Salesforce is an industry-leading CRM platform occupying over 20% of the CRM market share. It offers sales, marketing, and customer service clouds that can be customized to meet business needs. Some customization options do not require coding, like adding objects or tabs, while others like creating Apex classes do. The sales cloud provides tools like the Einstein AI assistant, smart lead scoring, and sales paths to help users close more deals. The marketing cloud helps build content and automate customer journeys. The service cloud offers self-service options and agent support through features like cases, portals, and collaboration tools.

1. Detailed CRM
Overview

2. What is Salesforce?
Salesforce is an industry giant, occupying over 20% of the CRM market
share. It`s known for its innovation, rich feature set, and endless
customization options.
Salesforce offers several “clouds” (or modules) to create an end-to-end
software solution. It`s beyond our scope to describe them all. In this
review, we`ll focus on the CRM trifecta of sales, marketing, and service
clouds and describe some of their key features.
Ease of Use
Salesforce is known for its innovative platform and the continual expansion
of its feature set. This means you never master Salesforce; you are its eternal
student. Some users find this frustrating or beyond the scope of what`s
needed for a small business. But for enterprises who can afford the requisite
time and training, Salesforce is a platform with endless potential.
As far as navigating the platform, Salesforce uses best-in-class design
principles. The steep learning curve is due to the mountain of features, not a
poorly designed interface.

3. Sales
Service
Marketing
Analytics
Commerce
Industry-specific clouds
Adding objects and/or fields
Adding tabs and/or apps
Creating profiles
Creating workflows
Setting validation rules
Creating Apex classes and triggers
Adding new features in JavaScript
Changing UI using CSS
You can customize Salesforce to meet the exact needs and goals of your
business. The first level of customization is choosing your “cloud,” or what
other CRMs might call modules.
Salesforce has clouds for:
Once you subscribe to a given cloud, the UI is set up for a specific role. For
example, a sales executive will see a different layout than a marketing
manager. The customization is built-in according to department and
industry. You can also tailor the platform to your unique business model.
Some aspects of the platform can be changed without coding, such as:
Other customization options require a software developer, such as:
Customization

4. Sales Cloud
Homepage
Einstein
Smart scores
Sales paths
Native telephony
To see how Salesforce improves productivity and helps you close more deals,
let`s walk through a few of their sales tools:
The sales homepage provides a colorful pipeline report with leads organized
by stage. You can also view tasks, events, records, account news, and more.
Analytics are embedded into the page, helping you keep tabs on sales
performance.
On the right-hand side of your screen, you`ll find a wild-haired icon. This is
Einstein, your AI-powered assistant. He helps you work smarter by analyzing
your lead data to provide sales insights. You`ll find a list of recommendations
in the Einstein sidebar. You can act on each recommendation by simply
clicking it, saving you time.
Einstein can also help you prioritize your leads by assigning a smart score.
Einstein combs through historical sales data and issues a score based on who
is most likely to convert. Unlike traditional lead scoring, which is static,
Einstein`s predictions are based on machine learning, meaning they evolve
and grow smarter with time. Each day the lead scores are updated.
A sales path is the Salesforce term for pipelines. When you click on a sales
path, Einstein will pop up to guide your next steps. Einstein combs customer
data and the web to provide guidance. For instance, it may alert you to a
relevant news article about your client or simply remind you that you`ve
missed a task. As you click on each stage of your pipeline (or “path”), you`ll
get a series of timely recommendations from Einstein.
The opportunities page opens to a list view or a Kanban view. Einstein uses AI
to score your opportunities and evaluate the health of each deal. You`ll get
an analysis of how likely the deal is to close and any risk factors you can
mitigate. Einstein can analyze all your interactions to make specific
recommendations, such as suggesting you send an at-risk opportunity a
competitor analysis.
You can make sales calls with just a click, and calls are automatically logged
in the client record.

5. Marketing Cloud
Content builder
Engagement scores
Journey builder
The marketing cloud can help you build better campaigns and customer journeys
with Einstein, your AI assistant.
This is a cross-channel tool that helps you organize and develop content for your
campaigns. Images, content, and documents are saved in one space. With the
templates and drag-and-drop interface, you can build campaigns in minutes.
Einstein analyzes prospect behavior at the individual and historical level to segment
your audience. It can predict what content is most likely to engage a buyer, as well as
who is most likely to convert, unsubscribe, and open your email. This score refreshes
daily, and Einstein`s accuracy improves with time. You can also compare your
audience`s engagement to overall email benchmarks.
You begin with a blank journey canvas where you can drag and drop activities to
build your audience`s perfect customer journey. You start by selecting the “entry
source.” This is the triggering event that will pull a customer into the journey.
For example, when a deal converts to closed-won, that could be the triggering event
for a New Customer journey. You then drag actions and conditions to the canvas to
build an automated journey. It can be as complex or simple as you like. You can even
span different departments, for example, automating a handoff between marketing
and sales once a particular lead score is met.

6. Take the pressure off customer service agents and serve customers faster with
Salesforce`s self-service portal. You can build guided processes and a
knowledge base so that customers can help themselves.
AI can help you scale support with intelligent chat boxes that answer
common questions. The bots can also route complex problems to the right
agent based on routing rules.
All customer data is contained in a single system of record, so agents and
departments can collaborate. No one gets lost between departments or has
to repeat themselves to a new rep. Everyone has access to a 360-degree client
profile, allowing any employee to find the perfect solution.
Service Cloud

7. Opportunity management
Account management
Task management
Contract management
Quote management
Product management
For Sales
Email marketing
Campaign management
Analytics
Lead management
For Marketers
Features of Salesforce
Call management
Case management
Ticket management
Customer portals
For Service

8. Support
Integration
Questions & Answers
Technical Documentation
Success plans
Trailblazer community
Partner community
IdeaExchange community
Live support
Business hours
Training
Email
Knowledge base
Phone
Force.com G-Suite Slack Heroku
Quickbooks
Service Cloud Pardot
MailChimp
DocuSign Analytics
Cloud

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