These days, customers expect companies to deliver fast and personalised experiences across every channel and at any time. But nearly 80 per cent of UK small businesses aren’t equipped to meet the needs of customers because they aren’t able to connect all of their essential business apps, which results in a fragmented view of the customer journey, and a less-than-seamless customer experience. As this means missed growth opportunities for businesses, we’ve designed our small business solutions to help companies achieve a single customer view and offer a highly personalised customer experience.

We know smaller businesses are often stretched thin on resources, so we’ve made our solutions smarter, so that sales, marketing and customer service teams can work more efficiently and effectively – putting the customer at the heart of the business with technology that is easy to adopt and fast to implement.

SalesforceIQ CRM, for example, is able to help small businesses gain deeper insights into their customers’ so they can better connect with them. Thanks to its intelligent core it can proactively surface insights and interactions with your customers and then recommend next best actions, allowing you to build stronger relationships with customers. What’s more, as it’s cloud based, the product empowers small businesses to get up and running within a matter of minutes.

Last year we increased its functionality even further: we launched an easy, out-of-the-box integration of the product with Desk.com, our all-in-one customer service app for fast-growing companies. As a result, SalesforceIQ CRM now empowers small businesses to have a complete view of their customer across both sales and service, helping to level the playing field with their larger competitors.

Small disruptive financial services companies, in particular those providing alternative finance, have to compete with traditional, established players to win and retain customers. Like most small companies, they must differentiate themselves through innovation and customer experience. But, in looking at technology to help them find, win and retain customers, they also need to consider regulatory requirements and how technology can help them scale.

Salesforce and the finance providers

Liberis is a great example of a small fintech company that has used Salesforce solutions to support its growth as it’s evolved to become an award-winning, internationally recognised brand. Liberis doesn’t just want to build stronger relationships with its existing customers; it wants to build stronger relationships with its customers of tomorrow.

To do this, it needs to serve up the right content at the right time to customers and prospects. For instance, it uses Salesforce to see how potential customers are engaging with its website, and uses this intelligence to provide content that matches each visitor’s specific interests.

And, because all of its customer relationships are built on this approach of learning about each customer and prospect to offer personalised journeys, Liberis has achieved a 98 percent service rating on Feefo, a global customer feedback system.

To increase convenience for its customers further, Liberis is now planning a fully-automated online decision-making and funding platform. Once the new cloud-based platform is live, Liberis will be looking to offer a ‘clicks-only’ application process with same-day funding as a norm.

As client expectations evolve, it’s vital that small businesses stay a step ahead – this is a key differentiator for them – and continue to focus on innovating around the customer experience. Therefore we’ll continue to add new functionality to our small business solutions to support this, while focusing on making the products easy to deploy and intuitive to use.

Also, I think that predictive intelligence – the combination of AI and analytics – will become a vital tool for small businesses looking to deliver that outstanding customer experience, helping sales and marketing focus on the right customer engagement, while also saving them time. Predictive Intelligence will help small businesses do more with their data.

The British Small Business Awards are a great way to recognise and celebrate the amazing achievements of the UK’s small business sector – not just of the SMEs themselves but also of the supporting eco-system around them. We’re very proud to be part of these awards.

Salesforce is sponsor of the Alternative Finance Provider of the Year category at the British Small Business Awards.

The British Small Business Awards, taking place on October 20th at the Grand Connaught Rooms, London, is the leading celebration of the UK’s small business sector, recognising the nation’s best sole traders, micro businesses and small companies – as well as the service providers, financiers and advisers that support them. For more information, please visit the British Small Business Awards website here.

The British Small Business Awards event is sponsored by: