Last week, Bluewolf hosted a webcast focused on addressing the question, “how do the best UK based companies use Salesforce?” Based on findings from the third annual State of Salesforce report, which distills data from more than 1,000 global Salesforce customers, the discussion gave way to great insight into how leading UK companies are using Salesforce to better engage their customers.

Jonathan Staley, Alan O’Mahony, and myself barely scratched the surface of the findings during the hour-long webcast, but we’ve distilled our three key takeaways below:

1. Customer experience is set to take center stage.
   
   The State of Salesforce report found that  46% of C-Level executives said Salesforce had measurably improved their customer experience. The key word here is measurably. As a company, we have seen a massive increase in investments dedicated to improving customer experience — every project our consultants are working on now has a customer engagement element to it. We predict that this focus on customer experience will only continue to grow in the coming year
2. Customers' digital expectations are impacting service strategies.
   
   Social channels are now seen as a must have rather than a nice to have for organizations across industries. Not only do customers expect a timely response on social channels, they expect it be personalized, too. Moreover, conversations over social media are public facing. Companies don’t have the luxury to ignore social in their service strategy.
3. Companies are investing heavily in analytics.
   
   The report found that 71% of companies will increase their investment in analytics, while 20% of those companies will increase it substantially. Data is everywhere, and investments are growing. But data without the right context — and without easy access — is not supporting your employees. Half of companies surveyed struggle with data adoption, and fewer still have mature strategies to use data to predict the next best customer view. Companies that invest early are seeing strong results.

How does your company use Salesforce? See how you compare to the 1,000+ survey participants and receive a personalized report of findings. To see comprehensive webcast discussions, watch the recording.