Create a Customer Portal in Salesforce Experience Cloud to Level up Customer Satisfaction

A customer portal in Salesforce is a great way to engage and personalize the experience for your customers. Salesforce Experience Cloud is a robust platform for building one. Whether you are a small startup or a large enterprise, you can use it to improve customer relationship management. As a result, you deliver a seamless and satisfying customer journey.

In this article, you learn what Salesforce Experience Cloud has to offer. This ranges from customized self-service help portals to third-party apps that improve customer relationship management. We also cover what to consider before you create a customer portal in Salesforce. Then we show how to create one with Experience Cloud in a few simple steps. Lastly, you will find best practices for designing a self-service portal that fits your business goals and users’ needs. If you want to take your customer relationships to the next level, read on.

Importance of a Customer Portal in Salesforce

Customer portals are online platforms where customers manage their relationship with your company securely and conveniently. They can access information, communicate with your team, and act on your products or services. Portals give your customers, partners, employees, and other stakeholders personalized, self-service digital experiences. With Salesforce, you build customer portals on the Experience Cloud platform. It lets you build, manage, and optimize branded sites and apps for any device.

Salesforce Experience Cloud

In this digital-first world, Salesforce wants to help businesses organize their operations around the customer. It launched the Community Cloud, and since then it has upgraded its customer relationship management. Its product now lets businesses connect with customers through mobile apps, knowledge bases, and customer portals. Here are some insights about Salesforce Experience Cloud:

• Salesforce Experience Cloud is one of the fastest-growing products in Salesforce’s history, with a 158% year-over-year growth rate in Quarter 2 of 2021.
• More than 10 million digital experiences have already been created with Salesforce Experience Cloud
  Salesforce Experience Cloud empowers businesses to build and customize digital experiences with low-code tools, templates, and components.
• Salesforce Experience Cloud integrates with other Salesforce products and services, such as Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, Commerce Cloud, and MuleSoft.
• Salesforce Experience Cloud has a 4.4 out of 5 rating from 1,022 reviews on Gartner.
• Salesforce Experience Cloud is used by 4,963 live websites and 1,949 historical websites, according to BuiltWith.

When you create an Experience Cloud in Salesforce, you can build customized help portals, communities, and support sites for your organization. These online spaces improve teamwork, simplify support workflows, and increase customer satisfaction.

Salesforce Help Portal with Experience Cloud

With Salesforce Experience Cloud, you can also offer self-service customer portals. Customers use them to find information, contact your team, and resolve issues independently. When you create an Experience Cloud in Salesforce, you build a solid self-service community. This improves your customer support quality and strengthens your customer bonds. The advantages of a Salesforce Help Portal with Experience Cloud are as follows:

• Being able to purchase products like Lightning Bolt solutions for free on the AppExchange. (Lightning Bolt Solutions like Supplier Relationship Management, Patient Portal, and Volunteer Self Service Portal are all templates supported by the Salesforce Experience Cloud that are used to create customized portals, support sites, and communities for your business.)
• ‘No Code’ drag-and-drop
• Customize your customer portal according to your business design and brand.
• Enhanced knowledge through the Customer 360 data. Integrates easily with third-party tools available on the AppExchange

Planning and Considerations Before Implementing a Support Portal on Salesforce

In today’s digitally native environment, a self-service customer support platform is imperative. Over half of clients would use self-service portals instead of calling someone on the phone.

A self-service, customer-friendly support center is a practical and economical way to grow your company. However, you must build it correctly. The following pointers help you create a fantastic customer portal in Salesforce Experience Cloud:

• Map out your business goal. Identify the problems you want to solve. First, you need a clear business goal. What are the main pain points you want to address with your portal? For example, do you want to reduce support costs, increase customer satisfaction, or improve customer retention? When you define your goal, you can align your portal strategy with your business objectives and measure your success.
• Customize your Salesforce Help Portal with Experience Cloud. An important part of the work is customizing your portal design and functionality. You can use one of the standard Salesforce templates, which are pre-built and ready to use. Or you can create a custom design that suits your brand and business needs. A standard template saves time and effort, but it may lack flexibility and uniqueness. A custom design gives you more control and creativity, but it may need more skills and resources. Weigh the pros and cons of each option and decide what works best for you.

Security and Registration for a Customer Portal in Salesforce

• Security and access to your website. Community access options are an essential factor to consider. You can give all community users equal access to pages and data. Or you can assign different access levels to different user types based on your business needs. Moreover, you can use Salesforce Experience Cloud’s personalization features to create customized experiences for different user segments.
• Registration process for the Salesforce Customer Portal. User registration lets new users sign up for your self-service portal. You can choose from different types of registration, such as:
• Standard registration: Users fill out a form with their basic information and create a username and password
  Social
• registration: Users sign up using their existing social media accounts, such as Facebook or Google
• Invitation-based registration: Users receive an email invitation with a link to join your portal

Consider the pros and cons of each type of registration. Then select the one that best suits your business needs and your users’ preferences.

How to Create a Customer Portal in Salesforce with Experience Cloud

Step 1: Enable Digital Experiences and Choose a Template

To create a customer portal in Salesforce, first enable digital experiences in your Salesforce org. Then choose a template that matches your use case. To select a template, click Setup > Digital Experiences > All Sites and click New. You see a list of templates, such as Customer Account Portal, Customer Service, Partner Central, and more.

Step 2: Customize Your Customer Portal with Components and Pages

After you create your customer portal, you can customize it with components and pages to add functionality and content to your site.

Components are reusable elements that you drag and drop onto your pages to build your layout and design. You can use standard components, such as headers, footers, menus, forms, and charts. You can also use custom components that you create or install from the AppExchange. To add components, click the Components tab on the left panel and drag the components you want onto your page. Then click the gear icon to edit the properties and settings of each component.

Pages are the individual web pages that make up your customer portal. You can use standard pages, such as Home, Account, Orders, and Cases. You can also create custom pages with the Experience Builder tool.

Step 3: Configure Your Customer Portal Settings and Permissions

After you customize your customer portal, you need to configure your customer portal settings and permissions to control how your site works and who can access it.

Step 4: Enable Customer Portal Users and Assign Them to Accounts

To allow your customers to access your customer portal, you need to enable customer portal users and assign them to accounts. Customer portal users are external users with limited access to your Salesforce data and functionality through your customer portal.

To enable customer portal users, create a user profile that defines their permissions and settings.

You can use a standard profile, such as Customer Community User, or create a custom profile that suits your needs.

To assign users to accounts, create a contact record for each customer and associate it with an account. You can also enable self-registration, so customers create their own user accounts and contact records.

Repeat these steps for each customer you want to enable for your portal.

Step 5: Salesforce Experience Cloud Implementation

Before you launch your customer portal, test it to make sure it works as expected and meets your quality standards. Try it in different browsers, devices, and user accounts to check your site’s functionality, design, and performance.

Conclusion

Customer portals are a great way to foster trustworthy and long-lasting customer relationships. They can help you deliver a seamless and personalized customer experience while improving your operational efficiency and profitability.

In this article, we showed how to create a customer portal in Salesforce using Experience Cloud. This platform lets you build customized and engaging online spaces for your customers. We covered why customer portals matter and how they improve customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention.

We also explained its features and benefits. Finally, we covered the steps to create a customer portal and how to use the tools and templates on the platform. For custom builds, see our custom software development services.

Now, we want to hear from you. What are your thoughts on customer portals and Salesforce Experience Cloud? Have you tried to create a customer portal in Salesforce? If yes, what difficulties and advantages did you see?

To learn more about Salesforce and its products, visit the Salesforce website.