As I said the other day, Dreamforce was amazing.

The other thing I heard about was ‘personalized at scale’. This is a concept with which I have toyed at various job and during various projects, but the description, ‘personalized at scale’, is one I could not quite grab hold of until I heard it. Yes, I thought, that describes exactly what libraries need to do on a daily basis.

‘Personalized at scale’ is the concept of sending a customer an email with recommendations or personalization in some way based on their past purchases or interactions. Within the realm of personalization, you acknowledge each ‘touch’ with the client, because each touch point is documented. Obviously, using a system to help with this makes life much easier and Salesforce.com, according to the conference, is that system.**

Salesforce has a small business unit, but this area is really designed for large organizations that want to seem like they care about each customer. This feature has to be done with big data and computers. There is no company who can hire enough people who have the skills to get to know all the customers and suggest other products. It just won’t happen.

Still, I think that librarians do this to some extent by remembering what attorneys or patrons asked for last time and follow-up. I think it is very ad hoc. Readers Advisory is similar, but not a push notification; it is reactive. If public libraries could send out emails, personalized to all of their patrons I think things would change.

** I know there are other systems that do this same thing and if I get the opportunity, I will write about them, but this post is about Salesforce’s Dreamforce and their products.