What it is:

Salesforce Community Cloud (now known as Salesforce Experience Cloud) is Salesforce’s Platform Portal tool which allows companies to connect their internal teams, customers, and resellers / partners together into a single location with all the information, records, notes and tools needed to deliver the best experience for all parties. 

Why is it important / Business Value:

With communication between employees, teams or customers being one of the most business-critical areas for companies as we’ve all been adapting to the changes in our working environments, the need for these channels to be in one easily managed location has never been more required. What does this mean for your business? It provides a single location for your teams to engage with customers, potential new clients and colleagues whilst sharing data and various other media, in real-time whilst increasing efficiency and customer resolutions as quickly as possible.

Where appropriate:

The Community Cloud / Experience Cloud can be integrated into various areas of your company to address any number of business needs based on the team using the platform as well as who is on the other side of the conversation.

Internally, HR and IT Support teams can engage with the rest of your company when dealing with anything from onboarding to payroll, to holiday or expense requests to IT troubleshooting.

Experience Cloud isn’t just an internal portal. Your Sales Team can use the platform to open up a more direct dialogue with your customers, delivering a more efficient and very positive customer experience. As a Salesforce tool you also benefit from the ability to connect third party platforms, including ERP tools to pull in customer information, buying history and deliver opportunities for upselling, loyalty discounts or new packages specifically tailored to the customer on the other side of the conversation.

Considerations of application:

The obvious thought is that a platform like this is only really suited for large-scale companies, however that’s never been the case with Community Cloud / Experience Cloud. The range of bespoke, template (or Lightning Community Builder) options gives SMBs pre- created “out-of-the-box” solutions that can be quickly and easily plugged into the various areas of your business with simple customisation options as your business continues to grow.

How to do it:  

The first, and probably most important step is establishing where Community Cloud can be inserted into your business, be it one department or multiple. Regardless of industry, Community Cloud has a library of industry-specific Lightning Bolt templates. Process flows, apps and components that can easily plus into your business. From there you can begin creating your communication dashboard, including any third-party apps and systems you wish to connect and once you have everything looking exactly as you want, it’s time to launch.

With so many options, variations and customisable templates available it might be a little daunting to decide where to begin and what is the best option for your business, at least to start with. That is where we can help, get in touch with us and our team can work with you to understand your business needs, the scale you are looking to incorporate and together we can build the perfect Community Cloud / Experience Cloud for you, your team, your partners and most importantly, you customers.