Salesforce.com is the now multi-billion cloud computing company started by Marc Benioff in the beginning of 1999.
Marc’s slogan is ’no software’. His company offers CRM services via the Internet. And not only the software that salesforce.com customers are using is running on remote servers, also their CRM data is stored on remote servers.
Problems
Because of the enormous growth of the company and the great number of users, salesforce.com suffered serious performance problems in 2005. Causing users not only to be unable to use the system, but also not being able to access their data on the salesforce.com servers.
To restore their customers’ confidence, Marc Benioff and his people decided to make information about the performance of their servers available on-line. The information is available on trust.salesforce.com and is there for everybody to see. Not only for salesforce.com’s customers but also for you and me, and for the salesforce.com’s competitors.
Would you do it?
Later Marc Benioff stated that trust.salesforce.com has saved his company. Without giving the information and being open about the performance of the system, salesforce.com would not have survived.
Opening up the way salesforce.com did was not new. Ebay was the first company to make similar information available to the public. But still it was a huge step for salesforce.com as it would have been for every company.
It proofs that being open to your customers is very important. If your customers don’t trust you anymore, you’re done. Trust is everything.
Would you be prepared to share your company’s performance with your customers or with the whole world? There is a chance you will be forced to do it in future. When customers start demanding more transparency.
Related links:
> trust.salesforce.com
> salesforce.com
> Behind the Cloud – Marc Benioff’s book on Amazon.com
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Earning trust and credibility is critically important, particularly for SaaS type businesses such SalesForce. That level of transparency is refreshing to see and sets a high standard both internally and externally.
Thanks for your reaction, Myron. I have put your blog in my blogroll. Great reading too.
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