Dreamforce 2024: Genesys, Salesforce Showcase Expanded Availability and Customer Success

The artificial turf has been rolled up and Einstein wigs packed, signifying the conclusion of Dreamforce, the annual Salesforce user conference. And this year’s event marked the continued significant partnership between Genesys and Salesforce, with experts from both companies coming together to showcase our product milestone.

At last year’s Dreamforce, Genesys and Salesforce first announced CX Cloud, a jointly offered solution that integrates the Genesys Cloud^™ platform with Salesforce Service Cloud to help organizations unify their data, agents, bots and communication channels for smarter end-to-end customer and employee experiences.

This year’s event was similarly packed with exciting announcements, not the least of which was our continued momentum with Salesforce through strong customer adoption, expanded availability and global expansion. Together, we’ve expanded CX Cloud availability to Sales, Financial Services and Health Clouds. And we’ve added additional language and channel support, enabling global companies to orchestrate personalized experiences across more industries and business units.

Here are three key takeaways from our joint activities at Dreamforce 2024.

Moving Beyond Legacy Open CTI Integration

Jack Nichols, Vice President of Product, Genesys, kicked off day one with a standing-room only session aptly titled, “Genesys and Salesforce: The Next Generation of CX is Here.” While Jack walked the audience through the evolution of CX Cloud from Genesys and Salesforce since inception — and the recent game-changing enhancements — almost all the people in attendance (more than 250!) raised their phones to take pictures of these two slides.

CTI (Computer Telephony Integration) has been the development framework on which Genesys (and other companies) have integrated into Salesforce for many years. IT teams must cobble together services, APIs and data to embed even the most basic contact center functionality into Salesforce — a pain point that many attendees voiced when visiting the Genesys booth after the session.

This non-native, “over-the-top” integration can hinder the agent experience, tie down valuable dev resources and leads to frustrating customer experiences, noted Nichols. And with the recent Open CTI end-of-development announcement from Salesforce, I got the sense that the synchronized phone raising meant many companies are reevaluating their Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) and CRM integration strategies.

Unlike integrations based on the Open CTI framework, CX Cloud from Genesys and Salesforce is a native, easy-to-configure solution that once-and-for-all delivers that “single pane of glass” agent and supervisor experience. From the very first meeting between our R&D teams at Salesforce tower back in December 2022, the solution has been architected with a unified data fabric and artificial intelligence (AI) at its core.

CX Cloud Users Share Early Successes

Since launching the solution, more than 75 CX Cloud deals have been closed with a diverse set of organizations, including a Fortune 500 global workplace technology provider; a major luxury retailer; and AAA Washington, a trusted Pacific Northwest not-for-profit that has served as the local leader in automotive, insurance and travel solutions for the past 120 years.

“With our company strategy emphasizing ‘Helpful Tech, Human Touch,’ AAA Washington has a long history of providing exemplary member experiences with highly skilled service agents and sales staff,” said Jim Ryan, Chief Information Officer at AAA Washington. “As part of a progressive strategy, we are embracing solutions that enable us to support our members digitally and strengthen that experience through our signature support from the AAA Washington team. We see CX Cloud from Genesys and Salesforce as a strategic solution that will help us realize this vision.”

On Day 2 of Dreamforce, Naila Mendenhall, IT Program Manager at AAA Washington, echoed this sentiment during a fireside chat with Amy Slater, VP, NA Partners and Global Alliances at Genesys. Mendenhall discussed how the insurance and roadside service company is eliminating outdated, disparate systems and consolidating onto a single, unified solution — reducing their total cost of ownership.

“… aside from the combined UI and call functionality, I think we’ll recognize the biggest value when we begin to get a real 360-degree view of our customer across platforms, across channels and across our business units,”said Mendenhall.

Rounding out the dynamic trio was Mason Nelson, Service Engagement Specialist at Salesforce, and a key member of the joint Genesys and Salesforce team helping to design and deploy the solution for AAA Washington and other organizations.

“[Companies] really want to be able to service their customers on the channel of that customer’s choice. And as we’re seeing — in this day and age with AI and with channels coming into play and CCaaS implementations — it’s never been more important than now,” said Nelson.

Hear the full conversation at the CX Green Room series to get the full story behind how AAA Washington drives better experiences with a combined CRM and CX platform.

CX Cloud — The Fifth Beatle