Salesforce summer 2023 release: The business executive’s guide

Salesforce’s summer release delivers a series of enhancements to improve the user experience and saving time through efficiency. After all, what good is a tool if it’s challenging to use and takes up a bunch of time that none of us have? 

Highlights covered in this edition include admin and CRM enhancements, Account Engagement (formerly Pardot), and feature upgrades for Commerce.

Admin and CRM enhancements 

Whether you’re a seasoned pro or a first-time user of Salesforce, these admin and CRM enhancement enable you to customize the experience and find things faster.

• Layout. Imagine trying to read a book, but the words are all jumbled together, making it nearly impossible to understand. Before the latest layout updates, that’s how Salesforce used to feel for many users — especially first-timers. The updated layout includes consolidated address fields, phone numbers, and well-spaced elements to improve readability and navigability. In addition, you can now align fields horizontally for user adoption and data visibility.
• Optimized app pages. Users can customize and optimize app pages, making information more accessible and digestible for users. Maximizing and minimizing sections of pages will help you and your team find what you’re looking for faster, which means less time spent scrolling.   
• Gender-neutral salutations. The importance of honoring all of your customers cannot be overstated. Salesforce has adopted gender-neutral salutations so you can better reflect the diversity of your customers. An “Mx.” salutation is now available, which is a significant step towards making everyone feel seen and valued.
• Customizable dashboards. The dashboard, which has been a significant source of frustration, is now customizable and can be tailored to your customers with the ability to add custom images and text. Plus, you can add up to five filters and focus your dashboard. All this is to say that you can set your workspace to suit your needs and preferences, making it more efficient and narrowly tailored for your target audience.
• Updated calendar. The last important update in this section is that the calendar feature has been revamped to include a drag-and-drop capability to move events around easily. Plus, there are now overlapping event tiles and color-coded events for better usability. Updates to calendar functions have been a longtime request by Salesforce users, and the upgrades are exciting because they lead to increased productivity. 

Account Engagement 

Salesforce’s Account Engagement, formerly known as Pardot, has received several significant updates to improve efficiency and effectiveness.

• Completed actions + external actions. Trigger partner completion actions with external actions in the same setup. Previously, external actions had to be triggered via Engagement Studio, but you can use your Account Engagement platform and third-party tools to automatically create a multi-touch experience while also creating operational efficiencies between marketing systems. Let’s say you have a user fill out a form on your site. You can now automatically register them via your webinar tool. You can also create an automatic second touch by sending them a text message after the form completion. 

• Optimizer tool. The new optimizer tool for Account Engagement allows users to see how the tool and your business unit(s) are operating at any time. This includes identifying areas to improve your overall performance, which in turn creates more efficient touchpoints for your customer.  A great example of the tool at work is identifying the overuse of automation rules that can slow overall operational processes ‘behind the scenes’ (which can delay critical communications to your customers!). In digital, every second counts; Optimizer’s ability to surface risks to Account Engagement users means you’ll be spending time fixing automations rather than manually auditing your tool.

• Data Cloud. Account Engagement now works with Salesforce Data Cloud (formerly Salesforce CDP) to connect data from multiple sources and unify that data into unified customer profiles. Once unified profiles are available, Account Engagement users can segment and personalize their customer communications, driving increased engagement and revenue.

Guest check-out upgrade among Commerce enhancements

Several significant updates that enhance customer experience were included in this release: upgrades to guest checkout, a self-service reorder portal, a Pay Now feature, and saved payment methods.

• Guest check-out feature. Allows customers to browse and check out anonymously, making the shopping experience faster and less intrusive.

• Self-service reorder portal. Simplifies the process of placing repeat orders, saving time and effort. 

• Pay Now: Makes it easier to process payments without going through the checkout process by letting businesses send a URL or a page to a customer so they can make a payment immediately. Think of it as skipping the line and going straight to the cashier.

• Saved payment methods.  Also enables quicker checkouts by eliminating the need to re-enter payment information each time. This feature mimics a digital wallet, only you don’t need to dig around to find your credit card. 

Want to see all the details? The full Salesforce Summer ‘23 Release notes are here.