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Transcript

What Can Salesforce's AI Do? · The Retail Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome back to the Retail podcast live from NRF.
• 0:04
  This time Rob Gough from Salesforce General Manager of
• 0:09
  Retail. Have I?
• 0:09
  Got that right you got there. Honestly, you're doing.
• 0:12
  Great. Really beads of swing coming
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  down my hands. I actually saw Rob dazzling the
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  audience about your new capabilities.
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  And so for those who don't know, let's take a step back for it.
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  Let's talk about you for like the first bit and then let's
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  talk about Salesforce in terms of thing.
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  So just tell us a little bit about you, how you got here,
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  your journey through Salesforce, how long have you been at
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  Salesforce? Yeah.
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  So again, Rob Garf, GM for retail here at Salesforce.
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  I've been here a total of 13 years.
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  That's actually been a combination of coming in through
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  the acquisition of Demandware, which is now Commerce Cloud.
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  And I am now, like I said, oversee retail and consumer
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  goods on the product side. So we're building products and
• 0:51
  solutions to bring them to market.
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  The intent is recognising that consumers traverse nine
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  different touch points in any given shopping journey.
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  We're trying to create a unified platform to really personalise
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  and remove that friction across all of those touch points.
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  Yeah, I mean, when I was at your Chicago event, I was blown away
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  how you are embedding AI into like every single module as you
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  go. And so you're responsible for
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  that. Yeah, Mark, in terms of bringing
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  that to market for retail and it sounds like you're at
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  Connections, it's always that happens in the fall and spring,
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  excuse me. And yeah, you know, it's
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  interesting. Everybody's coming at AI from a
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  different angle. At Salesforce, of course, we put
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  data in the middle. We put trust in the middle.
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  But most importantly, what I'm hearing from our retail
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  customers is they don't want another user interface to do
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  their job. Our research at Salesforce has
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  shown that store associates on average have to log into 12
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  different systems on a daily basis.
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  That's just untenable. That really doesn't allow for
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  more productivity or customer and consumer engagement.
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  So we make AI right in the flow of work.
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  So for us marketing across service and commerce.
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  Wow. OK.
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  So so I I guess the whole the outcomes that you're creating
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  for retailers, you're allowing them to get to things a lot.
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  I mean, customisation, for example, is one of the outcomes
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  you focus on. Yeah.
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  I mean, if you think about the outcome, and I like how you're
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  framing that up, is ultimately removing the friction, right,
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  between inspiration and purchase through a frictionless and
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  personalised experience across all of those different channels,
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  both in store and online. And with AI, we're doing that by
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  embedding it right in the flow of work.
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  Yeah. And what I think is also super,
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  super interesting is that I talked to a lot of customers
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  about a, I mean hundreds of customers since the about 12
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  months at Generative AI came on to the map.
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  And some are talking about low end or I should say bottom line
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  improvement for efficiency and productivity.
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  Yeah, others are talking about top line growth.
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  But the one thing in common is the customer and the customer
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  experience. And also, by the way, I'm often
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  corrected, it's also about the employee.
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  Yeah, it's very ants ultimately thinking about what problems
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  we're solving on their behalf and not trying to create these
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  big shiny objects, but rather solve practical problems for
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  either the customer or the employee.
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  OK. There's a couple of areas that I
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  want to go in Yeti, for example, or massive Yep Ban.
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  It's incredible how many talks I've been at where they've used
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  Yeti as the store of the future. Yeah.
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  In terms of blending all of these experiences, yes,
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  Salesforce at the heart of Yeti, that's right.
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  In terms of the e-commerce transformation, yeah, you just
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  take for those who don't know about Yeti and what you're
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  doing, can you just tell us about you know the outcomes
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  there? Yeah, absolutely.
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  I mean you know them through tumblers and you're seeing them
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  through the different coolers they have really innovating and
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  disrupting the market yet he is one of my favourite brands,
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  personally one of the older demand.
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  We're now Commerce Cloud customers, so holds a very near
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  and dear place in my heart. And yeah, what they're looking
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  at when they went from just going wholesale through the
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  brick and mortar retail locations direct to consumer,
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  they came to Salesforce and they said how do we better understand
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  who our consumer is. Yeah, so we start to connect the
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  dots in terms of their profile, their preferences, their
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  shopping behaviour, what service queries they have, how loyal
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  they are. Yeah, they help personalise that
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  experience. And it's not like you go out
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  every week like in a grocery store to buy a new Tumblr, but
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  rather they need to think about how do we proactively trigger
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  something to inspire the consumer to buy something you.
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  Yeah. And in order to do that, they
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  are creating a 360° view of that consumer in activating it.
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  Yeah. Through marketing.
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  Yep. Through commerce.
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  Yeah. And through service.
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  So again, that consumer is having a consistent experience.
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  They're being treated and served as they should as a loyal
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  customer. It it does feel that that's the
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  blueprint of the future if I'm honest.
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  From listening to all the talks about how yetis creating
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  physical, incorporating digital and then backing them off to
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  each other, right? So the website refers to the
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  store, store refers to the website and you and you've got
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  this thing. Final thoughts.
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  Yeah, I obviously AI massive theme.
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  Yeah. What I'm really curious of the
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  number one thing customers, you must have met so many customers,
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  what's top of mind for them? What's the one thing they
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  they're being asking you about? Well, The thing is, I'm really
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  encouraged about the positive mindset.
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  I mean, NRF here, there's so much energy.
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  We feel like we're back and even above where we were before the
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  pandemic. And retail executives, I'm
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  talking about are focused on growth.
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  They're focused on increasing the share of wallet.
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  Yeah. And that might be beyond the
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  categories of the products or the services they have provided
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  in the past. That's why you're hearing about
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  retail media. That's why you're hearing about
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  retail health, retail logistics and even more thinking about,
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  again, beyond the kind of constraints they've been in the
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  past. And the way they're going to do
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  that is better understand the consumer and monetize loyal
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  shoppers to find new and different ways to serve them
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  better. And the way ultimately that
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  comes down to we talk about AI. Yeah, right.
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  How many times have you heard AI this week?
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  It's not. Inside, I just climbed 1000.
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  It's, it's an AI revolution. But it's as much of A data
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  revolution. It's a skills revolution, it's
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  an organisational revolution, it's a trust revolution.
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  And most importantly, it's a customer experience revolution.
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  And so you wrap all that together and it's really a
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  transformation that I have never experienced in my time in
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  retail. It's fundamentally going to
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  change the way we're interacting with our consumers.
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  Yeah. Our suppliers, our employees and
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  ultimately driving loyalty and growing really sustainable
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  relationships. I I love that.
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  Can I ask one more question please?
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  OK. Salesforce, you have so many
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  different components. Yeah so many different products,
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  so many different entities. I a lot of the community may not
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  be or the the effects may not be on the Salesforce journey.
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  Sure, if I'm thinking about this world and I'm either re
• 7:02
  platforming, I understand what I've built doesn't work.
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  Where do I start? It's the one thing where if I'm
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  turning up to talk to Salesforce, how do I get the
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  maximum value? What?
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  Where do I start? Yeah, it's a great question.
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  It's a question that I get, I guess if I frame this up a
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  little bit, retailers are engaging with consumers like I
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  said across nine different touch points in any given shopping
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  journey. Consumer electronics have
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  probably on the higher end, if you're a fast moving consumer
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  goods like convenience store, you're at the lower end of that.
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  But my point is consumers are traversing online and offline to
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  ultimately buy what they want to get the service they need.
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  And so what's happening though and the retailer side, retailers
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  according to our research that Salesforce have to manage 44
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  different systems could actually manage that engagement.
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  That doesn't even account for the back office.
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  That's just consumer engagement. Yeah, you can't do that
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  efficiently. You can't do that effectively.
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  Yeah. So you think about, you think
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  about Salesforce of course at the highest level we are the
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  number one AR, we are the number one AI CRM, period, full stop.
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  What does that mean for retail? We infuse data.
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  We infuse AI across the entire buying journey across all of
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  those touch points, marketing, service, commerce.
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  We layer on Tableau for analytics.
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  You have Mulesoft to integrate all those disparate systems and
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  Slack to bring productivity and collaboration to the hands of
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  the frontline and headquarter workers.
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  That's fantastic. Well, thank you so much.
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  We can carry on. I know they're queuing up to
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  take you away, so I really appreciate.
• 8:37
  Absolutely. My pleasure.
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  Thank you very much. Have a good day.