Can you believe it has already been five days since Dreamforce ended? 

We can’t because our experience is still ongoing. When Dreamforce finished, the event itself came to a close, but the opportunity to reflect has just begun. We anticipated that we would have great stories to tell given this was our biggest Dreamforce presence to date, and that is most certainly the case. Our sessions were everything we hoped they would be and more, so I am excited to share the tale of our success with you. 

Ready? Let’s relive the Dreamforce glory days. 

Day 1

The first day was mainly spent easing into the excitement and gearing up for the week to come. With plans for various presentations and demonstrations, we wanted to make sure they went off without a hitch. Although we didn’t hold any sessions on opening day, we did host our “Relevance on the Rocks” cocktail party that night, which was a powerful indication of how the remainder of the event would unfold. 

Over 160 people attended our soiree at Hotel Zetta. We were not only able to reconnect with old friends, but make connections with new ones too. It was incredible to have our customers and partners come together with prospects to discuss everything they hoped to see and accomplish during the week. We couldn’t have planned a better way to kick off the event than to see our community grow right in front of us. 

Day 2

Beyond Apps Demo Jam

The second day started off early with this game show-style event. Our dynamic demo duo, Neil Kostecki and Ezmie Bouchard, proved to be a mighty force in this competition. 

Using our famous “Speedbit” demo environment, they told the hypothetical story of a poor soul who could not get their Speedbit activity band to work properly at Dreamforce (imagine the horror). They were able to showcase the true power of our new Lightning components by taking attendees on a journey from search and recommendations on the Speedbit community support page to case deflection, agent insights, case resolution and more. The most impressive part? They managed to do it all in under 3 minutes. 

How to Build AI-Powered Search and Recommendations using Lightning

Our second session of the day saw Neil make a repeat appearance. He had already made the potential of our Lightning components clear in the demo jam. In this session he was able to reveal just how simple they are to implement by introducing the three steps to get started.

Ultimately, utilizing our components is as easy as dragging and dropping recommendations into a page or an insight panel into the agent console, which amazed and drew insightful questions from onlookers. 

Day 3

Leveraging AI-Powered Search to Drive More Growth from your Commerce Site

Another dream Dreamforce duo, Alana Hagarty and Maxime Martin, teamed up to take their audience on a deep dive into B2B Commerce. 

Alana kicked off the session by delivering a thought-provoking narrative on the future of commerce. She highlighted new opportunities and challenges, offering advice for a way forward. When buyers can’t find what they need, digital commerce costs are increasing, and there is no complete view of the buyer’s journey, it becomes necessary to make products discoverable, limit operational costs, and prioritize higher profits in order for a business and its customers to succeed.

Maxime followed her presentation with a demonstration that perfectly illustrated how this balance becomes possible with AI-powered search and recommendations technology. He showcased how all digital buyer interactions can be taken into account to provide a more personalized experience- that only gets better over time. David Smith, the espresso machine buyer in question, was pleased with the outcome and so was the audience.

Using Coveo AI and Salesforce to Create Experiences that Engage, Sell, and Serve

Our afternoon breakout session saw our CMO and master storyteller, Mark Floisand, take the stage along with Ezmie Bouchard, Associate Product Manager, as well as leaders at Salesforce, Lisa Gomez, and Xero, Nigel Piper.

Mark began with the thrilling tale of how the digital landscape has evolved and how expectations have changed with it- not only must digital experiences be relevant and continuous for customers, but valuable for businesses too. This is a delicate balance to strike, but he showed how AI makes it possible to keep up with this new normal. 

Lisa proved this to be true, by discussing how Coveo allowed Salesforce to create experiences that engage, sell, and serve- across all use cases. Lisa shared Salesforce’s journey with Coveo, walking the audience through the expansion in use cases in order to highlight where Coveo AI had been used and benefits of doing so. The best part for us was that she finished by touching on plans for future applications and implementations. 

Nigel followed with a similar success story, explaining how Coveo helped them to scale their service experience at a time of rapid customer growth. By unifying their content and applying AI, they were able to deliver the information customers needed when they needed it- sometimes before they even knew they needed it.  

Ezmie concluded the session by bringing their experiences to life with another Speedbit demo, highlighting how and where Coveo AI can be applied. She started by showcasing in-app recommendations and moved into the community page to show all the information Coveo uses to train its machine learning. This gave her the opportunity to display case deflection as well as submission and resolution. She did such a fantastic job balancing exposure to customer and agent views that an attendee told her it was the best demo he had seen at Dreamforce – way to go Ezmie! 

Day 4

Introducing the B2B Commerce Partner Ecosystem

This session in particular was run by Salesforce, but the involvement by our VP of Products, Sawan Deshpande, was strong and worthy of note. 

Sawan was joined by Sanjay Agarwal, CEO at Fielo, and Brent Halverson, President & CEO at Conexiom, for a discussion on the expansion of the Salesforce B2B Commerce ecosystem led by Salesforce’s own Director of Strategic Product Partnerships, Josh Israels. Putting together this many brilliant thinkers in one room was a recipe for fantastic insights into the future of B2B Commerce. 

Sawan did an incredible job of showing the three ways Coveo brings value to B2B Commerce:

  • Unification: gathering together content within, and outside, the Salesforce ecosystem to create a one-stop shop where customers can find everything that they need. 
  • Boost and Bury: having results be based on business rules, so that they are aligned with all signals and objectives- from inventory levels to seasonal promotions.
  • B2C to B2B: bringing B2C Commerce personalization and relevance capabilities into B2B commerce.

His last point touched on the common theme that all speakers addressed: how to bring aspects of the B2C Commerce space into that of B2B. B2C customers have come to expect personalized and relevant digital experiences when they buy online, which has led to digital transformation on the part of vendors in order to meet those needs. The question now is how to replicate that same shift to better serve B2B business buyers and distributors, and these panelists did a great job answering it.

These sessions don’t even include the customer meetings we had, the partner circles we lead, or the countless interactions we had at our booth. Truthfully, it is impossible to fully capture our full involvement at Dreamforce. We were able to teach and learn so much about how to enhance digital experiences at the event, and we want those opportunities to continue to arise moving forward. 

Register for our three-part webinar series “AI-Enabled Personalization within Salesforce” to let the collaboration continue.