Salesforce CX, AI, integration tools are 2019 trends to watch

For the company that popularized CRM -- and indeed uses that abbreviation as its stock symbol -- Salesforce faces a potential identity crisis in 2019 as competitors such as Oracle, SAP, Zendesk and others pivot from CRM to customer experience management. Salesforce CX-enabling tools will likely be one focus of the San Francisco-based cloud software vendor in the coming year, as will Salesforce integrations that make customer data move more fluidly between its clouds. Large companies, such as Nike and Mastercard, that sell both to businesses and consumers -- or B2B2C in marketing parlance -- expect their platforms to support CX improvement initiatives that focus on customer retention and buttressing retail store experiences with online alternatives. Salesforce CX-facing features ripe for upgrading include AI-based personalization tools, as well as those that can measure campaign effectiveness against advanced segments and metrics, said Chris Jacob, director of product marketing for Salesforce Marketing Cloud. These tools must become more sophisticated by design, because Salesforce customers pour more data into their marketing and sales efforts every year.