Salesforce Genie and the Rise of “Customer Companies”

Posted on December 15, 2022  (Last modified on December 10, 2024) • 4 min read • 777 words

Dreamforce marked the introduction of Salesforce Genie (and a rapid spike in Google searches).

Like many new Salesforce offerings, the Dreamforce intro was packed with talking points about the platform’s potential, flexibility, and broad applicability — despite being a bit light on the nitty gritty details. That’s nothing new, but admins and devs everywhere have been waiting for the inevitable reveal of exactly what, how, and why Salesforce Genie is the future — and now we’re starting to see some glimpses of that.

Most notably, at least from a marketing perspective, is the sudden adoption (or ressurgence) of a new bit of marketing copy from the tech giant: the “Customer Company”.

There are two mentions on the Genie product page (now branded as the “Genie Customer Data Cloud”).

Peppered throughout recent posts and collateral.

And even landing a top spot on the Salesforce blog to drive clicks.

Even some SEO targetting.

It’s clear that Salesforce is betting most companies aspire to being “customer companies” and it’s a fairly natural progression of the previous “Customer 360" messaging, uniting all the touchpoints between you and your customers to deliver a personalized, complete, and satisfying experience that improves both their appreciation of your work or products and captures data that will make you a more effective organization at catering to their needs and expectations.

In fact, long-time Trailblazers will remember that Marc Benioff was pushing the “customer company” branding way back in the early teens, and it fit well in the wake of the turn-of-the-millenium shift in business philosophy that saw the introduction of the Net Promoter Score, the rise in online Direct-to-Consumer shops, and the revolution in the world of the “influencer” as marketing effort, not customer service consequence.

Eventually sidelined by “Customer 360", Genie may be the perfect product to bring back the old messaging. In case you weren’t part of the Salesforce ecosystem back then, customer companies are organizations that recognize that their customers, and that relationship, is really what keeps the lights on — not the product, but the experience and expectation of those that you deliver to.

Those expectations are changing more rapidly than ever before, thanks to technology, and being able to understand, adapt, and deliver is more important than ever. And, in a time where organizations have more data than ever before, from web traffic metrics, to ecommerce analytics, to marketing engagement, to competitive and industry analysis, the opportunity to become a true “customer company” is more obtainable than ever.

Except when all that data lives in silos, can’t be molded into recognizable patterns and, perhaps most limiting of all, in places where the C-Suite is unwilling to adapt their organization’s efforts to meet the needs their data is dictating.

So how does Salesforce Genie Customer Data Cloud aim to solve that? Genie adds two powerful new capabilities to the Customer 360 experience Salesforce clients are aiming for:

• Real-Time Data
• Powerful Visualization and Data Recognition

Genie promises to integrate all of an organizations disparate data sources into a central, easily understandable, and widely configurable customer profile that will reveal in real time a customer’s entire interaction with your brand, across media. Imagine unifying Sales, Support, Marketing, and more, across sites, apps, in stores, etc… to get a true understanding of what works and what doesn’t in your processes. Not to mention, what your customers have already seen and know when it comes time to recommend content or offerings.

Powered by Tableau, Genie also offers non-realtime benefits in data analysis, recognition, and manipulation with visualization and reporting tools to tie in departments, management, and executives at the relevant data level, to the patterns and results that will help them act effectively.

And of course, Genie only becomes more powerful when paired with the other Salesforce products, like Einstein to leverage Genie’s data profiles to tailor experiences automatically.

In fact, companies are already embracing the functionality (and, of course, being highlighted by Salesforce) like Casey’s using Genie to deliver actionable data on their 13+ million customer profiles, 150 profile attributes, and 6 billion engagements. And reaping the rewards.

You can see Marc Benioff’s breakdown of Genie from the NYC World tour event here or catch Sanjna Parulekar’s Dreamforce demo right here.

We’re only a few months post-DF, of course, so it may still be a while before we start seeing less-polished, more live-action Genie demos but, if you’re a customer company, or aspire to be one, especially if you have a broad customer base, it’s a product you’ll absolutely want to keep your eye on.

Stay tuned here for more updates on Genie as they roll out, first-hand experiences, tips and tricks, etc… and, until next time, keep working hard, smart, and happy.

We’ll see you in the cloud.