Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) has announced the launch of the “next generation” of its Community Cloud. With new innovations including Targeted Recommendations, Lightning Community Builder and Templates and Salesforce Files Connect for Google Drive, companies would be empowered to connect with customers, partners and employees in a whole new way.
With Community Cloud, customers would be enabled to deliver better service, sell more through channel partners and create more engaged employees. Digital communities result in 48 percent faster case resolution, 48 percent increase in employee engagement, 45 percent increase in customer satisfaction and 43 percent increase in partner sales, according to recent research from Salesforce.
The “next generation” of Salesforce’s Community Cloud would enable companies to extend this success with new innovations, including:
- Intelligence – Targeted Recommendations use powerful algorithms to analyze both structured and unstructured data to deliver the most relevant content including posts, resources, files and groups to each member. The new feature identifies experts by understanding the quality of a user’s contributions, then surfaces her as a subject-matter expert and recommends her to other community members. Community managers can also suggest content with specific information or post an announcement into the feed and target it to a specific group, member type or individual. Now, a community manager can send a new employee a personalized note to connect her with an onboarding training course, or target a consumer with a coupon for running shoes within a community about fitness.
- Speed – Lightning Community Builder and Templates enable any business user – not just developers and IT staff – to quickly and easily deploy a customized, branded and mobile-optimized community. Companies can use Lightning Builder to create their own custom community and even develop their own custom apps with Lightning Components and embed them into the community. For example, a nonprofit could quickly build an app to organize volunteer events and embed it into the homepage of their community. In addition, new drag and drop Templates allow customized design, usability and data integration.
- Engagement – Salesforce Files Connect for Google Drive accelerates engagement by enabling community members to easily collaborate and share any file created or stored in Google Drive. For example, a marketing team can share a Google file into a campaign-planning group for easy access and collaboration. Files in Google Drive can also be attached to a record, such as a sales opportunity or service case, placing files into the flow of business and delivering the power of a centralized, universal file-sharing solution.
“Communities have become the connective tissue linking customers, partners and employees to companies and each other,” said Nasi Jazayeri, executive vice president of Community Cloud, Salesforce. “With the next-generation Community Cloud, companies have the intelligence, speed and engagement to strengthen these bonds like never before.”
