Salesforce Unveils the Next Generation of Social Studio--Introducing Unified Social Engagement for the Salesforce Customer Success Platform

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 19, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Salesforce CRM, the Customer Success Platform and world's #1 CRM company, today unveiled the next generation of Social Studio, introducing unified social engagement for the Salesforce Customer Success Platform. The next-generation social listening, analysis, content marketing and engagement solutions empower employees to make the most of every social interaction, from any device. Social Studio innovations include a new social listening engine, social customer service for service teams and social lead engagement for sales teams. Leading global brands like Activision, ADP and McDonald's harness the Salesforce Marketing Cloud to connect with customers in a whole new way.

Comments on the News

• "The lines between sales, service and marketing continue to blur," said Scott McCorkle, CEO of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Salesforce. "However, many companies are still using siloed social engagement and listening solutions, leading to disjointed and ineffective customer engagement. We are now past the social hype cycle and it is clear that companies that make social core to the customer journey will be more successful."
• "Working with Salesforce, Activision has created engaging self-service and social customer service experiences tied to each game. We are able to help more people and resolve their issues more quickly, in the ways they prefer to communicate," said Tim Rondeau, senior director of customer service, Activision. "This has translated into a large channel shift—in 2011, 45 percent of customer inquiries happened over the phone. Today, greater than 90 percent of all service inquiries are handled in self-service or social. Furthermore, we believe our social customer service programs complement our digital marketing strategy and help increase player engagement."
• "Salesforce Marketing Cloud helps us keep a finger on the pulse of social conversations that can quickly turn into new leads and opportunities," said Jeff Stevenson, director of social selling, ADP. "Now we can quickly distribute information to multiple social networks with one consolidated branded voice, listen to key topics across Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and engage leads with helpful content. Social selling helps ADP optimize social lead generation, from sourcing to qualification to closure, to easily see the full life cycle of a lead right within Salesforce."
• "Our aim is to bring innovative digital experiences to our customers and to continually improve the social customer experience," said David Martinelli, U.S. digital marketing manager, McDonald's. "With more and more Americans engaging with McDonald's online, Salesforce's Social Studio will optimize our social conversations across all teams and more than 14,000 restaurants, offering our customers a heightened social customer experience."

Social Media Engagement With Customers is Ubiquitous, But Still Siloed Within Businesses
Social media engagement is now ubiquitous with customers, yet many companies are still struggling with how to integrate social across business processes to gain insight and improve decision making. Marketers need to run social campaigns, engage with customers and use social insights to drive programs. Service teams need to surprise and delight their customers with social customer care. And sales teams need to find and connect to new customers faster through social lead generation. However, social is still isolated from where key customer interactions occur, resulting in missed opportunities and poor customer experiences.

According to a recent Gartner report, "a social media strategy to engage with customers is necessary, not optional, and CIOs will assert a greater role in application selection, as will marketing professionals." (Michael Maoz, Jenny Sussin, Gartner Inc., Social for CRM Vendor Guide, February, 2014).

Next Generation of Social Studio to Deliver Unified Social Engagement for the Salesforce Customer Success Platform
Building on the leadership of Radian6's social listening and analysis and Buddy Media's content marketing and engagement tools, today Salesforce unveiled the next generation of Social Studio. Now fully integrated into the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Social Studio includes single sign-on, unified navigation and a user interface that is so simple to use, any employee can benefit from social insights on desktop and mobile devices. In addition, any developer, ISV, customer or partner can directly build and deploy an app within Social Studio. Partners include Getty Images, Nexgate (a division of Proofpoint), Pressly, Rallyverse, Shutterstock and Trendspottr. With Social Studio, now any company can break down social silos to connect with customers in a whole new way.

Social Studio's breakthrough innovations include:

• New Social Listening: Social Studio now includes a completely new social listening engine that monitors more than one billion social data sources including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, news sites and more. Social Studio is designed to meet the scale of the largest multi-brand, multi-region companies, enabling social media teams to empower other groups throughout the enterprise with a unified, easy-to-use social solution for sales, service and marketing. Social marketing and community management teams can finally get rid of their spreadsheets and manage social content calendars in Social Studio. In addition, integration with Social.com, the Marketing Cloud's social advertising solution for agencies and advertisers, allows teams to monitor top performing content published from Social Studio and amplify it with sophisticated social advertising campaigns to reach more current and potential customers.
• New Social Customer Service: With the next generation of Social Studio, customer service teams can easily monitor social channels for customer support issues, create customer cases to be managed in the Service Cloud and route these social cases to the right person or team to ensure a timely resolution. With the combined power of Social Studio and the Service Cloud, any company can surprise and delight customers with social customer care on the world's leading social networks, including Facebook, Google+, Twitter and Sina Weibo. For the first time, any Service Cloud customer can now get started with social customer service for no additional charge, managing up to two Facebook or Twitter accounts directly from the Service Cloud.
• New Social Lead Engagement: Two-thirds of marketers see improved lead generation with social media¹, and with the new Social Studio, sales reps can find and connect to new customers faster with social lead generation. By listening to conversations across more than one billion social data sources, sales reps can identify new leads and engage with them in real-time directly from the Sales Cloud. In addition, using Social Studio and Salesforce Pardot, sales reps can be unstoppable with social selling by bringing together marketing automation campaigns and lead scoring with social data, such as sentiment or influencer status.

Global Leaders Deliver 1:1 Customer Journeys at Scale with the Salesforce Marketing Cloud
The Marketing Cloud is the #1 solution for companies to build 1:1 customer journeys at scale. It enables marketers to build a single view of the customer, plan and optimize the customer journey, deliver personalized content across channels and devices, and measure the impact on their business. Leading global brands like Activision, ADP and McDonald's harness the Marketing Cloud to connect with customers in a whole new way. 

Pricing and Availability

• Social Studio is generally available for customers and includes unlimited users starting at $1,000 per month.
• New Social Studio listening is in beta and is currently scheduled to be generally available in February 2015.
• Service Cloud customers can get started with social customer service for no additional charge, managing up to two Facebook or Twitter accounts directly from the app.
• New social sales capabilities within the Sales Cloud are currently scheduled to be in beta in February 2015.

Additional Information

• Learn more about Social Studio by watching the new demo video.
• Download the Social Studio mobile app.
• Read about how McDonald's is using Social Studio to manage social media presences for more than 14,000 restaurants.
• Like Salesforce Marketing Cloud on Facebook: www.facebook.com/marketingcloud .
• Follow @salesforce and @marketingcloud on Twitter.

About salesforce.com
Salesforce, the Customer Success Platform and world's #1 CRM company, empowers companies to connect with their customers in a whole new way. For more information about Salesforce CRM, visit: http://www.salesforce.com.

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¹Social Media Examiner, "2014 Social Media Marketing Industry Report," http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/social-media-marketing-industry-report-2014/

² Bain and Company, "Putting social media to work" http://www.bain.com/publications/articles/putting-social-media-to-work.aspx

SOURCE Salesforce