Salesforce Adds New Gender Identity and Pronoun Data Options to Its Core Products

Gender identity and inclusivity are no longer brushed under the carpet. Today, companies are making extra efforts and walking the extra mile to establish a deeper, more sensitive bond with their customer. With an aim to enable a more inclusive environment, Salesforce rolled out new fields for gender identity and pronoun data in its products.

This move will empower companies to support more inclusive ways to collect, manage and utilize data, further enabling them to build a more reliable connection with their customer.

The new enhancements will focus on two to-be-added fields across standard objects that typically represent people including Lead, Contact, and Person Account objects. These will allow customers and users to ‘select, identify, and capture pronouns and gender identity’.

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By enabling standardizations, admins can do away with creating custom fields for their companies, while facilitating them to bring together accurate customer data.

Paula Goldman, Salesforce’s Chief Ethical And Humane Use Officer points out that these gender-inclusive features will help organizations to understand and connect better with their customers.

“Today’s gender-inclusive features will help customers better understand and connect with a growing consumer base. In today’s digital economy, it’s critical that businesses have the accurate, authentic customer data they need to deliver the exceptional experiences people expect.”

How the Gender-Inclusive Features Came Into Force

Salesforce designed these new features in close partnership with the Inclusive Language Steering Committee – including members of Outforce, the company’s LGBTQ+ employee resource group, and Out and Equal, an Oakland-based organization working on LGBTQ+ workplace equality.

Salesforce’s earnest belief to not only encourage but also advance ethical and inclusive tech resulted in the addition of these new fields. Another testament to their belief was the updates made to Salesforce’s technical language in 2021 to attend to implicit bias and increase racial inclusivity.

According to the Salesforce blog, the new fields and options, include he/him, she/her, they/them, and more. Built-in gender identity options include male, female, nonbinary, and more. Both fields feature a “not listed” option as well.

Inclusive Features Meaning Building Trust

To establish a trustworthy connection and enhance customer success, making use of the right identifiers is an integral part. Most often than not, the options in the data systems and customer relationship tools are generic and thus fail to capture an individual’s full identity.

With Salesforce’s new fields, businesses can make the most of built-in pronoun and gender identity options. These fields will further accommodate each customer’s unique needs.

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In addition to customizing each person’s unique needs, the all-new gender-inclusive features will give organizations different choices about how and when to use this data. In some cases, if the data should be used at all or not as not all businesses will require broad gender-related data. Salesforce’s news of the new feature represents the company’s commitment to protecting people from discrimination, exclusion, and unintentional disclosures.

Guidelines while Collection Customer Data

Companies should keep the following general rules while gathering sensitive information from customers.

Safety above all:

Gender data is sensitive. With LGBTQ+ and nonbinary people, if the data is disclosed unintentionally, they can be at risk of potential discrimination or targeted harassment.

Emphasis on transparency to build trust

In most cases, when customers are aware of the reason behind the collection of sensitive data, they are most likely to trust the companies. As long as brands are transparent about why they need the data and what they will do with it, customers will easily trust them.

Customer empowerment

While gathering information, another vital aspect companies must keep in mind is providing relevant options for customers to choose from and giving them the freedom to decide what they wish to disclose. Sometimes, there is no need to collect gender data, and in some cases, it can be considered a limited data point.

Encouraging inclusive language

Ensure that the language used is people-centered and inclusive, and important to obtain accurate data, thus enhancing customer experience.

This new feature will enable businesses to understand their customer better and protect them from discrimination, and unintentional disclosures.