Salesforce Experience Cloud

In the dynamic landscape of customer engagement, organizations grapple with the ongoing challenge of nurturing connections with customers and partners. Despite the prevalence of technology and online communities, businesses seek a dedicated platform that can effectively engage and unite their audience with the brand.

These dedicated platforms, often in the form of communities, serve as invaluable sources of information about a company’s products, services, and industry-grade customer support. They contribute to the transformation of shopping behavior and foster increased customer loyalty.

Salesforce Communities now rebranded as Salesforce Experience Cloud, stands out as an exemplary solution, empowering businesses to bring customers, employees, and partners together seamlessly. This in-depth exploration delves into the narrative of Salesforce Experience Cloud, shedding light on its evolution from Community Cloud, highlighting its features, benefits, licensing options, and much more.

Unveiling the Dynamics of Salesforce Experience Cloud :

Understanding the Essence of Experience Cloud

Salesforce Experience Cloud, formerly known as Community Cloud, represents a hybrid private cloud. This online social platform, with its multi-tenant architecture, plays a crucial role in extending key business operations across departments in real-time. It enables organizations to address customer needs promptly and close deals swiftly.

The platform is versatile, serving various purposes, including customer feedback, lead qualification, customer support, employee training, and creating channels for employee interaction. The rebranding as Salesforce Experience Cloud emphasizes its commitment to providing customers with a holistic buying lifecycle experience.

Elevating Capabilities with Salesforce Experience Cloud

Salesforce Experience Cloud empowers companies to craft digital experiences for customers, employees, and partners. It equips businesses with tools and services for developing mobile apps, portals, and communities while managing customer interactions across multiple channels. Notably, Experience Cloud integrates capabilities from various Salesforce Clouds, including Community Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, and Commerce Cloud.

Features Enriching the Experience Cloud

Prime Features of Salesforce Experience Cloud

Personalized Interaction: Create tailored experiences for customers and partners, ensuring easy access to the information they seek.
Business Integration: Seamlessly integrate and connect data from third-party sources and systems to enhance overall business operations.
Customization Options: Leverage pre-built themes and templates for brand-aligned communities. Experience Cloud allows organizations to create custom, branded portals tailored to specific needs.
Easy-to-Access: Ensure universal accessibility, enabling community collaboration and information access from any device, anywhere in the world.
Create Better Engagement: Establish online communities that keep members actively engaged through discussion forums, Q&A, comments, and likes.
Community Management & Analytics: Gain valuable insights into community members’ behavior and interests, enabling customization and optimization of services based on their needs.
Social Collaboration Tools: Facilitate social collaboration and engagement with features like discussion forums, Q&A, comments, and likes.
Gamification and Rewards: Integrate gamification to motivate and engage stakeholders through rewards, recognition, and incentives.

Diverse Communities within Experience Cloud

Three Categories of Communities

Customer Community: A self-service platform allowing customers to connect, provide feedback, and share information, creating a curated customer journey.
Partner Community: Ideal for business-to-business organizations, enabling sales teams and resellers to easily communicate, manage activities, access relevant references, and efficiently close deals.
Internal Employee Community: Utilized by HR and IT teams for file sharing, knowledge references, project management, and organization-wide documentation, enhancing employee knowledge and productivity.

Exploring Salesforce Experience Cloud Statistics

Insights into Experience Cloud’s Popularity

Over 10 million digital experiences have been created with Experience Cloud, showcasing widespread adoption.
Experience Cloud holds the record as the fastest-growing product in Salesforce’s history, boasting a 158% year-over-year growth rate in Quarter 2 of 2021.
A survey conducted by Salesforce reveals that 80% of customers expect real-time responsiveness from companies, emphasizing the importance of tailored and timely experiences.
Another survey indicates that 86% of marketers prioritize establishing a unified customer journey across all interaction points.

User Base Across Industries

Experience Cloud serves a diverse range of industries, boasting a user base that includes prominent companies such as American Express, Dell Technologies, Coca-Cola, L’Oreal, Toyota, U.S. Bank, Panasonic, Pearson Education, Sonos, The Home Depot, Unilever, Vodafone, Zurich Insurance, Siemens Healthineers, KeyBank, and more.

Navigating the Implementation Journey

Step-by-Step Process of Experience Cloud Implementation

Enable Digital Experience:
- Access Digital Experience settings in the Quick Find Box.
- Enable Digital Experience by selecting the appropriate settings.
- Choose a carefully considered domain name, as it cannot be changed once created.
- Save your domain name and create multiple communities based on your license.
Create a Community:
- Search for “All Sites” in setup and select it.
- Create a new Experience Site using predefined templates or customize your templates.
- Name your community, add a unique URL value, and complete the creation process.
Activate the Community:
- Access All Communities from Setup.
- Navigate to Workspaces and click on Administration.
- In Settings, click “Activate Community” to finalize the activation process.
Publish the Community:
- Go to All Sites in Setup and then to Builder.
- Click “Publish” from the top right corner of Builder to make your communities accessible to end-users.

Best Practices for Implementation

Identify Vision and Objectives: Clearly define the vision and objectives of your site before delving into development.
Determine Roles for Experience Cloud: Assign different roles to individuals based on their responsibilities and skillsets to ensure a balanced team.
Content Management Strategy: Develop a solid plan for creating, organizing, managing, and optimizing content to enhance user experience.
Track Customer Journey: Leverage Experience Cloud features to track and analyze customer behavior, creating targeted content and facilitating interactions.
Mobile Responsiveness: Prioritize mobile-friendly design, as approximately 70% of customer interactions occur over mobile devices.

Unpacking the Benefits and Licensing

Benefits of Experience Cloud

Enhance Connections with Clients and Partners: Strengthen relationships by providing platforms for customers to communicate with each other and for partners to collaborate and network.
Opportunity for Product and Service Improvement: Collect feedback and opinions through communities, enabling evaluation of market potential and customization or launch of new products.
Better Grounds for Customer Support: Generate reports on customer data, ensuring timely and accurate responses to customer queries.
Save Time and Money: Reduce team involvement in addressing common issues, saving time and resources for more strategic tasks.
Boost Employee Productivity:Present data in one package, facilitating access to information and enhancing communication within the organization.
Easy Integration: Use native integration or create customized APIs to connect backend systems and deliver seamless services and support.