,  complete, and AI-enhanced data that can improve their efficiency. It enables upselling opportunities for sales teams and more rapid and accurate resolution for services teams.

Enhancing sales teams’ efficiency

Salesforce Data Cloud provides a 360 degree view of the customer, drawing data from external systems and presenting them in the context of Salesforce. This improves efficiency but also provides insights that elevate and accelerate the customer conversations.

It also improves productivity as sellers need to access only Salesforce, and don’t have to switch between multiple platforms to get a single, comprehensive view of each customer.  It also gives sellers confidence that they have the full picture when making recommendations.

Salesforce Data Cloud enhances the sales teams’ efficiency by giving Agentforce better quality and more complete data that can be analyzed, allowing it to anticipate customer needs and provide proactive support. This eliminates manual collation and analysis of data that is time-consuming and error-prone.

Data Cloud enables Agentforce to identify buyer intent signals to route leads and identify new upsell opportunities. It helps prioritize a seller’s workload so that they can focus on the opportunities with the highest potential to close.

By analyzing purchase patterns, customer preferences, and product usage data, all of which is made available to Agentforce via Data Cloud, agents and sellers can provide more compelling upsell recommendations to customers.

Personalized service increases customer sat

Agentforce can improve the response quality and dramatically shrink response times by summarizing support requests and using knowledge articles, product data sheets, and previous replies to formulate a response. But this requires Agentforce having access to this content that could be in different systems and formats. That is where Data Cloud can aggregate the data either around the customer, or around the product.

Data Cloud can pull together customer support data to enable Agentforce to predict trends and provide proactive customer service to address issues before they escalate, ultimately improving customer satisfaction and retention. This could be from the perspective of common issues around products or by considering the at-risk customers and their buying and support trends.

Customer data, preferences, and interaction patterns are often held in multiple systems, in disparate formats, with different unique customer identifiers.  Data Cloud can pull this together and harmonize it so that the patterns become clearer. Then service teams can build personalized onboarding journeys, training suggestions, and product recommendations. These tailored experiences drive up customer engagement, satisfaction, and retention rates.

Final word

Salesforce Data Cloud offers substantial benefits across industries, whether through the Salesforce Industry Clouds, ISVs, or local customizations. It provides a unified platform that supports advanced analytics and helps business teams drive data-driven insights and actions. With its ability to easily connect to industry-specific applications and external data sources using clicks, not code, there’s no barrier to leveraging its power. However, a proven, intentional, and architecture-led implementation process ensures long-term success, helping organizations achieve their business goals and meet specific business requirements.