Salesforce Experience Cloud | Complete Knowledge Base for Legal Solutions
Salesforce Experience Cloud, previously called Community Cloud, allows legal professionals to build custom online communities and portals branded to their unique web project requirements. For more information on the differences between these Salesforce products, check out our Community Cloud Vs. Experience Cloud article.
But, for now, let’s continue with our current topic. Web portals created with Salesforce Experience Cloud ensure that everyone interacting with your law firm 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, client support, knowledge bases, and other engagement options, follow our guide as we explore Experience Cloud and the leading alternatives in the market.
Explaining Experience Cloud in Salesforce to Legal Admins
Previously known as Salesforce Community Cloud, Experience Cloud is a cloud-based customer experience platform.
Although Experience Cloud started with a different name in 2014, it still helps law firms across any field 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 law firm’s services to clients, 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 law firms is that articles, guides, and forums hosted on portals help clients understand legal services immediately and independently.
Since Experience Cloud is a premium Salesforce product, law professionals can also trust that it integrates exceptionally well with their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform to enjoy all the benefits they are used to.
The Difference between Experience Cloud and Salesforce Site in Legal Services
If you need web projects that do not require users to log into your legal firm’s portal with a username and password to access content, then you need a Salesforce Site.
With Salesforce Site, legal admins 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 law firms use a Salesforce Site to create branded websites that display content they want to share with the public.
Describing Salesforce Community Cloud Limitations for Legal Professionals
Before it became Experience Cloud, this product was known as Salesforce Community Cloud.
Salesforce Community enables law firms to create online communities for their services. While this has been a great way for legal professionals 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 legal admins 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 legal use case.
- If your legal admin is not using coding languages to develop a 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 legal admins to build online communities. This software doesn’t permit the creation of custom web apps and self-service portals.
- Full customization of communities is impossible without coding and development. This puts a strain on the go-to-market and budget of law firms.
To overcome some of these issues, Community Cloud was rebranded as Experience Cloud in the Spring ’21 Salesforce Release.
Features of Salesforce Experience Cloud Worth Exploring for Legal Admins
Let’s check out some of the most powerful features of Experience Cloud:
- Lightning Bolt solutions are 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.
- Legal professionals get to access Customer 360 Salesforce data to integrate into Experience Cloud web projects.
- Legal admins get to use pre-built templates so they don’t have to start designing projects from scratch.
- Legal admins can 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 law firm.
- Experience Cloud has version management capabilities to track the progress of your legal web projects.
- You can deploy your legal web projects on mobile devices.
Understand Experience Cloud Pricing for Your Law Firm
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 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 your law firm 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 legal portal. Before purchasing this product, make sure you have the budget at your law firm to scale up.
For example, if you need 300 members of Customer Community Plus, this will cost you $4500. If you are a large law firm, this will nowhere near cover the number of members you need.
Imagine paying $30,000 for 2000 members on the same portal. This could be a serious expense.
Salesforce Experience Cloud Examples and Legal Use Cases
Now that we know the limitations and features of Experience Cloud, it’s time to kick off with some legal use cases.
Whether you work at a business-to-consumer (B2C) or a business-to-business (B2B) law firm, many use cases can be explored to see how Experience Cloud can be maximized to improve client experiences and interactions.
Law Firms Using Salesforce Customer Community
Many law firms create portals for their Salesforce Customer Community. These legal client portals empower users to conveniently access self-service options 24/7.
Almost any legal practice can benefit from a customer portal. Common legal institutions that already have customer portals include personal injury law firms, family law firms, and immigration law firms.
Customer Self-Service Portals for Law Firms
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 clients with self-service options that include articles to give them more insight into legal services, a support center for them to log tickets, and various features that allow clients to edit their details, make payments, and track cases, to name a few.
Bring Legal Professionals Together with Partner Portals
Many law firms collaborate on joint projects to reach a broader target audience and increase revenue. Creating partner portals in Salesforce is super beneficial to successfully transfer information and keep all parties up to date.
A partner portal with Salesforce data allows your employees and legal partners to collaborate seamlessly on ventures and instantly share information related to leads, opportunities, and other client-related information.
If you want to know more about a partner portal, make sure to read our Create a Partner Portal guide.
The ability to have access to the latest Salesforce data at all times with a partner portal helps legal professionals be more confident at legal case management and resolving any client queries that might pop up.
Interested in other solutions to give your partners and clients information about your law firm’s services? Check out our Help Portal in Salesforce article.
An Employee Experience Platform in Salesforce for Law Firms
You can also use Experience Cloud for internal legal projects, such as an employee portal.
An employee portal is an excellent platform for workers 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 legal professionals to track and print out pay slips. Many law firms use employee portals to monitor leave and ask their employees to submit requests through the system.
More than just the basics, you could revamp your employee portal by displaying documents and adding a Salesforce group with access to legal collaboration tools for colleagues to engage and participate in training programs.
Salesforce Legal Knowledge Management with a Knowledge Base for Clients
A Salesforce knowledge base portal is an excellent space to upload legal documentation, resources, or any information related to the services of your firm.
Legal professionals often upload articles, tutorials, and how-to guides to their Salesforce knowledge base. Clients can then easily access these legal resources to learn more about a service to resolve issues independently.
Salesforce for Legal Events and Training
Experience Cloud can be used to create portals for Salesforce event management.
Adding groups of legal professionals to a portal helps organizers streamline work processes related to managing training sessions, conferences, and other legal events.
Here are a few tasks that organizers can speed up with Salesforce for legal event management:
- Registering Guests
- Creating Schedules
- Managing Communication Channels
- Gathering Guest Requirements
A Salesforce Feedback and Ideas Exchange Portal for Legal Services
Legal firms that need feedback from employees, clients, or partners will find creating a feedback and ideas exchange portal quite valuable.
The portal can be used as a legal solution for Salesforce feedback management. Users logged into the feedback and ideas exchange portal can fill out the web surveys with their opinions and submit them back to the law firm.
You could also add a group to the Salesforce idea exchange and feedback portal to gather ideas from legal professionals working at your firm so logged-in users can join and share thoughts on raised topics.
Legal Professionals Embracing Salesforce Case Management
A client management portal can be created as a legal solution for legal matter management. If your law firm were to implement a client management portal, your admin teams would be able to track client queries that are logged from the portal directly in Salesforce.
Additionally, managers can track the resolution times of queries through the client management portal, which can then be analyzed to improve legal case management and Salesforce strategies.
Legal Client Onboarding
Law firms that want their new clients to have positive experiences focus on Salesforce customer onboarding strategies.
One legal practice management task to start with in client onboarding is to create a Salesforce portal to streamline all the processes during this phase, such as registering clients to systems or allowing them to submit documents online.
Sales Experience Cloud: Sales Enablement for Law Firms
A Salesforce sales enablement portal serves your business development team the most. It can help by providing a digital space to host your legal resources, tools, or any information that can help your business development team interact with leads and clients.
These resources are vital since they can be referenced anytime during the legal client engagement process.
A portal for sales enablement in Salesforce can also help as a central location for training, onboarding, and certifications for your business development staff.
Moreover, these legal resources don’t have to be uploaded as documents. With Salesforce Experience Cloud solutions, you can upload quizzes and training videos to engage your business development staff in the latest selling skills.
Law Firms Integrating Salesforce E-commerce Solutions
To make the most out of client data, law firms could establish a Salesforce e-commerce integration to their customer portal.
A customer portal designed for the legal sector can allow logged-in users to track their services, manage queries, access their payment histories, and manage their data like billing addresses or credit card details.
Creating an e-commerce integration with Salesforce from a customer portal will ensure that all edits from clients are pushed to Salesforce automatically to eliminate any manual data entry for your legal admin staff.
Salesforce Customer Experience Platform Alternatives for Legal Services
As outstanding as Experience Cloud is at providing legal CRM solutions that meet client 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, and these may resonate with you. If your law firm is interested in finding out about other reliable platforms on the market that can help it engage with clients while integrating with Salesforce data, join us below.
Let’s get started!
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 law firm requirements? Let’s take an objective look at their pros and cons.
Pros
- A reliable platform for law firms. Founded in 2006, Wix is still going strong.
- The user interface is popular amongst its users, and it is easy to use in the legal space.
- Provides a variety of templates for legal admins to customize.
Cons
- There is no direct integration available for Wix and Salesforce.
- Legal admins need to use a third-party tool or start building a custom solution to gain a Wix and Salesforce integration.
- Wix would have design limitations related to layout, elements, and styling options, if your law firm wants a super custom website.
Skuid
Next on the list is the software platform Skuid. Legal firms could employ Skuid to design and launch custom user interfaces for data-driven applications.
Do they have the right Salesforce solutions for your user experiences? Let’s dive into their pros and cons for legal services.
Pros
- Non-technical legal admins can enjoy creating user interfaces with no code.
- Works well with REST APIs and web services to connect data.
- Skuid and Salesforce integrate well together.
Cons
- Skuid licensing fees and subscriptions can become costly for large projects and legal start-up practices.
- Even though the software does not require code to operate, there is a learning curve for legal admins using Skuid.
- Building legal applications on Skuid means that your projects are dependent on the software. If your law firm plans to change project tools and platforms, it might run into hurdles when migrating its applications 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 law firms, but do they have custom solutions that meet your specific Salesforce requirements?
Let’s take a look at its pros and cons:
Pros
- As WordPress is an open-source software, the source code is free to the public. This means that there is always new functionality provided by developers who are passionate about the platform.
- Legal admins can build, edit, and manage content on WordPress with limited coding experience.
- Legal 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.
- Your legal firm needs to commit to ongoing maintenance from updates that are released from both of these platforms. Over time, software evolves, so your legal firm must keep up to date and prepare for incompatibility.
Adobe Experience Manager
If your legal firm opts for a CMS platform like Adobe Experience Manager, you get to create and manage digital experiences for various distribution channels.
Many law firms use this platform to deliver their services via web, mobile, email, and social media platforms. There are numerous perks to choosing Adobe Experience Manager, but is it the right Salesforce solution for your legal firm?
Let’s dive into the pros and cons of an Adobe Experience Manager Salesforce integration:
Pros
- Legal admins get robust features to build and manage your legal firm’s online content.
- Adobe Experience Manager has a user-friendly interface that is popular amongst non-technical legal users.
- Legal admins can store and work with 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. Legal admins will need to make sure that data is current in both systems.
- Legal admins will need to possess technical skills to manage a Salesforce and Adobe Experience Manager integration.
- This integration has known performance issues, especially when legal 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 law firms 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 with Salesforce in real-time.
- Legal admins can automate processes and eliminate any manual data entry across multiple platforms.
- Salesforce data will be more enriched as legal professionals can pull information from multiple applications with a Jitterbit integration.
Cons
- Data is not synced to Salesforce during downtime or technical issues.
- There are increasing legal data security concerns to address for sensitive and confidential details 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 legal professionals could use to create digital experiences.
Sitecore is popular amongst law firms 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
- Legal admins get machine learning capabilities from Sitecore to create personalized content and experiences from client data.
- Sitecore gathers client data from websites to enrich Salesforce data.
- Legal professionals can deliver content to multiple digital channels, such as websites, mobile applications, and social media platforms.
Cons
- Law firms need to cater for downtime and extensions to projects since staff will require training to learn how to work with the different platforms.
- Web projects will become dependent on Sitecore and Salesforce. This means legal admins need to consider feature changes and the roadmaps of these two platforms. Discontinuation of a feature could be a hurdle for a legal web project.
- Legal services can be disrupted when there are technical issues from either platform due to scheduled downtime or bug fixing.
Magentrix
Many law firms choose Magentrix for partner relationship management and Salesforce customer experience cloud solutions.
If you need a legal solution to manage relationships with partners or clients, 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 legal matters.
- Legal admins can build a client portal with self-service options to elevate user experiences.
- Legal professionals get access to tools for collaboration, like sharing documents and discussion forums, to facilitate communication.
Cons
- Law firms must understand who owns the sensitive client 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 legal experiences in Salesforce. Admins use Titan Web to create and launch no-code websites, portals, surveys, and other legal 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 legal projects and CRM platform in real-time.
Titan Web has intuitive drag-and-drop tools that give legal teams a single solution to optimize all tasks, whether building a legal workflow with automation 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 Experience Cloud, implementing Salesforce in legal industries to bring essential services to market faster. Alternatively, it empowers law firms to build branded portals and web apps without an Experience Cloud license.
Another advantage is that Titan Web does not charge per member or log-in. Instead, your law firm pays a flat rate when it buys the product!
Nowadays, no one wants to be left in the dark about the status of their case or waste time tracking submitted documents and long email trails.
Leveraging Titan Web, legal admins can build seamless digital experiences for clients, enabling them to engage in a range of self-service options from anywhere in the world, track cases, and manage legal documents with automation.
For a more in-depth look at what your law firm can get from Titan Web, take a look at these pros and cons:
- Zero-code platform with an easy drag-and-drop interface to build any legal 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 Experience Cloud and also functions as a versatile alternative.
- 100% flexible user experience with responsive designs across multiple devices.
- A multitude of styling options for fully branded legal web projects.
- Add maps or schedulers to legal web projects to elevate user experiences.
- Our software has a mobile-first approach.
- The platform has offline capabilities to keep your law firm’s operations running smoothly.
- Built-in third-party integrations with SAP, MS Word, Excel, Google Drive, Amazon S3, Slack, PayPal, GitHuB, and many more popular business applications.
- Our platform has version management capabilities.
- Better legal compliance management, as 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 legal professionals quickly generate and sign pre-filled documents for end-to-end processes in Salesforce.
- Titan Web can assist your law firm with all-in-one Salesforce solutions for any process!
- Easy to onboard quickly via Titan’s comprehensive learning Academy!
- Titan can align your legal teams, clients, and partners every step of the way with complex approval flows, custom SSO portals for non-Salesforce users, and advanced 2FA security.
Cons
- Implementation times 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 Our Salesforce Experience Cloud Guide
Thank you for taking the time to stop by and read our guide on Salesforce Experience Cloud for Legal Services. We understand how important it is to know all the benefits and limitations that software contains so you can choose the best Salesforce solution for your law firm.
We have also provided a comprehensive list of the most reliable software on the market to help you elevate your client experiences in Salesforce for law. For full flexibility, faster go-to-market, and competitive pricing, Titan Web stands out as the market leader.
If your law firm is interested in learning more, book a demo today!
See you soon!
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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