What is the purpose of the Experience Cloud and what is it used for?
The Salesforce Experience Cloud, formerly known as Community Cloud, is a platform that enables businesses to create connected, personalized experiences for their customers, partners, and employees. It is suitable for a wide range of businesses, regardless of size or industry.
At its core, the robust platform builds upon the established infrastructure of Salesforce. It provides a range of tools and services for creating comprehensive digital experiences.
This type of software is known as a Digital Experience Platform (DXP). The comprehensive software framework enables the creation, management, and optimization of digital experiences across a variety of channels. DXPs are designed to facilitate digital transformation for businesses. By providing technologies for digital content management, customer relationship management (CRM), personalization, and analytics, everything is centralized and managed in one place.
The overarching goal of a DXP and the Experience Cloud is to provide users with a unified and personalized experience across all digital touchpoints. This can help increase customer engagement, loyalty, and satisfaction.
In the following text, we take a closer look under the hood of the program, examining its functions, benefits, and use cases, among other aspects.
The Experience Cloud offers a variety of features to shape and tailor digital touchpoints with a company to the customer. The Salesforce platform integrates content management systems and CRM into one. Additionally, it includes Salesforce-native or third-party applications that provide solutions for practically any business requirement.
By integrating data from Salesforce or other sources, personalized content for your visitors and customers can be created quickly and easily. This content is responsive, optimized for desktop or mobile devices, allowing for easy and fast website creation to drive conversions.
This feature can be used to efficiently manage the "lifecycle" of online content, from creation and management to delivery and analysis, all within the Salesforce ecosystem. This includes text, images, videos, and documents.
The reuse of various content blocks enables a consistent corporate image, and content creation becomes more efficient.
With the Experience Cloud, customer service can be professionalized, for example, through a knowledge database, a self-service portal, or a forum.
You can provide your customers with a portal to improve accessibility to your company and services.
By creating automatically generated topic pages, you can provide clear answers and quick access to sought-after information. Discussions, files, groups, and experts can be centrally consolidated on one page.
Empower users by creating a customer portal to access relevant articles, update personal information, and create and manage various business transactions such as service orders and purchases independently.
Simultaneously, you can create a portal for partner companies to simplify the management of your collaborators.
Within the Salesforce ecosystem, there are industry-specific templates containing templates, processes, applications, and components, enabling a wide range of use cases.
Develop dynamic applications and customize the user experience individually based on user groups. Use data from your CRM to segment target audiences and reach them with specially tailored, personalized content.
Seamlessly link websites, forums, and portals created with the Experience Cloud with your customer data. Data can be integrated from various sources, including Salesforce, external providers, or legacy systems. These can be used to apply features such as lead generation, opportunities, customer processes, campaigns, and custom objects within the Experience Cloud.
An Experience Cloud website is composed of multiple layers, each contributing its specific content and data, working together to create a compelling digital experience. The components can be categorized into several main categories:
The Experience Cloud relies on elements created in the primary Salesforce organization. Users, profiles, and records created there are used to operate the Experience Cloud website.
Platform services created on the Salesforce platform and usable with other Salesforce products can be utilized. These can include Flow Builder, Process Builder, or Apex triggers and classes that can be connected to your website.
It's possible to integrate content into Experience Cloud websites and apps without needing to create and manage content anew. Salesforce CMS (Content Management System) is a Lightning app where you can create, store, and manage all your content.
The presentation layer brings everything together. It includes the templates and components of the Experience Builder. You can choose how the website is presented to your visitors and consider aspects of accessibility. Components often access the Salesforce organization to populate data and process actions performed by users.
While the analytics tools in Experience Cloud may not be as extensive as those from Google Analytics or other third-party providers, content can be easily tracked, and user information can be monitored with reports and dashboards.
What benefits does digitalization through Salesforce Experience Cloud offer for companies and their customers?
Let's examine the following reasons why many executives are implementing the program in their organization:
Customizable digital experiences: It provides tools for creating websites and portals with branded experiences for different stakeholder groups, thereby enhancing engagement and collaboration.
Seamless integration into the Salesforce ecosystem: If you're already using other Salesforce applications in your operations, this is a significant advantage of using the Experience Cloud. Due to its easy integration with Salesforce CRM and other Salesforce products, it enables a unified view of customer interactions and data relatively easily.
Personalization: The program supports personalized content and recommendations based on user roles, preferences, and behaviors. The target audience feels better addressed and understood, leading to increased satisfaction and engagement. Everyone prefers to be addressed by their name rather than a "Hey you."
Mobile optimization: A factor of ever-increasing importance is optimization for mobile devices. This cloud offers responsive design for mobile phones and tablets, ensuring users have a pleasant and consistent experience across all platforms.
Scalability: Since the solution is based on the Salesforce platform, it can easily scale to accommodate a growing number of users and larger data volumes. This is crucial if the software is to grow with a company. This ensures the successful setup remains viable for the future, even as your operations expand and grow.
Security and compliance: Undoubtedly an important point. Regardless of the software, adequate data security and correct access authorization are immensely important. The Experience Cloud offers robust security features, enabling compliance with various standards to protect user data and privacy.
Community management: Includes tools for managing communities, facilitating collaboration, and engaging users.
Usability: Even if getting started with the software isn't a walk in the park, mastering the successful application of the software is still achievable. Through training on Salesforce Trailhead, you can acquire the necessary knowledge for using the product yourself, as with almost all Salesforce products. And it's free.
Are you interested in seeing how the software looks in the digital reality? Then watch the official demo video of Salesforce's Experience Cloud. (Registration required)
The pricing for Salesforce Experience Cloud depends on several factors, such as the chosen edition, the number of users, and any additional features or services required.
Salesforce often structures its prices based on users per month. In the pricing of the Experience Cloud, this is also dependent on the number of accesses for customer or partner portals.
Base price: As a starting point, prices for Experience Cloud can range from a few hundred to several thousand dollars per month, depending on the edition and required basic features.
Add-ons: Additional costs may apply for extra features such as more data storage, additional customizations, premium apps from the Salesforce AppExchange, and a higher level of support.
Custom offers: For many companies, especially those with complex requirements or needing multiple Salesforce products, custom price quotes are common. These are tailored to the specific needs of the company and are negotiated directly with Salesforce.
For the most up-to-date and tailored prices, contacting Salesforce directly is recommended. They can provide detailed information based on your specific requirements, company size, and desired functionalities. Additionally, Salesforce often offers special deals or bundled pricing for the joint purchase of multiple products or services, which can provide additional benefits.
The Experience Cloud is a powerful tool for digitizing your business. However, it's not the only option on the market. Therefore, it makes sense to compare it with other providers to make a better assessment for your company.
To facilitate your evaluation process, here are several DXPs (Digital Experience Platforms) that offer similar features to the Salesforce Experience Cloud. They cover various aspects of customer, partner, and employee engagement through personalized digital experiences.
Adobe Experience Manager (AEM): A comprehensive content management solution for creating websites, mobile applications, and forms. AEM is part of the Adobe Marketing Cloud and provides robust tools for content and digital asset management.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Portals: Dynamics 365 Portals is integrated into Microsoft's suite of business applications and allows organizations to create external websites that extend their Dynamics 365 applications to customers, partners, and employees.
Liferay Digital Experience Platform: A flexible platform primarily focused on creating intranets, extranets, portals, and websites. Liferay is known for its adaptability and integration capabilities, providing a solid foundation for personalized digital experiences.
SAP Customer Experience: Formerly SAP Hybris, this suite integrates various business functions and focuses on commerce, marketing, sales, service, and customer data. It offers personalized engagement across multiple channels.
Oracle CX Cloud Suite: Oracle's comprehensive suite includes marketing, sales, service, and commerce clouds. It offers a wide range of tools to enhance customer experience through personalized, cross-channel interactions.
Sitecore Experience Platform (XP): Combining content management, digital marketing, and commerce capabilities. Sitecore XP is known for its strong personalization and analytics features, enabling marketers to create highly individualized digital experiences.
Drupal: While not a ready-made DXP package, Drupal is an open-source content management system that can be expanded into a full-fledged digital experience platform with the right modules and development effort.
Joomla!: Another open-source content management system that can be extended with a wide range of plugins and themes. Joomla! provides opportunities for creating websites and online applications with the potential for customization to meet digital experience requirements.
Each of these platforms has its own strengths, pricing models, and focuses ranging from content management and digital marketing to comprehensive CRM solutions (Customer Relationship Management). The best choice depends on a company's specific requirements, existing technology stack, budget, and strategic goals related to digital experience management. If you're still unsure or have questions, feel free to consult with us.
What does the implementation of the Salesforce Experience Cloud look like in reality, and how do companies use it? To give you a better idea, here are some brief examples:
A globally renowned sportswear manufacturer uses the tool for a loyalty program. Leveraging data from their CRM, they also create personalized content to dynamically showcase products that are most likely to interest the visitor.
Pernod Ricard utilized the Salesforce Experience Cloud to create an innovative marketing campaign. The platform supported the company in scaling its marketing efforts across various channels and regions. A focus was on collaboration and customer engagement. The platform enabled the company to connect its teams globally.
Toyota utilized the Salesforce Experience Cloud to enhance global collaboration among its employees. The platform facilitated seamless communication and coordination across continents, helping the team work more efficiently as a cohesive unit.
Brown-Forman, the manufacturer of well-known spirit brands, used Salesforce Experience Cloud to assist its employees in rapidly developing over 45 custom apps. This initiative not only improved internal processes and efficiency but also fostered an innovation culture within the company. By promoting collaboration and providing powerful tools, Brown-Forman drove digital transformation and strengthened its global presence.
The sports brand Puma also relies on Salesforce Experience to optimize the shopping experience on mobile devices. Leveraging the pre-built features of the Experience Cloud in mobile user experience, product presentation, and technical setup, the company offers a seamless and easy shopping experience. This allows Puma to ensure a consistently enjoyable user experience for its customers.
The Salesforce Experience Cloud represents an innovative platform that enables businesses to create personalized and connected customer experiences across various channels and touchpoints. With its comprehensive features, it not only facilitates the efficient design of customer interactions but also provides deep insights into customer behavior.
The functionality of the Experience Cloud is based on the integration and analysis of data from various sources, enabling a 360-degree view of the customer.
In terms of pricing, Salesforce Experience Cloud demonstrates flexibility by offering various packages and customization options to accommodate different budgets and needs.
While there are alternatives on the market, the Experience Cloud stands out for its deep integration into the Salesforce ecosystem and the synergies associated with it. The successes of numerous companies with this program underscore the effectiveness of the platform.
In summary, the Salesforce Experience Cloud offers a robust solution for businesses striving to create exceptional customer experiences. With its help, organizations can not only strengthen their relationships with customers but also excel in competition in the digital world.
Email Luca Körner: lkoerner@kkvision.de
All articles from Luca Körner.
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