Responding to customer enquiries and comments is difficult at the best of times, but how about trying to capture nearly six million voter communications in a matter of months? That was the task facing the team managing voter correspondence for the Obama for America campaign. With time of the essence, the campaign had to build “the equivalent of a Fortune 500 company in seven months,” according to Edward Schlicksup, lead Salesforce administrator.

One of the biggest obstacles for the Obama for America (OfA) campaign was to capture, sort, and analyze each voter enquiry in real-time. The campaign implemented Salesforce to categorize and respond to communications, regardless of whether they were received via email, web enquiry, or by phone. Schlicksup says the flexibility and scalability of the cloud-based Salesforce platform was crucial for accurately capturing voter enquiries throughout the campaign. Each voter enquiry became a Salesforce case; a record created to describe a customer support incident. Using this data, administrators were able to create reports detailing how policies and other strategies resonated in different regions. This allowed senior campaign staff to make strategic decisions on-the-fly.

Capturing, categorizing, and responding to individual communications is an important business process across many sectors, not just politics. Today’s customers are empowered, and engage with brands across an array of communication platforms and social channels. Accordingly, companies must embrace a multi-channel social customer service strategy. Much like how the OfA campaign connected with voters, companies nowadays need to use customer relationship management platforms, like Salesforce, to build intimacy with their customers. Actively listening and responding to customers is essential for any company looking to differentiate themselves from competitors.

The ease of deployment, agility, and scalability of the Salesforce platform enabled the Obama for America campaign to better engage voters. When asked the key learnings for companies from the campaign’s successful use of Salesforce, Schlicksup calls out four points:

1. Speed-to-market - cloud-based platforms can be deployed quickly, which is a competitive advantage
2. Agility - the flexibility of cloud technologies allows for iterative development throughout the implementation process
3. Scalability - the Salesforce software-as-a-service model enabled the OfA campaign to ‘turn on’ additional functionality, as voter engagement swelled
4. Continuous innovation - cloud platforms facilitate rapid innovation ongoing, in response to changing organizational needs

Can’t attend the webcast? Check back for the recording, and in the meantime read our newly released guide: The Advocate of Change, The Central Role of the Salesforce Administrator.