Salesforce communities have become an important aspect in the present business environment. It is capable of collaborating external constituents beyond the organization. Two categories of Salesforce communities are available. One of them is Customer Communities and the other one is Partner Communities. However Partner communities is considered to be more effective than Customer communities as far as the sharing rights for the Salesforce objects are taken in to consideration.
Salesforce communities helps in a great way in bridging the gap between the employees, customers and businesses. It has features that are similar to other popular social networking websites. Some of the notable features include real-time feeds, profiles, recommendations and trending topics etc. Thus companies can closely work with their customers in resolving any existing user problems.
The varying and growing needs of businesses and customers can be addressed by making use of several networks that can be established using the Salesforce Communities. Businesses can create a public support network with the help of Salesforce communities where in the customers will have the permission to access a knowledge base for receiving specific answers for the questions and also asking questions in return for getting specific answers. They can express their interest regarding a particular post and like them as in any social networking websites. Furthermore, users can also tag individuals if required in the public support network that was created using Salesforce Communities. As far as the companies are considered, their support representative could answer a specific question posted by a questionnaire privately so that the answers would be only visible for the specific user who has posted the question. As a means to prevent queries from being unanswered, escalations of those questions are possible which ensures all of the unanswered questions are answered instead of getting ignored.
To improve the user participation, Events and polls can be introduced using Salesforce communities. Other important features include event creation and group creation followed by subscribing of specific types of threads in feeds. General customer support communities such as Invitation-based exclusive communities which are meant for business owners, channel partners and platinum card members can also be created using the Salesforce Communities. To help employees and the management to effectively co-ordinate within the organization, internal communities can be created which would help in effective functioning of the organization by means of enhancing communication between different business units within the organization.
All these benefits have made Salesforce Communities a perfect solution for achieving peer collaboration and customer service between the businesses and their customers. Furthermore, Salesforce Communities have also a greater contribution in improving the sales for the company. By providing users with tools with which customers can register for sales deals and also by providing effective collaboration with potential customers in real-time, Salesforce communities has shown how important it can be for companies to improve their sales. Companies can easily implement any changes in their networks as a means to assure a consistent and relevant design that matches perfectly with the vision of the company and the services provided by those companies. Salesforce Communities thus with the help of its enhanced social networking ensures the business prospects are leveraged by maintaining effective customer relationship management. Thus the importance of Salesforce Communities in the current business scenario and the impact it can have on businesses can be very significant.