With nearly 125,00 registered Dreamforce attendees this year, it’s clear that salesforce.com has carved out a global community. These like-minded individuals all believe in salesforce.com’s platform, their message, and their future. It’s this emphasis on community building and focus on frictionless interactions that drives salesforce.com products, shapes their messaging, and keeps them at the forefront of enterprise innovation. 

As the first Super Session of Dreamforce ’13, Bluewolf teamed up with Harvard Business School, Stanley Black & Decker, Aberdeen Asset Management, and salesforce.com themselves, to highlight the power of communities during the session, Why Communities is the New CRM - The New Rules for Customer Engagement.

84% of organizations believe that customer engagement will overtake productivity as the primary driver of profitable growth. With this business imperative top of mind for so many, organizations are looking for ways to better engage their customers and drive business value. Enter communities. Whether the community be in the social world or through the Salesforce platform, creating and nurturing a community enables customer interaction and engagement. 

After presenting the latest findings in The State of Salesforce, Bluewolf CEO, Eric Berridge turned to the first client story of the session, Aberdeen. Michelle Calcutt, Group Head of CRM & Business Management – Distribution at Aberdeen, emphasized the importance of providing a frictionless customer experience for their clients. Operating in the saturated market of financial services, Aberdeen differentiates themselves by delivering a personalized experience that removes all of the heavy lifting for their customers. Aberdeen has created an impressive footprint in the industry, owning over 34% share of voice around all UK social conversations around wealth management.

Next, Jen Burgin, Director of Executive Education at Harvard Business School (HBS) took the stage. Communities play an essential role at HBS. Expanding their extensive alumni network is a major focus at HBS, said Burgin. Executive education is an extremely competitive industry, and those seeking higher education want security that their investment will yield returns upon graduation. By providing access to a vast and influential alumni network, HBS helps ensure ROI for their students. Perhaps that’s why HBS has become the highest grossing executive education program in the US.

The third and final client story came from Stanley Black & Decker. Famed as a global leader in tools and equipment, the Stanley family includes many recognizable brands such as Black & Decker, Dewalt, Mac Tools, among others. In Mac Tools specifically, JoAnna Sohovic, Global President at Stanley Black & Decker, highlighted how they teamed up with Bluewolf to implement a text-to-case feature for their franchisees. This easy to use mobile solution was created to fast track Mac Tools inquires, providing answers at just a text away.  

To close the session, Lisa Hammit, VP of Marketing, Salesforce Communities, joined Eric on stage. Lisa shared that while the Communities product might only be five months old, it’s quickly becoming an essential component for any salesforce.com solution. 90’s of today’s CEO rank customer engagement as their top priority. What better way to engage your customers than to create, nurture, and grow a community of like-minded individuals? Salesforce Communities offers an incredible platform for interaction between your customers, your partners, and inside of your own organization. 

See how Bluewolf can help you engage your customers and become customer obsessed.

Benchmark yourself against hundreds of top salesforce.com customers in The State of Salesforce. Pick up your free copy at our booth. 

Please find the recorded session below.