In today’s business climate, success is driven by your company’s ability to unify engagement between customers, employees, partners, suppliers and distributors. In order to stay current with customer-focused strategy and empowered employee teams, companies need solutions to connect all aspects of their business. Salesforce has recently launched a revamped version of Communities, a cloud-based platform that allows companies to create an online forum that provides enhanced, interactive experience between customers, employees, and partners.

The Salesforce Communities cloud resembles the social-networking-site experience, much like LinkedIn, created for the realm of enterprise. Communities is a customized, private community designed to meet the needs of your business and is unique in that the Community Cloud can be accessed from any device. You can login with a single sign-on and toggle between your communities seamlessly and securely from your dashboard. You can chat with other users in your community, share files and links to helpful resources with fellow team members, and, perhaps most importantly, with customers.

Salesforce Communities replaces the out-dated portal, where information sharing is clunky and limited, with a social and collaborative peer-to-peer communication between customers and your workforce. No matter who is using communities, whether it be your customer, an employee, or a partner, you set the parameters and the member sees only their specific information. Communities is an ideal platform for companies who want to create frictionless business-process integration with rapid and secure access from any location.

There are three Communities products that you can implement depending on the needs of your business: Customer Communities, Partner Communities, and Employee Communities. Each community is designed to maximize service for all aspects of your business.  So how can you implement Communities to keep your business relevant in today’s engagement-centered business world?

1. Boost Customer Service & Engagement: Customer Communities allows your company to provide excellent customer service through self-service or through a membership-based support plan. Customers have mobile access, are able to collaborate with other customers, locate information, and even resolve issues with service representatives quickly and efficiently. In the Communities environment your customers can engage with your brand on a much deeper level where they become valuable support resources and can also serve as brand ambassadors and enhancers. When customers are able to have access at the Community Cloud level, loyalty is increased and so is customer satisfaction.

2. Improve Business Processes: Partner Communities allows you to create role-based security to share only the pieces of data that you determine for certain external users, for example. Your company has control over which aspects of lead and funding information that is private and what is shared with partners so that you can increase engagement and efficiency.

3. Increase Employee Efficiency: Employee Communities achieves productivity with the versatile community platform because employees have access from any device anywhere. They can share files, obtain information, and collaborate to become experts and more fully engaged with the business. Similar to your relationship with customers, employees are more productive when they have a stake in the business.

With extensive experience in working with Service Cloud and Community Cloud, West Coast Consulting Group can structure content and incorporate smart design features into your community space. Our experts will help you determine and implement the best community product for any corporate needs.

For more information about Salesforce Communities, contact info@westcoastconsulting.com for a free assessment.

Community Examples:

By Benafsha Irani, Managing Partner, West Coast Consulting Group

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