Community software connects customers, partners & employees
4.2/5 (55 reviews)Salesforce Community Cloud gives organizations the ability to connect customers, partners, and employees directly to information, applications, and experts.
Community Cloud allows businesses to integrate data from any system and incorporate 3rd-party and custom apps, and can be customized to serve as an extension of your online customer experience.
Community Cloud allows collaboration anywhere, whether on a desktop, smartphone or smartwatch, and gives individuals a personalized experience, recommending groups, experts and content based on interests and behavior. Topic pages are automatically generated by collecting discussions, files, groups, and experts into a single feed so that all relevant information is easily accessible.
Pros
We use community cloud to provide information and self-services to our external customers. The tool is very flexible and we are able to create templates for different customer types which allows us to tailor their user interface. With community cloud, the customers are able to login to one application to conduct business with our company. It is also integrated with the other salesforce products which enables all customer data to be stored in salesforce and shared across multiple applications.
Cons
The username must be formatted as an email. Some of our customers do not have business email addresses. Also, if our customer has implemented salesforce internally or has a salesforce id already with another vendor, they cannot use the same email as their username. When a user attempts to create a username, we have no way of knowing if they already have a salesforce id in another system so we must assume if the username meets all of our criteria and the creation fails that they must have another salesforce id with that username.
As the Partners performance is critical for company growth, Partner community presents a powerful way to collaborate with Partners and share the required information to them on a timely basis to make them successful. The partner can see the Quota and current status through the community on a real-time basis through powerful analytics tool and help to grow your company.
Partner Community helps a company to optimize every stage of partner lifecycle in easy and quick way
Pros
1. Easy to Setup and rollout - Drag and Drop
2. Deep integration with Salesforce Sales cloud
3. Readily available Partner engagement analytics
4. Cost Effective
5. Easy to share files through Sharepoint and external sources through community
6. Step by Step setup tutorial available
Cons
1. Partner Community is still new in the market and hence it is not the complete solution, Feature and still being developed and deployed every passing release
Pros
Easy to Setup, Domain registration was easy, Dragging and Dropping standard components from Salesforce was an excellent feature, Self Registration with zero code, SSO with AD was one-time setup, User Friendly, More Secured, They give us the IP ranges were they have hosted, Excellent Customer support, Responsive UI, Browser compatible.
Cons
It supports only 10 objects(Tables) to show by default. It doesn't support lower versions of Internet Explorer.
I like that capability of using the salesforce solution to import data, run reports and expand the document respository. Would like the ability to adjust the CSS file table for more specific setup of my contacts.
Pros
Import of data, ability to run reports and query related to my business, ease of use and tracking abilities of my team.
Cons
Limited ability to set up my own data tables, change cvs file formats and retrieval of reports via handheld device easily and without minimum attempts.
Pros
Community Cloud makes it quick and easy to put a basic site together that has access to your Salesforce data. There are several pre-defined template options + multiple out of the box widgets that make it possible to get something up and running quickly. A branding editor allows basic changes to the site's colors, logo etc. Access to CSS allows for greater customization.
Cons
Understanding how to work with the Community Builder takes some time and practice. Particularly with understanding how to create new pages, grant access to those pages and the different nuances between setting up pages in different ways. You can grant access to different content based on audience but managing those options can be confusing especially as your site grows more complex. The navigation menu, the pages, the page variations, and the audiences all work together with the Salesforce security model to determine what a user sees. Unfortunately this means there are a lot of places to check when something isn't quite right.
CUSTOMER COMMUNITY
Enable customer self-service, extend business processes, and build deeper customer relationships. Starting at $250 USD/month.
PARTNER COMMUNITY
Increase sales through resellers, distributors, agencies, and brokers. Starting at $500 USD/month.
EMPLOYEE COMMUNITY
Drive employee productivity and engagement across your organization. Starting at $25 USD/user/month.
Boost Channel Sales: Accelerate sales by connecting directly with partners, distributors, resellers and more. Allow partners to register new prospects, update lead records, manage funds, and find the information and experts they need.
Provide Exceptional Service: Create a rich, self-service community that allows customers to help each other, while allowing customer service agents to focus on the most complex and impactful cases.
Connect Customers: Give customers the ability to share direct feedback and enthusiasm for your product.
Revamp the Workplace: Drive engagement, collaboration and productivity across the organization by creating social, mobile and branded employee communities.
Build Any Community: Collaborate with vendors, agency partners, suppliers and more. Connect job applicants, patients, students, alumni, retail locations, or anyone else critical to business success.
Platforms for online communities have matured in the past decade, and as a result, more businesses are now opting to create their own digital communities as a way to form better relationships with their partners, customers, and employees. Salesforce Community Cloud is an online community platform that provides organizations with a way to directly connect with their most important allies. The web-based solution is leading the way in the social business space, with new innovations that include targeted recommendations, Lightning Community Builder and Templates, and Salesforce Connect for Google Drive.
Salesforce Community Cloud provides a way for companies of all sizes to help customers help themselves with rich, self-service experiences. These communities also offer a way to form deeper relationships through direct customer interaction and transform the workplace by giving employees access to the information they need to be engaged and productive at work. Although many businesses traditionally see communities as a social experience for their business partners, they’re also relevant for customers, employees, and even business alumni. Salesforce views Community Cloud as a solution that is suited equally well for both enterprise and SMBs.
Salesforce Community Cloud represents the company’s move into enterprise social media. It offers a way for Salesforce users to create their own fully branded online communities. Although many businesses will ultimately use these communities as a social experience for their business partners, they’re also relevant for customers, employees, and even business alumni. Salesforce is viewing the online community as a capability that enterprise organizations will want to use to engage more effectively with their key contacts. Industry research on the benefits for social business backs up this position.
Intelligence, speed, growing business, and engagement are all pillars within Salesforce Community Cloud, as organization leaders see their own customers transform into ambassadors. Adding community to a business can also enable customers to give more honest feedback and share their enthusiasm for the brand or products on a larger scale. By connecting resellers, distributors, and partners directly to the information, apps, and experts they need to take action, businesses are increasing sales and leads.
One of the ways that Salesforce Community Cloud differentiates itself from competitors is by offering a Lightning Community Builder and Templates to allow any user to quickly deploy a customized, mobile-optimized community. Users don’t need to have development or IT backgrounds in order to build their own online communities with Salesforce Community Cloud.
In addition to building your own custom community, which can be managed using drag-and-drop templates, you can also build your own apps with Lightning Components. These apps can then be embedded into your online community. If you run a non-profit organization, for example, then you might want to build an app to organize your volunteers. This app would then be embedded on the homepage of your online community, where volunteers could sign up themselves to work at upcoming events.
Salesforce Community Cloud’s personalization capabilities are unmatched within the industry. Recommended resources match each individual user’s needs and interests. Community Cloud uses this data to automatically suggest connections to experts, groups, and content. Community Cloud also delivers relevant content, including posts, resources, and files. This provides immediate value and encourages deeper community participation.
Using this feature, you’ll be able to identify experts by understanding the quality of their contributions to your community. You can then identify specific users as subject-matter experts who would be interested in sharing their knowledge with the community at large. As a community manager using Community Cloud’s personalization features, you’ll be able to pinpoint the customers most likely to be interested in specific products and then target those customers with coupons they’re likely to redeem.
One of the best ways to keep active members engaged in an online community is by rewarding them for participation. Community Cloud has developed a system for rewarding the most active members within any community. Members can also recognize one another’s contributions with specialty badges that appear in their feeds and on their profiles.
Create your own engagement metrics, and then set up your own scoring system and badges as a way to thank top users for their contributions or other activities within your company’s online community. (You can also allow users to create their own custom badges based on the parameters they select.) Ideally, this process should help you highlight top influencers and contributors within the community. It should also encourage members to participate in discussions around the topics they know best.
Salesforce Files Connect for Google Drive offers a way for community members to collaborate on files they’ve created or stored in Google Drive. For example, an advertising department within a larger organization might open a file they’d saved on Google Drive and share it with an account planning team. Files that have been saved in Google Drive can also be attached to individual records, such as leads or service cases.
With Salesforce Community Cloud, you can attach files to project groups, account records, campaigns, or service cases. Placing files into the workflow and unleashing a universal file-sharing system attaches those files to related records and makes it easier to access the right documents at a later date. It also increases the reuse of important assets across the enterprise.
Salesforce Files Connect syncs with many third-party applications, including Google Drive and Box.
Salesforce Community Cloud offers users the ability to integrate data from any system and update records from within the community. Salesforce connects with service, sales, marketing, supply chain, and product development applications. Organizations can also enable fund approvals, status updates, and other actions with Salesforce’s business integration software.
Subscription pricing for Customer Communities starts at $250 per month (billed annually). Employee Communities cost just $25 per user, per month (when billed annually). Partner Communities, which can be used to increase sales through resellers and distributors, are available for $500 per month.
Below are some frequently asked questions for Salesforce Community Cloud.
Salesforce Community Cloud offers the following pricing plans:
Starting from: $250/month
Pricing model: Subscription
Free Trial: Available
CUSTOMER COMMUNITY
Enable customer self-service, extend business processes, and build deeper customer relationships. Starting at $250 USD/month.
PARTNER COMMUNITY
Increase sales through resellers, distributors, agencies, and brokers. Starting at $500 USD/month.
EMPLOYEE COMMUNITY
Drive employee productivity and engagement across your organization. Starting at $25 USD/user/month.
We do not have any information about Salesforce Community Cloud features
Salesforce Community Cloud has the following typical customers:
Large Enterprises, Mid Size Business, Non Profit, Public Administrations, Small Business
Salesforce Community Cloud supports the following languages:
Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai
Salesforce Community Cloud has the following pricing plans:
Subscription
We do not have any information about what devices Salesforce Community Cloud supports
We do not have any information about what integrations Salesforce Community Cloud has
Salesforce Community Cloud offers the following support options:
FAQs, Forum, Knowledge Base, Online Support, Phone Support, Video Tutorials
