4. Communities Extend the Value of Portals
Current Portals
•Partner
•Customer
Branding &
Customization
Social
Collaboration
Business
Process
Integration
Mobile
Access
6. Community 1:
Self-Service Community
Community 2:
Partner Community
Community 3:
Company Community
Community n:
Any Community
Business Data
Cases
Salesforce Community Types
Community 1:
Self-Service Community
Community 2:
Partner Community
Community 3:
Internal Community
Community n:
Any Community
7. Types of Communities
-OR-
Extensive Functionality
Up to 300K Users
Reports & Analytics
Knowledge Management
Site.com/VF/APEX
Per/user/year
Partner Community
B2B
Customer Community
B2C
Self-Service Functionality
Up to 5M Users
Read Only Dashboards
Read Only Knowledge
Site.com/VF/APEX
Per User/Login
18. What is the Community’s Business Objective?
• Maintain Customer Relationships
• Streamline Sales Operations
• Customer Service Channel
• Connect with Distributors
• Integrated Marketing Channel
• Knowledge Sharing
27. Salesforce Communities Best Practices!
•Define the community business objective(s)
•Identify who your audience will be
•Analyze how your audience will benefit from the community
•Involve key stakeholders
•Define the perspective of your brand that you want to deliver
•Prepare & test
•Train you community members (internal/external)
•Build a support channel for help and feedback (Chatter!)
In order to become customer companies, businesses need to engage with a complex ecosystem. Salesforce communities were driven by our customers who asked us how to better connect customers, partners, distributors, prospects in ways that they can collaborate together, work together, and drive better business results.
Engagement and alignment with customers and partners determine success in today’s business environment. Resellers and dealers drive revenue growth, agencies empower marketing, and customer satisfaction makes the difference between sustained growth and stagnation.
The key incremental benefits of Salesforce Communities when compared to Salesforce Portals :
Social collaboration: members can interact, collaborate on goals and form groups to support their interests
Branding: companies can design their community to match their brand and website look and feel
Business processes: members can create and collaborate on support cases, sales opportunities or campaigns from within the community
Mobility: members can access the community from any device, anywhere
Salesforce Communities is the only community platform that combines the power of social with mobile participation, trusted security and direct connection to business processes.
Salesforce Communities is an online platform that enables rich collaboration between employees, customers, partners, suppliers and distributors. Organizations can create fully branded public or private communities and directly connect members with each other as well as with relevant content, data and business processes.
Salesforce’s Social Intelligence technology recommends relevant topics, business data, groups, and experts to connect with.
Business Process Integration: members can create and collaborate on support cases, sales opportunities or campaigns from within the community.
Social Collaboration: members can interact, collaborate on goals and form groups to support their interests.
Branding/Customization: companies can design their community to match their brand and website look and feel. Content and navigation structure is highly customizable.
Mobility: members can access the community from any device, anywhere
Social Intelligence: relevant content and resources are suggested to each member based on their interests and behavior.
Security & Scalability: leveraging the trusted Salesforce platform, all data and member information is always safe -- no matter how many members you have
Salesforce allows you to host multiple communities for your specific needs on a single platform. This means your internal employees as well as external stakeholders can belong to multiple communities, and seamlessly toggle between them with a single user interface. Important updates on business data, such as leads or support cases, are presented to relevant members on every community they belong to in order to ensure visibility. Role-based sharing helps to restrict data and member visibility based on access levels.
At a high level, Partner Communities offers more access to business data although Customer Communities are more scalable. It’s important to understand use cases before making a community recommendation.
Unfortunately, companies struggle to use existing tools to connect. Many organizations try to engage with customers and partners using either rigid portals that don’t enable collaboration, or discussion forums that are completely detached from business operations. The modern consumer is frustrated by the obvious shortcomings of these outdated technologies.
Portals: If things go smoothly, portals can be a reasonable solution. But challenges arise when there are kinks in the process. Who do they go to? Do they have to make a call and then go through a tedious waiting process or send an email and wait without knowing when they’ll get a response?
Social Point Solutions:
Maximize Revenue from Partners: Communities lets partners manage and analyze their deals, while also empowering them with the intellectual horsepower contained within the community they belong to. The result is a higher channel win rate, an increased velocity in partner-driven deals, and partners with a higher level of engagement.
Provide Stellar Service: Communities enables businesses to provide a range of stellar customer service experiences, whether it’s an efficient self-service community or a white-glove community for customers with premium support plans. The results are faster case resolution, an increase in call deflection, and an overall level of improvement in customer satisfaction.
Drive Marketing Engagement: Communities transforms marketing outreach and campaign management through its versatile platform. Employees and brand advocates engage with prospects in new ways, driving conversion and strengthening the perception of a brand. Companies can pool the knowledge of employee experts and external agencies to develop successful campaigns. The results are higher conversion rates for marketing initiatives, increasing ROI.
Maximize Revenue from Partners: Communities lets partners manage and analyze their deals, while also empowering them with the intellectual horsepower contained within the community they belong to. The result is a higher channel win rate, an increased velocity in partner-driven deals, and partners with a higher level of engagement.
Provide Stellar Service: Communities enables businesses to provide a range of stellar customer service experiences, whether it’s an efficient self-service community or a white-glove community for customers with premium support plans. The results are faster case resolution, an increase in call deflection, and an overall level of improvement in customer satisfaction.
Drive Marketing Engagement: Communities transforms marketing outreach and campaign management through its versatile platform. Employees and brand advocates engage with prospects in new ways, driving conversion and strengthening the perception of a brand. Companies can pool the knowledge of employee experts and external agencies to develop successful campaigns. The results are higher conversion rates for marketing initiatives, increasing ROI.
The customer can use the appropriate combination of blocks to suit the requirements. The blocks in this example are for a customer community (the block structure for partner communities is different).
Rapid, visible responses to requests
Share experiences with other customers
Mobile access to businesses
Self service access to data and information
Customer relationships and brand loyalty
Market-driven business processes
Visibility to changing customer needs
Tighter relationships with channel partners