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Hello and welcome back to the 
Retail podcast live from NRF. 

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This time Rob Gough from 
Salesforce General Manager of 

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Retail. 
Have I? 

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Got that right you got there. 
Honestly, you're doing. 

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Great. 
Really beads of swing coming 

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down my hands. 
I actually saw Rob dazzling the 

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audience about your new 
capabilities. 

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And so for those who don't know,
let's take a step back for it. 

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Let's talk about you for like 
the first bit and then let's 

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talk about Salesforce in terms 
of thing. 

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So just tell us a little bit 
about you, how you got here, 

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your journey through Salesforce,
how long have you been at 

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Salesforce? 
Yeah. 

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So again, Rob Garf, GM for 
retail here at Salesforce. 

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I've been here a total of 13 
years. 

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That's actually been a 
combination of coming in through

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the acquisition of Demandware, 
which is now Commerce Cloud. 

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And I am now, like I said, 
oversee retail and consumer 

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goods on the product side. 
So we're building products and 

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solutions to bring them to 
market. 

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The intent is recognising that 
consumers traverse nine 

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different touch points in any 
given shopping journey. 

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We're trying to create a unified
platform to really personalise 

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and remove that friction across 
all of those touch points. 

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Yeah, I mean, when I was at your
Chicago event, I was blown away 

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how you are embedding AI into 
like every single module as you 

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go. 
And so you're responsible for 

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that. 
Yeah, Mark, in terms of bringing

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that to market for retail and it
sounds like you're at 

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Connections, it's always that 
happens in the fall and spring, 

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excuse me. 
And yeah, you know, it's 

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interesting. 
Everybody's coming at AI from a 

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different angle. 
At Salesforce, of course, we put

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data in the middle. 
We put trust in the middle. 

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But most importantly, what I'm 
hearing from our retail 

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customers is they don't want 
another user interface to do 

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their job. 
Our research at Salesforce has 

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shown that store associates on 
average have to log into 12 

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different systems on a daily 
basis. 

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That's just untenable. 
That really doesn't allow for 

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more productivity or customer 
and consumer engagement. 

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So we make AI right in the flow 
of work. 

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So for us marketing across 
service and commerce. 

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Wow. 
OK. 

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So so I I guess the whole the 
outcomes that you're creating 

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for retailers, you're allowing 
them to get to things a lot. 

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I mean, customisation, for 
example, is one of the outcomes 

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you focus on. 
Yeah. 

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I mean, if you think about the 
outcome, and I like how you're 

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framing that up, is ultimately 
removing the friction, right, 

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between inspiration and purchase
through a frictionless and 

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personalised experience across 
all of those different channels,

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both in store and online. 
And with AI, we're doing that by

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embedding it right in the flow 
of work. 

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Yeah. 
And what I think is also super, 

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super interesting is that I 
talked to a lot of customers 

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about a, I mean hundreds of 
customers since the about 12 

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months at Generative AI came on 
to the map. 

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And some are talking about low 
end or I should say bottom line 

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improvement for efficiency and 
productivity. 

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Yeah, others are talking about 
top line growth. 

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But the one thing in common is 
the customer and the customer 

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experience. 
And also, by the way, I'm often 

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corrected, it's also about the 
employee. 

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Yeah, it's very ants ultimately 
thinking about what problems 

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we're solving on their behalf 
and not trying to create these 

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big shiny objects, but rather 
solve practical problems for 

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either the customer or the 
employee. 

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OK. 
There's a couple of areas that I

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want to go in Yeti, for example,
or massive Yep Ban. 

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It's incredible how many talks 
I've been at where they've used 

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Yeti as the store of the future.
Yeah. 

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In terms of blending all of 
these experiences, yes, 

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Salesforce at the heart of Yeti,
that's right. 

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In terms of the e-commerce 
transformation, yeah, you just 

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take for those who don't know 
about Yeti and what you're 

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doing, can you just tell us 
about you know the outcomes 

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there? 
Yeah, absolutely. 

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I mean you know them through 
tumblers and you're seeing them 

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through the different coolers 
they have really innovating and 

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disrupting the market yet he is 
one of my favourite brands, 

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personally one of the older 
demand. 

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We're now Commerce Cloud 
customers, so holds a very near 

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and dear place in my heart. 
And yeah, what they're looking 

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at when they went from just 
going wholesale through the 

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brick and mortar retail 
locations direct to consumer, 

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they came to Salesforce and they
said how do we better understand

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who our consumer is. 
Yeah, so we start to connect the

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dots in terms of their profile, 
their preferences, their 

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shopping behaviour, what service
queries they have, how loyal 

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they are. 
Yeah, they help personalise that

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experience. 
And it's not like you go out 

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every week like in a grocery 
store to buy a new Tumblr, but 

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rather they need to think about 
how do we proactively trigger 

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something to inspire the 
consumer to buy something you. 

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Yeah. 
And in order to do that, they 

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are creating a 360° view of that
consumer in activating it. 

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Yeah. 
Through marketing. 

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Yep. 
Through commerce. 

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Yeah. 
And through service. 

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So again, that consumer is 
having a consistent experience. 

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They're being treated and served
as they should as a loyal 

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customer. 
It it does feel that that's the 

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blueprint of the future if I'm 
honest. 

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From listening to all the talks 
about how yetis creating 

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physical, incorporating digital 
and then backing them off to 

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each other, right? 
So the website refers to the 

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store, store refers to the 
website and you and you've got 

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this thing. 
Final thoughts. 

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Yeah, I obviously AI massive 
theme. 

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Yeah. 
What I'm really curious of the 

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number one thing customers, you 
must have met so many customers,

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what's top of mind for them? 
What's the one thing they 

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they're being asking you about? 
Well, The thing is, I'm really 

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encouraged about the positive 
mindset. 

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I mean, NRF here, there's so 
much energy. 

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We feel like we're back and even
above where we were before the 

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pandemic. 
And retail executives, I'm 

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talking about are focused on 
growth. 

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They're focused on increasing 
the share of wallet. 

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Yeah. 
And that might be beyond the 

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categories of the products or 
the services they have provided 

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in the past. 
That's why you're hearing about 

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retail media. 
That's why you're hearing about 

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retail health, retail logistics 
and even more thinking about, 

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again, beyond the kind of 
constraints they've been in the 

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past. 
And the way they're going to do 

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that is better understand the 
consumer and monetize loyal 

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shoppers to find new and 
different ways to serve them 

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better. 
And the way ultimately that 

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comes down to we talk about AI. 
Yeah, right. 

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How many times have you heard AI
this week? 

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It's not. 
Inside, I just climbed 1000. 

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It's, it's an AI revolution. 
But it's as much of A data 

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revolution. 
It's a skills revolution, it's 

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an organisational revolution, 
it's a trust revolution. 

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And most importantly, it's a 
customer experience revolution. 

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And so you wrap all that 
together and it's really a 

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transformation that I have never
experienced in my time in 

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retail. 
It's fundamentally going to 

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change the way we're interacting
with our consumers. 

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Yeah. 
Our suppliers, our employees and

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ultimately driving loyalty and 
growing really sustainable 

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relationships. 
I I love that. 

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Can I ask one more question 
please? 

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OK. 
Salesforce, you have so many 

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different components. 
Yeah so many different products,

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so many different entities. 
I a lot of the community may not

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be or the the effects may not be
on the Salesforce journey. 

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Sure, if I'm thinking about this
world and I'm either re 

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platforming, I understand what 
I've built doesn't work. 

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Where do I start? 
It's the one thing where if I'm 

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turning up to talk to 
Salesforce, how do I get the 

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maximum value? 
What? 

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Where do I start? 
Yeah, it's a great question. 

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It's a question that I get, I 
guess if I frame this up a 

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little bit, retailers are 
engaging with consumers like I 

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said across nine different touch
points in any given shopping 

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journey. 
Consumer electronics have 

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probably on the higher end, if 
you're a fast moving consumer 

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goods like convenience store, 
you're at the lower end of that.

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But my point is consumers are 
traversing online and offline to

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ultimately buy what they want to
get the service they need. 

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And so what's happening though 
and the retailer side, retailers

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according to our research that 
Salesforce have to manage 44 

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different systems could actually
manage that engagement. 

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That doesn't even account for 
the back office. 

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That's just consumer engagement.
Yeah, you can't do that 

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efficiently. 
You can't do that effectively. 

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Yeah. 
So you think about, you think 

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about Salesforce of course at 
the highest level we are the 

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number one AR, we are the number
one AI CRM, period, full stop. 

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What does that mean for retail? 
We infuse data. 

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We infuse AI across the entire 
buying journey across all of 

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those touch points, marketing, 
service, commerce. 

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We layer on Tableau for 
analytics. 

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You have Mulesoft to integrate 
all those disparate systems and 

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Slack to bring productivity and 
collaboration to the hands of 

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the frontline and headquarter 
workers. 

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That's fantastic. 
Well, thank you so much. 

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We can carry on. 
I know they're queuing up to 

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take you away, so I really 
appreciate. 

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Absolutely. 
My pleasure. 

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Thank you very much. 
Have a good day.