5 benefits of salesforce communities: Why you need to develop a strong network

Siloed information and fragmented communication are the enemies of a prosperous business ecosystem. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? How are you then supposed to foster strong, long-term relations with customers, partners, or employees in this context? 

Imagine for a second these potential scenarios: clients empower themselves via a well-oiled knowledge base, troubleshoot their issues on forums, and reach out to product or subject-matter experts (SMEs) on the fly. Partners, in the meantime, are up to speed on sales agreements, deals sealed, and related analytics. Last but not least, employees can access training materials and share best practices in dedicated groups. Here is when salesforce communities loom on the horizon. 

Such a powerful solution serves as a perfect hub for knowledge sharing, peer-to-peer support, and streamlined information exchange. However, just knowing about it can take you only so far. In this article, we’ll guide you through the benefits of salesforce communities so that you can use a strategic approach while creating yours. 

What are salesforce communities?

Salesforce communities offer users a trouble-free creation of online networks. With them, you can communicate and exchange information on different levels within your organization (we’ll get to that later).

Moreover, salesforce communities have a moderate learning curve, which adds to their user-friendliness and the ability to customize literally anything: from the layout to individual building blocks. 

How to create a community of your own? With the help of a Salesforce Community Cloud (Salesforce Experience Cloud) – a corporate social platform aimed at enhancing communication and engagement between an organization and its partners, customers, and employees. 

3 main types of salesforce communities 

To puzzle the benefits of salesforce communities out, we need to look at their types first. Thus, you’ll be able to implement them better and more effectively. All of them match various salesforce community requirements and goals: 

1. Salesforce customer communities 

Show us a customer who has no questions about a product or service whatsoever. You’re right: there isn’t any. Your clients may come up with a gazillion of inquiries, waiting for you to address them. If you don’t react to them swiftly, the odds are they will switch to another, more responsive, solution. This is when a customer community on Salesforce kicks in.

You can easily craft websites, forums, and portals on Experience Cloud with just a few clicks—no code required. Utilize pre-built Experience Cloud templates with preconfigured components to create spaces that your customers will love. Build a self-service community where clients can share insights and solve burning problems themselves, faster, all thanks to their collaboration.

How does it work on a practical level? Semilab, a Budapest-based industrial equipment supplier, has built a self-service customer portal with Salesforce Experience Cloud. Now, everything that clients would need on their purchase history, open cases, and status updates, is at their fingertips.

“The community helps customers to find answers to basic queries quickly, freeing up the service team to focus on more complex issues. It’s really important that we can show customers that their issues are important to us and that we’re working on them.” – says Benedek Koncz, head of digital operations at Semilab. 

2. Salesforce partner communities 

You want to keep your partners in the loop about sales and deals, don’t you? Salesforce communities for partners are your best bet in this case. These are gated portals that accelerate your sales efforts and require login credentials to access them. Let’s comb through their main elements:

• Partner business management: partners can navigate their programs and certifications, as well as submit leads and projects.
• Salesforce automation: share contacts, leads, and other vital records with your partners. Besides, you can engage third-party providers for standardized pricing and inventory purposes.
  
• Report management: you can not only track and monitor partner performance but also share customizable reports and dashboards with partners to make sure no important data slips through the cracks.

Salesforce employee communities 

Employee productivity is always high-stakes in a company of any size. Designed for internal use, this Experience Cloud on Salesforce lets you drive your coworkers’ efficiency, reduce onboarding costs, boost employee morale, and improve decision-making by facilitating information flow. The numbers confirm that! The McKinsey Global Institute discovered that employee productivity skyrockets by 20-25% in organizations where coworkers stay connected.   

Alongside with that, let’s cast a glance at a few features of salesforce employee communities, just to paint a broader picture: 

• Chatter collaboration: this is a hub where coworkers can collaborate on projects, meet relevant SMEs, get updates on ideas, etc. Chatter is a safe harbor for those wanting to introduce and contribute their concepts.
  There is a vivid example, presented by Toyota. Based in 170 different countries, the employees use Chatter to team up on the work seamlessly and revolutionize the way tasks get done. Even though there are 24 hours in a day, with Chatter, Toyota’s coworkers can connect with many people at once through this corporate, Facebook-like social platform.
  
• Salesforce file management: employees can bring all their files under one roof that is easily accessible by syncing them across all their devices. However, it’s vital to keep some related limitations in mind. First, uploads in Communities typically have a smaller file size limit compared to standard Salesforce. This might not be ideal for large training videos or design assets. Second, keeping track of changes and reverting to previous versions can be tricky with the native features. Imagine multiple team members editing the same marketing strategy document – confusion party!
• Groups: internal knowledge sharing is a ton better within a structured group. Thanks to this functionality, coworkers can join special team-wide crews, company-related groups, or new project channels. Sure thing, it’s also possible to exchange files and records across your organization. 

5 ultimate benefits of salesforce communities

As previously suggested, salesforce communities built on Experience Cloud are versatile. So are their advantages. Utilizing Salesforce Experience Cloud can open up a wave of opportunities to your customers (self-service), partners, and employees. What’s in it for you? Here are the undeniable benefits of salesforce communities you’ll notice once you adopt them:

1. Trouble-free community creation  

It’s the 21st century, so building a digital network shouldn’t be rocket science. With a community creation kit powered by Salesforce Experience Cloud, this definitely isn’t. For instance, you can create a community from scratch or use one of the pre-built templates, such as:

• Customer account portal;
• Customer service;
• B2C commerce;
• Help center, etc.

After that, use an intuitive experience builder tool to lay out important pages, modernize everything, play around with administrative parts (like inviting new members to the community), and gamify your users’ experience. Publish the website and let your network grow! 

2. User-first approach 

At their core, communities built with salesforce strive to empower users, be it customers, partners, or company employees. Everything revolves around the tools and resources that help these people thrive on their own. By providing this means, communities reduce the burden on support teams and cultivate a sense of ownership among users.

While building and customizing communities is intuitive (we’ll talk about it in a second), for organizations seeking expert guidance, experienced consultants like Advanced Communities, who are available at https://advancedcommunities.com/, can help you unlock the full potential of the Salesforce platform.

Communities is a user-focused platform that enables organizations to harvest valuable feedback from users through discussions, forums, and surveys. It helps businesses gain insights into user needs, preferences, and pain points, allowing for continuous improvement of the platform. This is one more benefit of salesforce communities that ensures the platform remains relevant to clients’ demands and expectations.

3. Broad customization 

In the no-code era, anything is possible. The customization options of communities on salesforce are proof of that. Just use a drag-and-drop functionality and pre-built templates to design unique landing pages, forums, and specific knowledge bases that match your brand’s identity. This ensures a smoother customer journey at all costs. 

For instance, a software company can start up a community that has separate sections for a range of software versions. Each section can contain targeted FAQs, tutorials, and discussion forums that are specific to that particular version. Such an approach helps eliminate confusion among users and enables them to locate solutions nice and easy.

Furthermore, the code-free approach lets community users manage content effectively. Team members can create blog posts, announcements, and update knowledge base articles without depending on developers. This facilitates real-time information sharing and ensures that the content remains relevant and up-to-date.

4. Seamless data circulation  

As you’ve probably guessed, the benefits of salesforce сommunities go way beyond a nice picture. The thing is that these portals rely heavily on the free flow of information between their users. Case studies, user-generated content, or help hubs – everything is included. By enabling seamless data circulation, users can access the information they need to handle problems, learn from each other, and contribute their expertise. 

Data circulation isn’t just a one-way street. It has something to do with customer support teams as well. Let us elaborate here. When a client posts a question, the entire community becomes a potential crew of problem-solvers. Other users who have faced similar issues or possess relevant expertise can jump in and offer solutions. What’s left to the customer support teams? Focusing on more complex issues.

Don’t take our word for it! A real-life example of how Experience Cloud has enhanced the business working routine is Royal HaskoningDHV – an Amsterdam-based international engineering consultancy. 

As stated by Teun van Schijndel, the company’s business owner, “Community Cloud allows us to share all the data we have collected on Einstein dashboards with customers and easily communicate what data or insights are missing, so we can build more accurate dashboards. It’s a whole new way of working.” 

5. Mobile-friendliness

Our modern world requires uninterrupted access to information wherever you are. Communities are designed to be responsive and mobile-friendly. Your customers, partners, and employees can enter the community and its resources seamlessly on their smartphones and tablets.

For a truly immersive experience, some organizations choose to build a dedicated mobile app using the Salesforce Mobile SDK. The beauty of it is in gaining features like push notifications and offline access, keeping users even more engaged.

But that’s the tip of it. Communities are no strangers to responsive web design. This ensures your online hub automatically adjusts to the screen size of any device, be it a desktop, tablet, or smartphone.

Final words 

The benefits of salesforce сommunities can be easily underestimated under one condition: if you have no clue what they are! Luckily, this isn’t the case now that you’ve read through this article. 

By utilizing the force of the Salesforce Experience Cloud, you have all the chances to transform your organization into a collaborative powerhouse. Design your community in clicks, customize it, and bridge the gap between your customers and support team – and you’re all set.  

08/04/2024