Create a Salesforce Help Portal with Experience Cloud

Marinda K.

Masterful Salesforce Scribe with an eye for detail

Updated: Jan 9th, 2025

Where can your customers and clients quickly get information about your business’s support and services? It is no longer good enough to be “a phone call away.” In fact, phone support is so last century!

You need an online help or support portal to provide your customers or users with assistance, information, and support.

But what is a help portal?

A help portal is a specialized website or web application that provides self-service support to customers or employees. It is a centralized platform where your clients can find answers to their questions, troubleshoot issues, access resources, and seek assistance related to your products or services. Instead of calling your office during office hours when they run into a problem, users can just visit your help portal. A help, support, and training portal typically includes a knowledge base, FAQs, and contact information for support staff.

Help your clients find answers, submit requests, access resources, contact support, and track the progress of a support request. You can also add a community support section where customers can share experiences and help other users with their issues.

What are the advantages of a help portal for your business?

The most important benefit is undoubtedly that you are available to your clients at all times. Your customers can get a hold of you 24/7. They can get help when they need it, not when your offices are open. This reduces the load on your support team as customers can search for – and find – solutions on their own, reducing the time they have to wait for a support agent to respond. This is especially true if you have a Frequently Asked Questions section that tackles those pesky repetitive questions (that also frustrates your support personnel to no end). Your team can now focus on the support cases that need individual attention.

The extensive documentation, tutorials, and other resources on a training portal educate your customers, ensuring that they get the most out of your products and services, therefore ensuring that they like and support you all the more.

The help portal provides consistent and standardized answers, and you can make sure that the information is accurate and up-to-date. Such a portal is scalable and can accommodate more customers and a wider range of queries without a proportional increase in support staff. You may need to make an initial investment, but a help portal is more cost-effective in the long run than increasing your support department.

Many help portals also provide analytical features that allow you to track user behavior, identify common pain points, and optimize content based on real user data. A well-designed help portal empowers your users to find solutions independently. This will enhance the overall customer experience and brand satisfaction. Speaking of branding, you can customize your help portal Salesforce to align with your brand identity.

An online help portal is accessible worldwide across all time zones. This breaks down geographical barriers and can expand your customer base.

Can I create a help portal with Salesforce?

Yes, you can!

You can build a portal for your Salesforce help center on the Salesforce Experience Cloud platform. This platform provides you with features to create a powerful and effective help and training portal that is also integrated with other Salesforce applications, such as Salesforce Sales Cloud and Salesforce Service Cloud. A Salesforce support portal can include features such as:

A content management system for creating and managing knowledge articles, FAQs, and other content.

A search engine for finding information quickly and easily.

A user profile system for tracking user activity and preferences.

A support ticket system for handling customer inquiries.

Create a Salesforce customer support portal by doing as follows:

1. Set Up Salesforce Experience Cloud

You’ll need a Salesforce instance with Experience Cloud licenses. You may need to work with your Salesforce administrator or representative to set this up if you don’t have one.

2. Design Your Portal

Within Salesforce Experience Cloud, you can customize the look and feel of your portal to match your brand. You can choose from various templates or create custom designs.

3. Create Knowledge Articles

Salesforce Knowledge allows you to create and manage knowledge articles that you can organize in data domains on your support portal. These articles can serve as the content for your Salesforce help portal, providing answers to common questions and solutions to common issues.

4. Set Up Navigation and Menus

You can create navigation menus and organize your content so users can easily find the necessary information. This involves setting up topics, categories, and article structures.

5. Implement Self-Service Features

Experience Cloud offers self-service features like search functionality, FAQs, and community forums. You can integrate these into your portal to enhance the user experience.

6. Implement Case Management

You can set up case management within Salesforce if you want to allow customers to submit support requests. This will enable customers to log issues, track their progress, and receive assistance.

7. Personalize User Experiences

You can use Salesforce’s personalization features to tailor the content and support options based on each user’s profile and needs.

8. Secure Access

Ensure that your portal is secure and that users have the appropriate permissions to access the content and features they need.

9. Launch and Promote

Once your help portal is set up, you can launch and promote it to your customers. This may involve sending out notifications or providing links from your main website.

10. Analyze and Improve

Use Salesforce Analytics to monitor user engagement and gather insights into what content is most helpful. Use this data to improve your portal continuously.

We hope to see you soon!

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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.