Taking a customer-centric approach to app development is about creating opportunities for customers to engage more deeply with your business, rather than just giving them more chances to spend their money.
A customer centric approach to building a mobile app means creating an app according to your customers’ requirements, preferences, and needs. We aren’t talking about just adding some needed basic features. The customer-centric approach to app development means knowing your customer and taking that 360 degree customer view to the next level by building an app that delivers on all their expectations creating a great customer experience.
You do this by leveraging customer data and integrating it into your app development process.
The customer-centric concept is not only relevant to app development. The concept goes back to the time when every product or service developed placed customer truths at the core of new development. Embracing this approach meant every new feature and functionality released could be traced back to a real customer problem or need.
Heroku, part of the Salesforce Customer 360 platform, allows developers to build, test, and optimize powerful new features that use Salesforce data to deliver highly personalized customer experiences. This integration is seamless and does not require developers to learn new skills.
Working from the Salesforce Customer 360 platform developers and designers alike have full visibility into the things that customers desire and the things that have been working – or not working – well for them.
Here are a few examples of how SMBs have used Heroku and Salesforce to improve customer experiences:
- Furnished Quarters syncs booking information with customer data in Salesforce, which is then used by marketing and customer service teams.
- B-Lab, a nonprofit, uses assessment tools running on Heroku that pull data from Salesforce Sales Cloud to help for-profit companies measure their social and environmental impact.
- PensionBee, an online pension management platform, displays up-to-date account information to users in apps on Heroku, sourced from Salesforce.
Heroku is a platform as a service (PaaS) that enables developers to build, run, and operate applications entirely in the cloud. Developers, teams, and businesses of all sizes use Heroku to deploy, manage, and scale apps. But you don’t have to know how to use Heroku to benefit from it. Summit has a team of application developers that can bring the power of Heroku to your Salesforce ecosystem.
Heroku Connect is an add-on service for Heroku Enterprise that makes it easy for developers to synchronize data between an app’s database (Heroku Postgres) and a Salesforce organization. This means that whenever a customer updates their data in a Salesforce Heroku app, it is immediately updated in Salesforce. This can be valuable for quickly diagnosing support issues, developing marketing campaigns, and upselling new products.
Using Heroku Connect also enables you to build stronger relationships with your customers by gathering data on how they engage with the app, their experiences with the product, their preferences and interests, and their overall satisfaction with the product. Additionally, it eliminates the need to manage Salesforce APIs or worry about limits on data movement. There is even a version of Heroku Connect that helps apps comply with HIPAA regulations.
Developers – or Summit – can easily install and configure Heroku Connect using a simple point-and-click interface.
And when you are ready to scale, Heroku Enterprise offers advanced developer collaboration features that simplify company-wide administration of teams and apps. Enhanced security and reporting help you ensure trust, improve visibility, and increase organizational agility.
Heroku and customer-centric app development is just one of the robust offerings from Summit LLC.
Summit is a Columbus, Ohio-based Salesforce Consulting Partner consisting of a talented and creative team of Salesforce-certified Consultants, Developers, Analysts, and Project Managers. We specialize in building innovative solutions for our clients within the Salesforce family of products including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, CPQ, Experience Cloud, Nonprofit Cloud, Education Cloud, Pardot, Field Services and Salesforce Communities. Summit strategic services solutions bring custom Salesforce technology to work for your business.
