What drives companies to adopt Salesforce.com and the associated ecosystem of marketing and customer outreach services that is building up around it?

It isn't simply the anticipated productivity benefits: increasingly, buyers see the platform as integral to improving proactive customer engagement, according to research conducted by Salesforce.com partner Bluewolf. Indeed, 84 percent of the companies responding to Bluewolf's second annual analysis of customer trends believe that customer engagement will be the primary key to future growth.

"An extraordinary customer experience is rare, but it is a powerful differentiator," said Eric Berridge, Bluewolf founder and CEO. 

The findings for the latest State of Salesforce report were gleaned from interview with more than 450 businesses, based on a survey developed in collaboration with MIT Sloan School of Management. Approximately 86 percent of the respondents are using either an enterprise or unlimited edition of Sales Cloud; 56 percent of them have at least three years of experience with the platform. This is the second year that Bluewolf has published this report.

"At Bluewolf, we believe customer obsession is the single biggest contributor to growth," writes Berridge in the report. "Becoming what Salesforce.com calls a 'customer company' means looking at business differently, from the outside in. It means continuously evaluating policies, processes, and operations from the customer's perspective."

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