What associations can learn from Salesforce to provide a better-connected member experience.
Is your association poised to take advantage of the latest technology for customer-centric experiences from Salesforce, the leader in customer relationship management?
Most association professionals would agree that they want to deliver a customer-centric experience for their members. However, delivering that experience requires the support of member management software, built specifically with a connected member experience in mind.
That’s why many membership-based organizations are moving to enterprise customer relationship management (CRM) platforms as the foundation for their association management software (AMS). That’s also one of the key reasons Nimble AMS is built on the Salesforce CRM platform.
Looking to the leader in CRM for a connected member experience
As the leader in CRM, Salesforce serves as the foundation for a modern AMS that puts the member at the heart of an association’s activities. In fact, in a recent report about CRM suites, Forrester named Salesforce as a leader in CRM, largely because it “puts the customer at the center of its vision.”
Customer 360: The evolution of the connected customer experience
Salesforce has furthered its commitment to a connected customer experience with Customer 360, the new cross-cloud technology initiative that makes their B2C Marketing, Commerce, and Service products work better together. It supports their view that “The Customer Demands to Be at the Center.”
Customer 360 provides a complete view of unified customer data across different Salesforce apps, as well as with data from systems outside of Salesforce. It delivers a connected customer experience across all channels and departments, so you can see all information about a customer in one spot.
For associations, Customer 360 means that if you’re using a Salesforce-based AMS system, such as Nimble AMS, you’ll now be able to deliver connected member experiences across channels and departments like never before.
Using the power of Person Accounts for Customer 360
Something to keep in mind is that Customer 360 requires Person Accounts when building the 360 view of a customer. Nimble AMS has always been an advocate for Salesforce’s Person Account model, the platform’s recommended data model configuration in which Business Accounts and Individual Person Accounts are treated as “Account” equals.
Here’s why: In the world of professional associations, members are primarily individuals. However, most professional associations also have membership levels for “associate” members, which typically are businesses, such as vendors, suppliers, etc. Similarly, trade association memberships are primarily made up of organizations, yet most of their interactions are with individuals. Clearly, every association needs to be able to facilitate business with both individuals and organizations.
On the surface, meeting the needs of such a structure may seem relatively straightforward. However, designing technology flexible enough to track both individual and organization relationships is complicated.
From the beginning, Nimble AMS was built on the Salesforce platform and embraced the Person Accounts model. In doing so, the Nimble AMS team can easily adapt the solution to meet nearly every membership structure in the marketplace. The goal: to empower associations of all kinds to meet future expectations and readily embrace innovative solutions, such as Customer 360.
Is your association poised to deliver a member-centric experience?
Since Nimble AMS was built using person accounts, Nimble AMS customers are well prepared to take advantage of Customer 360.
