Salesforce Director Urges Agencies to Adopt Cloud to Improve Customer Experience

The coronavirus pandemic has forced federal agencies to adopt cloud platforms to accelerate their digital transformation and to deliver better customer service, according to a top Salesforce manager. 

Tahera Zamanzada, Salesforce's director of digital strategy for the global public sector, said cloud platforms can improve the digital customer improvement in ways only possible through the technology. She added that recent trends resulted in higher cloud adoption rates and more satisfied customers, GovCon Wire reported Tuesday.

“Cloud can also handle the fluctuating bandwidth of demands so that agencies can scale up or scale down as needed. The key is to avoid the trap of replicating ineffective legacy processes and instead consider a more comprehensive, well-rounded, customer-centric approach,” Zamanzada wrote.

She urged agencies to work on delivering an "omnichannel experience" as when possible by providing customers with multiple options.

Zamanzada noted that some agencies are already developing customer-friendly main pages or portals that function effectively both on personal computers and mobile devices. 

The director also called on agencies to consider using artificial intelligence to help them understand their customers. AI technologies can help the government "reactionary" approaches to more "prescriptive" ones, she said. 

"They can use those insights to create human-centered design frameworks as part of their digital transformation plans while they continue to fine-tune their business processes and home in on mission effectiveness," she added. 

Zamanzada stressed that the customer should be at the center of the government's digital efforts in providing a secure, seamlessly interconnected and organized experience. "That means the experience should be tailored to each user who logs into an agency’s site,” she said.