Salesforce Experience Cloud | Complete Knowledge Base
TL;DR
This article explains everything you need to know about Salesforce Experience Cloud.
It starts with a comparison between Experience Cloud and Salesforce Site and moves on to the limitations of Community Cloud. With the basics covered, we discuss the features of Salesforce Experience Cloud and how much it costs. We then dive into some real-life use cases for Salesforce Experience Cloud before exploring alternative software solutions on the market, including all the pros and cons.
If you are ready to learn how to elevate customer experiences in Salesforce, let’s get started.
Salesforce Experience Cloud, previously called Community Cloud, allows teams to build custom online communities and portals branded to their unique web project requirements. When businesses create these types of projects, they provide seamless and connected content across all communication channels, which customers learn to trust. Web portals created with Salesforce Experience Cloud ensure that everyone interacting with your brand can engage in seamless self-service and access relevant resources from anywhere in the world.
So, if you are looking to extend your digital experiences with portals or web projects that have self-service, customer support, knowledge bases, and other customer engagement options, follow our guide as we explore Experience Cloud and the leading alternatives to Salesforce Experience Cloud in the market.
What is Experience Cloud in Salesforce?
It’s a cloud-based customer experience platform, previously known as Salesforce Community Cloud. Experience Cloud might have started with a different name in 2014. However, it still helps organizations across any industry create secure online portals and communities for its users to this day.
You can securely display and share all the content you want about your business products and services to customers, employees, and even partners with Experience Cloud at your disposal. There are many reasons why you might want to take this approach and a common one for many businesses is that articles, guides, and forums hosted on portals help customers troubleshoot any product or service issues that arise immediately and independently.
Since Experience Cloud is a premium Salesforce product, you can also trust that it integrates exceptionally well with your CRM platform to enjoy all your usual Salesforce benefits.
Difference between Experience Cloud and Salesforce Site?
If you need web projects that do not require users to log into a portal with a username and password to access content, then you need a Salesforce Site.
With Salesforce Site, your staff can build public websites or web apps for any visitor to access without a username or password. As Salesforce Site is a product of Salesforce, you can trust that it integrates well with your CRM platform and the other products provided in the system.
Many organizations get and use Salesforce Site to create branded websites that display content they want to share with the public.
Salesforce Community Cloud Limitations
Before it become Experience Cloud, this product was known as Salesforce Community Cloud. Salesforce Community enables organizations to create online communities for their product. While this has been a great way for companies to offer personalized recommendations, resolve cases, collaborate with their community, and offer branded experiences, this product was still limited. The biggest limitation was that it didn’t encompass the full range of digital capabilities, namely empowering organizations to build web apps and portals.
- Although Community Cloud provides pre-built templates to start working on your web projects immediately, understand that you don’t get very many, and they do not cater to every use case.
- If you are not using coding languages to develop your web project, then you will find that you do not have real-time input validations. This means that you must click on the Save button in your projects.
- The biggest con of Community Cloud is that it only enables you to build online communities. This software doesn’t permit creating custom web apps and self-service portals.
- Full customization of communities is impossible without coding and development. This puts strain on go-to-market and budget of organizations.
To overcome some of these issues, Community Cloud was rebranded as Experience Cloud in the Spring ’21 Salesforce Release.
Features of Salesforce Experience Cloud
Let’s check out some of the most powerful features of the Experience Cloud product:
- There are Lightning Bolt solutions available on the Salesforce AppExchange marketplace. Some of them are even free to use!
- It plays well with other third-party applications and digital cloud tools on the Salesforce AppExchange.
- You get to access your Customer 360 Salesforce data to integrate into your Experience Cloud web projects.
- You get to use pre-built templates so that you don’t have to start designing your projects from scratch.
- Use Experience Cloud’s drag-and-drop builder to create and customize web projects with no code.
- Experience Cloud has custom theme options for you to create a design that matches the brand of your business.
- Experience Cloud has version management capabilities to track the progress of your web projects.
- You can deploy your web projects on mobile devices.
Experience Cloud Pricing
While Experience Cloud is an innovative product, it does come with a considerable price tag:
Self-service:
Customer Community, which starts at $2 per login or $5 per per member.
Customer Community Plus, which starts at $6 per login or $15 per member.
Partner Relationship Management:
This starts at $10 per login or $25 per member.
External Apps:
This edition starts at &15 per login or $35 per member.
Salesforce Content Management System:
This is included in Experience Cloud purchases, quotes are customized and you will need to reach out to Salesforce directly.
As you can see, the cost of Experience Cloud can add up quickly depending on how many logins or members you need for your portal. Before purchasing this product, make sure you have the budget to scale up. For example, if you need 300 members of Customer Community Plus, this will cost you $4500. If you are a larger enterprise this will nowhere near cover the amount of members you need, imagine paying $30,000 for 2000 members of the same portal. This is a serious expense.
Salesforce Experience Cloud Examples and Use Cases
Now that we know the limitations and features of Experience Cloud, it’s time to kick off with some use cases. Whether you work at a business-to-consumer (B2C) or a business-to-business (B2B) organization, many use cases can be explored to see how Experience Cloud can be maximized to improve customer experiences and interactions.
Salesforce Customer Community
Many organizations create portals for their Salesforce Customer Community These customer portals empower users to access self-service options 24/7, conveniently.
Almost any organization can benefit from a customer portal. Common business types that already have customer portals include banks, hospitals, and insurance firms.
Customer Self-Service Portals
Customer self-service portals can be created with Customer Community in Salesforce. A Salesforce customer service portal is a solid choice if you want to provide customers with self-service options that include articles to give customers more insight into products and services, a support center for customers to log tickets to support teams, and various features that allow customers to edit their details, make purchases, and track orders, to name a few.
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Partner Portals
Many businesses collaborate on joint projects to reach a broader target audience and increase revenue. Creating a Salesforce partner portal is super beneficial to successfully transfer information and keep all parties up to date. A partner portal with Salesforce data allows your staff and partners to collaborate seamlessly on ventures and instantly share information related to leads, opportunities, and other customer-related information.
The ability to have access to the latest Salesforce data at all times helps sales representatives be more confident at closing deals faster and resolving any customer queries that might pop up in the sales pipeline.
Employee Experience Platform Salesforce
You can also use Experience Cloud for internal business projects such as an employee portal. An employee portal is an excellent tool for employees to access and update their details independently when they change. You could also supply payroll information on the employee portal to make it easier for staff to track and print out pay slips.
Many organizations use employee portals to track leave and ask their staff to submit leave requests through the system. More than just the basics though, you could revamp your employee portal by displaying company documents and adding a Salesforce collaboration group for staff to engage and participate in training programs.
Salesforce Knowledge Management: Knowledge Base
A Salesforce knowledge base portal is an excellent space to upload any documentation, resources, or any information related to the products and services of your business. Organizations often upload articles, tutorials, how-to guides, and troubleshooting content to their Salesforce knowledge base training. Customers can then easily access these resources to learn more about a product or use them to resolve issues independently.
Salesforce Event and Training Management
Experience Cloud can be used to create portals for Salesforce event management. Adding groups to a portal with Salesforce for event management helps event organizers streamline work processes that include registering guests, creating schedules, or managing communication channels that discuss guest requirements for training sessions, conferences, and other types of events.
Salesforce Feedback and Ideas Exchange
Organizations that need feedback from employees, customers, or partners will find creating a feedback and ideas exchange portal quite valuable. The portal can be used as a Salesforce feedback management solution to upload surveys. Users logged into the feedback and ideas exchange portal can fill out the surveys with their opinions and submit them back to the organization.
You could also add a group to the Salesforce idea exchange and feedback portal to gather innovative ideas from employees, so logged-in users can join and share thoughts on raised topics.
Salesforce Case Management
A client management portal can be created as a solution for Salesforce case management. If your business were to implement a client management portal, your support teams would be able to track customer queries that are logged from the client management portal directly in Salesforce. Additionally, managers can track the resolution times of customer queries through the client management portal, which can then be analyzed to improve case management and Salesforce strategies.
Customer Onboarding
Organizations that want their new customers to have positive experiences focus on Salesforce customer onboarding strategies. One of the strategies to start with in customer onboarding in Salesforce is to create a portal to streamline all the processes during onboarding, such as registering customers to systems or allowing them to submit documents online.
Sales Experience Cloud: Sales Enablement
A Salesforce sales enablement portal serves your sales team the most. It can help by providing a digital space to host your resources, tools, or any information that can help your sales agents interact with leads and customers. These sales resources are vital since they can be referenced anytime during the sales process.
A portal for sales enablement in Salesforce can also help as a central location for training, onboarding, and certifications for your sales staff. And these resources don’t have to be uploaded as documents. With Salesforce Experience Cloud, you can upload quizzes and training videos to engage your sales staff in the latest selling skills.
Salesforce E-commerce Integration
To make the most out of your customer data, you could establish a Salesforce e-commerce integration to your customer portal. A customer portal designed for the e-commerce sector can allow logged-in users to track their purchased orders, manage returned orders, access their purchase histories, and manage their data like billing addresses and credit card details. Creating an e-commerce integration with Salesforce from your customer portal will ensure that all edits from customers are pushed to Salesforce automatically to eliminate any manual data entry for your staff.
Salesforce Customer Experience Platform Alternatives
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As outstanding as Experience Cloud is at providing you with solutions that meet customer expectations for the latest and most current content that is available 24/7, it is not the only platform that exists to offer you these benefits. We earlier discussed the limitations of the cloud experience as a customer experience portal solution, and these may resonate with you.
If you are interested in finding out about other reliable platforms on the market that can help you engage with your customers while integrating with Salesforce data, join us below.
Wix
First on the list is Wix. It’s a popular cloud-based platform focused on developing websites. Wix customers use the platform to create and manage websites without coding knowledge. Are they captivating enough for your business requirements? Let’s take an objective look at their pros and cons.
Pros
- A reliable platform founded in 2006 and still going.
- The user interface is popular amongst its users as it’s easy to use.
- Provides a variety of templates that can be customized.
Cons
- There is no direct integration available for Wix and Salesforce.
- You need to use a third-party tool or start building a custom solution to gain a Wix and Salesforce integration.
- Wix has design limitations related to layout, elements, and styling options if you want a super custom website.
Skuid
Next on the list is the software platform Skuid. Organizations employ Skuid to design and launch custom user interfaces for data-driven applications. Do they have unique Salesforce solutions for your user experiences? Let’s dive into their pros and cons.
- Pros
- Non-technical users can enjoy creating user interfaces with no code.
- Works well with REST APIs and web services to connect to data.
- Skuid and Salesforce integrate well together.
Cons
- Skuid licensing fees and subscriptions can become costly for large projects and start-up teams.
- Even though the software does not require code to operate, there is a learning curve for using Skuid.
- Building applications on Skuid means that your projects are dependent on the software. If you plan on changing your project tools and platforms, you might run into hurdles when migrating your application in the future.
WordPress
Used by over 800 million websites, WordPress is an open-source content management system (CMS) platform. Released in 2003, it has been a popular tool for designing and managing websites. WordPress provides a platform that is accessible to everyone from bloggers to large enterprises, but do they have custom solutions that meet your specific Salesforce requirements? Let’s take a look at its pros and cons:
Pros
- The source code is free to the public, as WordPress is an open-source software. This means that there is always new functionality provided by developers who are passionate about the platform.
- You can build, edit, and manage your content on WordPress with limited coding experience.
- Your content can include blog posts, web pages, images, videos, and more.
Cons
- A WordPress Salesforce integration is complex and may need custom development or a third-party plugin to connect the two platforms.
- It is a pricey setup if you start to count the custom development for Salesforce integration, plugin licenses, and constant maintenance of the platforms.
- You need to commit to ongoing maintenance from updates that are released from both of these platforms. Over time, software evolves, so you need to keep up to date and prepare for incompatibility.
Adobe Experience Manager
If you opt for a CMS platform like Adobe Experience Manager, you get to create and manage your digital experiences for various distribution channels. This platform is used by many organizations to deliver their products via web, mobile, email, and social media platforms. There are many perks to choosing Adobe Experience Manager, but are they the right Salesforce solution for your business? Let’s dive into the pros and cons of an Adobe Experience Manager Salesforce integration:
Pros
- You get robust features to help build and manage your online content.
- Adobe Experience Manager has a user-friendly interface that is popular amongst non-technical users.
- You can store and work with your web project assets, such as images, videos, documents, and other media files.
Cons
- Managing the flow of data between the two platforms is not easy. You will need to make sure that your data is current in both systems.
- You will need to possess technical skills to manage your Salesforce and Adobe Experience Manager integration.
- This integration has known performance issues, especially when your web projects involve high volumes of data or must be updated regularly.
Jitterbit
Jitterbit provides software solutions for integrations and API management. Founded in 2003, Jitterbit is used by many organizations to connect the different applications and data sources that they have in their work systems. Before you give Jitterbit and Salesforce a chance, let’s take a look at its pros and cons:
Pros
- Jitterbit will sync data in batches in real-time with Salesforce.
- You can automate your data processes and eliminate any manual data entry across your different platforms.
- Your Salesforce data will be more enriched as you can pull information from multiple applications with a Jitterbit integration.
Cons
- Data is not synced to Salesforce during downtime or technical issues.
- There are more security concerns to address for your sensitive and confidential data as you start integrating more systems.
- Jitterbit has limited customization options for highly customized Salesforce systems.
Sitecore Experience Platform
Sitecore is another CMS platform on our list that you could use to create digital experiences. Sitecore is popular amongst organizations that need to manage websites, mobile applications, or e-commerce platforms across various channels. Is a Sitecore Salesforce integration your best option? Let’s explore the pros and cons of this duo:
Pros:
- You get machine learning from Sitecore to create personalized content and experiences from customer data.
- Sitecore gathers customer data from websites to enrich your Salesforce data.
- You can deliver your content to multiple digital channels, such as websites, mobile applications, and social media platforms.
Cons
- You need to cater for downtime and extensions to your projects since your staff will require training to learn how to work with the different platforms.
- Your web projects will become dependent on Sitecore and Salesforce. This means you also need to consider the feature changes and roadmaps of these two platforms. Discontinuation of a feature could be a hurdle for your web project.
- Your business operations can be disrupted when there are technical issues from either platform due to scheduled downtime or bug fixing.
Magentrix
Many organizations choose Magentrix for their partner relationship management and Salesforce customer experience cloud solutions. If you need a solution to manage relationships with resellers, distributors, vendors, or customers, then Magentrix is a solid cloud-based software platform, but are they the best option for your Salesforce needs? Let’s take a look at its pros and cons:
Pros
- Magentrix has features for managing partner onboarding, registrations, lead distributions, training, certifications, and collaborating on sales processes.
- You can build a customer portal with self-service options to elevate user experiences.
- You get access to tools for collaboration, like sharing documents and discussion forums to facilitate communication.
Cons
- You must understand who owns the sensitive customer data with a Magentrix Salesforce integration. Remember to cater to the many industry regulations, such as GDPR and HIPAA, that state how data should be managed and stored.
- Integrating Magentrix into Salesforce can be complex if they have different data structures or APIs.
- This is a pricey integration as it has costs that quickly add up, such as licensing fees, maintenance costs, and custom development expenses.
Titan Web
Titan Web is a no-code platform that supercharges your experiences in Salesforce. Teams use Titan Web to create and launch no-code websites, portals, surveys, and other projects. Titan is the only product on the market that integrates bi-directionally with Salesforce using zero code to guarantee that all data is in sync with your projects and CRM in real-time.
Titan Web has intuitive drag-and-drop tools that give teams a single solution to optimize all business tasks, whether building a workflow that moves files to Salesforce or styling a survey!
It’s no wonder this powerful platform has a 4.96 out of 5-star rating from trailblazers on the Salesforce AppExchange marketplace.
Titan Web integrates natively with Salesforce Experience Cloud to bring you to market faster OR alternatively it empowers organizations to build branded portals and web apps without an Experience Cloud license. Another advantage, is that Titan Web does not charge per member or login, instead you pay a flat rate when you buy the product!
Nowadays no one wants to wait in boring line at the bank to make a loan application or waste their day physically lodging a college application. Leveraging Titan Web, you can build seamless digital experiences for your customers, enabling them to engage in a range of self-service options from anywhere in the world. This product is truly industry agnostic and we have trailblazing results in verticals such as Finance, Healthcare, Education, Tech, Legal, Marketing, Sales, E-Commerce, and much more!
For a more in-depth look at what you get from Titan Web, take a look at these pros and cons:
Pros
- Zero-code platform with an easy drag-and-drop interface to build any web project.
- Real-time bi-directional integration with Salesforce and full access to Customer 360.
- Titan Web is fully accessible and meets all requirements outlined in section 508.
- Titan Web integrates with the Experience Cloud and also functions as a versatile alternative.
- 100% flexible user experience with responsive designs for multiple devices.
- A multitude of styling options for fully branded web projects.
- Add maps or schedulers to your web projects to elevate user experiences.
- Our software has a mobile-first approach.
- The platform has offline capabilities to keep your business operations running smoothly.
- Built-in third-party integrations with SAP, MS Word, Excel, Google Drive, Amazon S3, Slack, PayPal, GitHuB, and many more.
- Our platform has version management capabilities.
- Your web projects will be completely safe and compliant with HIPAA, SOC 2, ISO, GDPR, and other regulations.
- Titan Web is so much more than a portal builder. It lets you quickly generate and sign pre-filled documents for end-to-end business processes in Salesforce.
- Titan Web can assist your business with all-in-one Salesforce solutions for any process!
- Easy to onboard quickly via Titan’s comprehensive learning Academy!
- Titan can align your teams, customers, and partners every step of the way with complex approval flows, custom SSO portals for non-Salesforce users, and advanced 2FA security.
- You can schedule a free demo, there are special discounts for Nonprofits, and pricing starts at just $350 per month.
Cons
- Implementation times will depend on your custom Titan and Salesforce requirements.
- This product is not designed for custom development. Besides some JavaScript and CSS, Titan Web tools are 100% codeless.
Wrapping Up Salesforce Experience Cloud Guide
Thank you for taking the time to stop by and read our guide on Salesforce Experience Cloud. We understand how important it is to know all the benefits and limitations that your software contains so that you can choose the best Salesforce solution for your business needs. We have also provided a comprehensive list of the most reliable software on the market to help you elevate your customer experiences in Salesforce. For full flexibility, faster go-to-market and competitive pricing, Titan Web stands out as the market-leader. If you are interested in learning more, book a demo today!
Disclaimer: The comparisons listed in this article are based on information provided by the companies online and online reviews from users. If you found a mistake, please contact us.
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