Salesforce achieves complete customer engagement using the four realms of experience: entertainment, educational, esthetic, and escapist. It provides these through various touchpoints including help sites, in-app prompts, communities, customer success managers, media content, forums, and its Dreamforce event. Dreamforce specifically incorporates all four realms by including demonstrations, talks, an immersive environment, and a concluding party. By targeting all four realms through multiple touchpoints including events, Salesforce optimizes its customer success in the experience economy.

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October 8, 2021
7 Ways Salesforce Achieves Complete Customer
Engagement Using The Four Realms of Experience
process.st/customer-engagement-realms-of-experience
Jane Courtnell
October 8, 2021
Customer Success, Marketing, SaaS
Hello, and welcome readers to the experience economy.
Take my hand and I’ll guide you to a place of psychic gratification. Feel your senses tingle,
and your attention sharpen. You’re entering a new chapter of customer success, one that’s
immersive and marks the next economic stage.
Businesses are no longer competing on a commodity level. In a digital world, with growing
immersive processing power, organizations must crack the whip and adopt the experience
mindset. This is a mindset that’s focused on customer success and delivering exceptional
experiences instead of commodities.
In this Process Street article, we take a look at how one particular tech unicorn is succeeding
in this experience economy.

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You got it, I’m talking about the tech-tycoon Salesforce.
Salesforce is one of the largest tech companies to date with over 49,000 employees in 28
countries and has built the world’s most demanded CRM. Part of Salesforce’s triumph lies in
the organization’s customer success capabilities. And today, you will learn how they’ve
perfected customer success using principles from the experience economy.
Grab onto your seatbelts as you’re about to be blown away!
Here we go!💨
What is the experience economy?
The experience economy is a marketplace where organizations compete, not with the
commodities they provide, but with the experiences they create for their customers.
Source
A good example is the Simon DeBartolo Group, an American real estate investment trust
with a portfolio of shopping malls, outlet stores, community, and lifestyle centers. The malls
of the DeBartolo Group offer a different experience to your standard shopping center. These
malls use a panoply of architectural effects, which include marble floors, stark white pillars,
“outdoor” cafes, living trees – which nature-loving me highly appreciates 🌲– and flowing
fountains. Every mall front is an elaborated Roman re-creation. Statues of Caesar and other
Roman luminaries come to life and speak, “hail, Caesar!” while Roman centurions
periodically march through the walkways.
With the Simon DeBartolo Group, shopping never feels like a chore. It’s a fun experience.

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The term experience economy was first used in 1998 by authors B Joseph Pine and James
Gilmore.
In their book The Experience Economy, Pine and Gilmore argue that businesses must
orchestrate memorable events for their customers, and that memory itself becomes a product
of the experience.
A transformation has taken place. Customers no longer demand goods to serve a function,
but look for goods that deliver functions with individual experiences. This demand for
experience has created the experience market. This is the next step in what’s deemed as
progression in economic value.
The progression of economic value

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Unless companies want to become commoditized, they need to upgrade and deliver the next
economic value. Prior economic offerings – such as commodities, goods, and services – are
tangible and cannot give a truly differentiated output.
1. The commodity mindset: Business is merely performing a function (i.e. to get the user
from point A to point B.)
2. The experience mindset: Business moves beyond function and provides an experience.
You’re invited to witness how the experience economy has progressed over the years. Come
and join us as we’re about to host a party!
🎁You’re invited – let’s have a blast! 🎉
As a vestige of the agrarian economy, parents made birthday cakes from scratch, mixing farm
commodities (milk, flour, eggs, and butter) costing a small dime. As the goods-based industry
expanded, parents began to pay a little more for pre-made mixtures.
Use this mixture, whip up an egg, and va-va-voom you have yourself a cracking cake.
Moving on, the service economy takes over. We have busy parents purchasing premade cakes
with a hefty price tag.
Today, parents aren’t making the cake. They aren’t even going to the store to buy one. Nor
are they blowing up the balloons, making a playlist, and cramming around the treats
cupboard for party bag fillers.
They are spending a lot more money to outsource the entire event in places like Disney
World and Discovery Zone. Parents are buying the entire birthday experience.
Our party has transitioned into the experience economy.
Economic distinctions: The four realms of customer experience
We can sort experiences out into four broad categories according to where they fall along a
spectrum.

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This spectrum of division is as follows:
Entertainment: An example would be watching TV, or reading this article. This is
passive as you’re not involved in the event, nor do you affect the outcome. It’s
absorbing as your attention is attuned, but it’s not immersive as your not entering a
new, augumented environment.

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Educational: An example would be attending a university lecture. These experiences
are more active as you’re involved in the event and make a difference in its outcome.
The experience is absorbing as you’re engrossed with the information that’s
communicated to you – unless it’s a dull lecture.
Esthetic: Esthetic comes when your participation is removed from an immersive
experience. To be immersed means to enter a new or augmented environment. For
instance, if you go on a safari, then this would be immersive, but you don’t have an
impact on the event meaning you’re a passive participant.
Escapist: An escapist event is immersive, but demands active participation by
yourself. This could be playing in an orchestra or watching a football event. Your
contribution to these events will shape the experience. You’re also in a new, augmented
environment.
Generally, the richest experiences encompass all four realms of experience.
Rich experience examples include going to Disney World, gambling in Las Vegas, or climbing
a mountain. These experiences gain a sweet spot around the area where the experience
spectrums meet.
Hitting this sweet spot isn’t easy, but it’s achievable.
Salesforce acts as a prime example of how you can adjust your customer success strategies, to
deliver in the experience economy. The remainder of this article explains how Salesforce does
this.
8 ways Salesforce achieves complete customer engagement in our
experience economy
“I really like the [Salesforce] software because it brings me countless benefits with 100%
functionality…and an unbeatable service…[Salesforce] saves me time and allows me to meet
the needs of my clients, thus offering a unique and unmatched experience.” – Luisa S, G2
Review
As Luisa S says, Salesforce offers a “unique and unmatched” experience. The team at
Salesforce delivers these unique customer experiences by using the experience economy for
their customer success operations.
Salesforce does this by hosting:
Help sites
In-app help prompts
Communities
CSM/Account management
Tower tours

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Media content/Appearances
Forums
Dreamforce
Let’s have a look at each of the above in more detail, and see how – when delivered together
– Salesforce hits the sweet spot in terms of customer success, engagement, and delivering an
unmatched experience.
Help sites deliver an educational experience for the Salesforce customer
Salesforce’s help site is a web platform that offers informative documents, videos, interactive
tutorials, and walkthroughs. These resources are designed to educate and help you succeed in
using the Salesforce CRM.
How do help sites deliver an educational experience for the Salesforce
customer?
The different resources offered on the Salesforce help site mean customers can design the
experience they want. That is, the experience is self-led.
Maybe they want to take part in an interactive tutorial, or maybe they prefer to sit and read
an informative document. By having this interactive power, Salesforce has delivered an active
experience.
The customers are not immersed in a new, augmented environment, instead, they are
observing something from the outside. Because what they’re observing will help them achieve
their CRM goals, they will be absorbed in the information provided to them. To conclude we
have an educational experience.

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Educational = Passive Participation + Absorption
In-app help prompts deliver an educational experience for the Salesforce
customer
Source
When using the Salesforce platform, customers are prompted with pop-ups on how to do
certain tasks, and use certain Salesforce features. The prompts are designed to lead the
customer down a path of best practice towards their ‘A-ha!’ moment.
Help prompts give Salesforce users tidbits of knowledge they can apply while using the
software.
How do in-app help prompts deliver an educational experience for the
Salesforce customer?
As with help sites, customers are observing the information given from an online platform.
They’re outsiders absorbing the pop-up information. Hence they are not immersed in the
experience. The information given is useful and helps the customers achieve their aim with
the Salesforce CRM, and is hence absorbing.
The prompts delivered are dependent on the customer’s activity in the Salesforce application.
This means customers can shape what prompts are delivered to them, resulting in active
participation.
Communities deliver an escapist experience for the Salesforce customer

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Source
Salesforce Trailblazer community is an online platform designed to connect users.
Community members can go onto the Trailblazer platform, find the relevant community, and
then search feeds, groups, and topics for upcoming events. These events take place in person,
where Salesforce pays community members to go out and have fun with other members.
Through their communities, Salesforce orchestrates supportive groups to deliver a positive
experience to their customers. In a sense, Salesforce has managed to create a movement.
How do communities deliver an escapist experience for the Salesforce
customer?
Communities give people a sense of purpose and an escape from their everyday lives.
Meeting up in person creates an immersive experience as members physically remove
themselves from their routine to congregate, have fun, and learn.
This experience is active on the participant’s side. Community involvement is the
responsibility of the community members. Customers get out what they put in. Salesforce
merely provides the platform to support and help users organize their escapist experience.
Escapism = Active Participation + Immersion
Salesforce CS/Account management delivers an educational experience for
the Salesforce customer

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Source
When a customer sets up their Salesforce account, they’re assigned to a Customer
Success/Account Manager. This means customers have a dedicated team behind them,
assisting them on their Salesforce journey.
Customers can come to the CS/Account Manager if they have any questions or issues. This is
part of their Salesforce experience.
How do CS/Account Managers provide an educational experience for the
Salesforce customer?
Customers communicate with CS/Account managers to resolve their issues and achieve their
goals. This communication is two-way and demands active participation from the customer.
The collaboration between the CS/Account Manager and the customer does not rely on an
augmented environment, making the experience educational rather and escapist.
Media content and appearances deliver an entertaining experience to the
Salesforce customer

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If you haven’t already, I would recommend you check out the Salesforce blog. There’s a
wealth of entertaining articles to engross you. Salesforce also has a Youtube Channel, hosts
webinars, and often attends external events as guest speakers. For instance, check out Mark
Benioff‘s – CEO of Salesforce – talk at Goldman Sachs or his appearance at CNBC.
How do media content and appearances provide an entertaining experience to
the Salesforce customer?
The media content, webinars, and appearances are viewed by customers, who are on the
outside. The customers are not immersed in a new environment, but the experience is
absorbing.
Customers have no impact on the event and act as passive participants.
Entertainment = Passive Participation + Absorbing
Forums deliver an educational experience to the Salesforce customer

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Salesforce hosts several different forums to help their customers collaborate, and get the
answers they need from other users. These forums include Salesforce’s Customer
Collaboration Forum, Developer Forum, and a Discussion Forum.
How do forums provide an educational experience to the Salesforce customer?
The communities and forums hosted by Salesforce are all about providing a platform
dedicated to collaboration, idea sharing, communication, and peer-to-peer education. This
education is driven by the users, making the experience active.
Because the users aren’t immersed in a new environment, these experiences are not Escapist
experiences. They are educational, using absorbing information from the outside.
Dreamforce delivers an escapist experience for the Salesforce customer
Dreamforce is an annual Salesforce event. The event brings Salesforce users together for
learning, fun, community building, and philanthropy.
Dreamforce aims to teach, inspire, give back and provide fun for Salesforce customers. This
is achieved by:
Running breakout sessions, training, and certification opportunities;
Inspiring attendees by hosting talks from the world’s most innovative minds;
Helping attendees build diversity, inclusion, equality, and sustainability with action
and volunteerism;
Hosting a party in celebration of the Salesforce community for fun.
How does the Dreamforce event provide an escapist experience for the
Salesforce customer?

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Participants of the Dreamforce event are immersed in a new environment; one that has been
carefully designed, planned, and augmented by the Salesforce team. In this new world,
participants are allowed to let go, forget the outside world, and truly find themselves
immersed in the experience.
The presence of the attendees gives life and soul to the Dreamforce celebration. Without
participation, there would be no event. Once more, the quality of this participation (the
enthusiasm and spirit) alters the experience Dreamforce creates. Hence participants are
active participants.
To summarize, Salesforce uses different strategies and platforms for customer engagement.
By doing they’ve managed to create entertaining, educational, and escapist experiences. Yet,
what about esthetic experiences?
Remember an esthetic experience is immersive and requires no participation. It’s difficult for
SaaS companies – like Salesforce – to provide such experiences because their offering is
mostly in The Cloud. And I’m sorry to say, we can’t immerse people in The Cloud… yet. 😈
No, we’re not digitizing humans, but there’s another way SaaS companies can provide
esthetic experiences…something that Salesforce has managed to do.
The answer comes from holding conferences, like Dreamforce.
Esthetic: Passive Participation + Immersive
In fact, the Dreamforce event manages to use every four realm of experience by itself. This
one event rises to the demands of the experience economy.
How the Dreamforce event delivers four realms of experience
We know that Dreamforce is an escapist experience when considered as a whole. But if we
break the event down into its constituent parts, you’ll see the event itself incorporates all four
experience realms:
1. Entertainment: The Dreamforce event is used as a platform to announce important
Salesforce updates and new features using on-screen demonstrations. These
demonstrations are presented with participants looking on from the outside (absorbed,
not immersed). Participants have no impact on these updates/new feature
demonstrations, hence they are passive participants.
2. Esthetic: Dreamforce creates a new environment to host the event. For instance, a
Dreamforce “National Park” is created for the participants to walk around in and
admire. In this instance, the participants are immersed in the Dreamforce experience,
but they have no impact on the experience this augmented world creates. Hence, they
are passive participants.

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3. Educational: Dreamforce hosts talks from industry experts. These talks are watched
by the participants from the outside. Participants are absorbed in the experience but
are not part of it. The participants are active, as they interact with the speaker and
therefore shape the outcome of the experience.
4. Escapism: A Dreamforce event wouldn’t be a Dreamforce event without the ending
party. Participants are engulfed by the social event – they’re immersed – and their
presence directly impacts the party’s success – no one likes a dead celebration.
In conclusion, using Salesforce as an example, you can see how it’s possible to target all four
realms of experience to optimize customer success. You can do this by:
1. Providing multiple customer touchpoints that target different spectrums of experience.
2. Host a single event to deliver all four realms of experience in itself.
How was your experience? Evaluate your customer success
operations to deliver optimized experiences
How did you find this article? What was your experience?
I can tell you, you’ve been a great passive and absorptive audience.
If you’re not thinking about experiences when designing your customer success strategies,
then start. And start today.
Delivering on the four realms of experience will differentiate you as a brand that offers a
customer premium.
The experience economy is unfolding. Top corporations like Salesforce are tackling this
change as an opportunity. And so can you.
Adopt the same 8 customer success techniques as Salesforce and you’ll be on your way to
lead in the experience economy.
Use your creative powers, be industry shakers, and deliver mind-blowing experiences!