Around 90% of Fortune 500 companies use one or more Salesforce products. There are plenty of pieces of software that operate with Salesforce, and one of the best is Experience Cloud. It’s growing in popularity among businesses in various industries due to the advantages that it brings.
So what is Experience Cloud, and how can your business benefit from it? Keep reading to find out.
What Is Experience Cloud?
Experience Cloud is a collaborative cloud software system that offers a range of features to businesses. It has various integrated technologies, services, solutions, and digital marketing products that can help a company in several ways. Some of the things it allows a business to do include:
- Improve customer engagement
- Digitize business operations
- Increase communication and collaboration with partners
The versatility of Experience Cloud means it can be used across a range of areas within a business. You can use it to design, create, configure, and manage digital experiences with various features. Using Experience Cloud can make it much easier to reach any online objectives you’ve set for your business.
With Salesforce Experience Cloud, you can build a collaborative system using any Salesforce apps you need. This includes things like:
- Sales
- Customer care
- Analytics
- Marketing
- Advertising
- Content management
By integrating all of these operations into one system, you can increase the efficiency of your entire business. You can set a range of goals and build Salesforce communities around each one, enabling teams to handle various activities at the same time.
Experience Cloud was previously known as Community Cloud, but along with the name change, it’s been upgraded. This is primarily in terms of its ability to produce a range of connected digital experiences.
Experience Cloud vs. Community Cloud
If you’re just learning about the Experience Cloud model, you’re probably wondering how it differs from Community Cloud. Salesforce stated that the difference was simply in the meaning of the name. They felt that the word “community” didn’t properly reflect the capabilities of their system.
The original name suggests that it’s simply for building communities, but Experience Cloud can do so much more. Using it, you can create forums, sites, portals, help centers, and even mobile apps.
With all of these possibilities, you can see Experience Cloud as a more evolutionary version of Community Cloud that’s more suitable for a world where connected digital experiences are growing.
One difference to be aware of while using Experience Cloud is the terminology. Some of the changes include:
- Community – Site or Experience Cloud Site
- Lightning Community – Experience Builder Site
- Salesforce Tabs & Visualforce Community – Salesforce Tabs & Visualforce Site
- Lightning Community Template – Experience Builder Template
- Lightning Community Theme – Experience Builder Theme
- Lightning Community Page – Experience Builder Page
While this is just a small change, it’s good to be aware of it. Knowing this will make collaborating with others much easier.
Key Features
Over the years, the features and capabilities have expanded. Being able to use all these features within one platform helps streamline various business operations.
Build Communities
This is one of the original features carried over from Community Cloud. You can build and customize portals that give users various options. It includes accessing articles, creating/managing cases and claims, and updating their information.
Connect With Customers
Improving communication between your business and your customers can offer a range of benefits. You can use Experience Cloud to provide self-help features such as forums, self-service portals, or a knowledge base.
Empower Teams
It also offers features that can help your employees. You can use portals to allow remote staff to connect easily and provide shared business data. This will allow them to work towards improving productivity and engagement while increasing the quality of collaboration throughout your company.
Grow Partnerships
With PRM (Salesforce Partner Relationship Management) you can improve partnerships through a full channel management system. This will allow you to connect directly with partners, distributors, and resellers.
Benefits of Experience Cloud
Cloud infrastructure has changed the way companies operate online, providing a host of new features and capabilities. Salesforce Experience Cloud can provide your business with a range of benefits.
Security
When using any online system, security is crucial. Experience Cloud allows you to control the level of security for different users. This means you can restrict the data that people can view, and provide increased access wherever necessary.
Control
You have a lot of control over the whole Experience Cloud system. It allows you to control people’s access, change and manage user configurations, and make changes whenever you want. You can also apply rules to any content for increased moderation if needed.
Compliance
When managing the system, you can impose compliance measures for any users. You can then review any deviation requests to see if your users are following these compliances.
Flexibility
You’ll have full control over the scale of hardware, services, and personnel. By monitoring various accounts, you can easily see where changes need to be made.
Access
Experience Cloud can be accessed 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This means that partners, clients, and resellers can use it any time they need to. You can set up an FAQ to assist people and reduce search complexity.
It’s useful to upload and maintain common topics of interest. Autogenerated pages and post recommendations are a great way to do this.
Focus
Users can create unique experiences to meet the needs of a specific group within your company’s business. By adding things like reward programs, you can encourage more engagement.
Branding
You can use Experience Cloud to promote brand identity, helping you stand out from the competition. Keeping content across the system aligned and on-brand will help users familiarize themselves with your business.
Should You Be Using Experience Cloud?
Using Experience Cloud can help your business in a range of ways. It can improve productivity, security, and control while improving communication and collaboration throughout your company.
6Street Digital is a certified Salesforce Partner. We can provide guidance and expertise in Experience Cloud, as well as other Salesforce software. To find out more about how we can help your company, click here to contact us today.