With the world further expanding due to technological advancements of society, a large number of businesses have adapted new methods of keeping workflow and productivity smooth. With the prominence of various work setups such as remote work and work-from-home setups, a large number of companies and businesses have adopted tools such as collaborative software and customer relationship management (CRM) platforms.
From such need, brands such as Salesforce has emerged with its various applications aimed to support and built around its main purpose as a customer relationship management (CRM) platform, called Salesforce Experience Cloud. At the same time, with the extensive use of such tool, many users have discovered that Salesforce CRM can also be used to improve not just customer relationships but also business partner relationships.
And so, to guide you in how to further utilize Salesforce CRM as a tool to improving your relationship between business partners, this article will guide you into tips and strategies that may help you further improving how you and your business partners collaborate towards the success of your business.
What is Salesforce Experience Cloud?
Now as mentioned before, Salesforce CRM is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform that allows owners and users of businesses and companies to form communities and groups within the internet.
Within these communities and groups, customers, business partners, and employees or team members to interact with each other and communicate as well as share concerns, questions, and data.
With Salesforce Experience Cloud, salesforce developers are able to customize its systems to fit not just the user’s business or company but also based on information such as preferences of the customers, partners, and team members.
Lastly, with Salesforce Experience Cloud features, business owners can create a robust relationship towards customers and potential customers as well as business partners as it features tools meant for collaboration and information sharing.
Benefits of Using Salesforce Experience Cloud
Collaborative Platform
Being a major brand in the CRM market, Salesforce Experience Cloud is backed by a large community of users ranging from various types of industries such as tech, customer service, online merchandise, E-commerce.
With this large network, users have access to a variety of critical information and resources that are pooled and shared with other users. This information may come in varieties such as tips and tricks in how to maximize the use of Salesforce or perhaps various ways how users can use Salesforce
In terms of partner relationships, Salesforce users allows its users to create specific pages or platforms where users and their business partner can communicate, work together, and share information.
Easy-to-Use and Flexible Platform
A major element of Salesforce’s success as a CRM platform is its flexibility and ease of use, allowing it to be smoothly integrated with a business or company’s systems.
At the same time, the Salesforce Experience cloud allows its users to customize its systems, how it looks, how it works, and how and what data to show, collect, and process.
This is vital when it comes to maintaining a partner relationship, as it allows your partners to view specific data meant for them as well as make it easy for them to understand what they need and what they are seeing.
Mobile Access
With mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, a large number of people such as customers, users, and business partners have 24/7 access to information.
To keep up with this change, Salesforce Experience also has implemented and integrated new systems and features that allow it to be accessible to the viewer’s phones and any other mobile devices as long as they have access to the internet or data.
In terms of partner relationship management, though mobile features, business owners and business partners now have the capability to collaborate and connect 24/7 and share critical information in the day-to-day function of their business.
Secured Information
A vital feature in all software and online tools, Salesforce Experience Cloud has built-in security measures that protect not just the customer’s personal and critical information but also your business’s and business partner’s information.
Salesforce Experience Cloud implements this feature through secure login details, movement and action trackers, and identity trackers. It also notifies the admin users who have accessed the platform, when they access it, and what kind of information they have accessed.
Salesforce Experience Cloud also allows admin users to designate and limit various users even their business partners what type of information they have access to.
Strategies to Improve Partner Relationships with Salesforce Experience Cloud
Manage Your Channels with Your Business Partner
When it comes to creating and maintaining a good business partner relationship, the most effective means is by maintaining constant communication, access to critical information, access to business data, and exchange of vital information.
First, with Salesforce Experience Cloud, admin users have something called a “channel” which functions as a medium or tool of communication. With Salesforce as a CRM tool, admin users and business partners have an active and constant means of communication which further nurtures business partner relationships.
Second, with access to critical information and business data, admin users and business partners can build their relationship based on company or business performance such as the rate of workflow, productivity, sales revenue, how much has been earned, and the time between a task being given and done. These sets of critical information, become concrete and realistic reasons that affect partner relationships.
Lastly, in the combination of both the ability of constant communication and access to vital data, admin users and business partners can build their relationship with the spontaneous and instant exchange of information allowing them to further collaborate and make data-driven decisions.
To make sure this is attained here are specific ways to do so.
Constant Interaction and Communication
As mentioned before one of the most important ways one can secure a good business partner relationship is to constantly interact and communicate with him/her. To do this, admin users must constantly inform and provide data in real-time, continuously, and consistently.
To help you, Salesforce Experience Cloud can be integrated with other third-party tools and applications which allows you to have a constant and consistent flow of information. A good example of a third party tool is SMS-Magic which is a third party tool that grants you messaging capability across various channels such as Facebook messenger and WhatsApp.
Control Data Access and Viewing
When it comes to running a business, there are tons of information and data that Salesforce gathers, processes, analyzes and shows to the admin users.
These can be divided into 2 types of information, current and historical.
Current information is based on data gathered from the day-to-day functions and operations of a business/company. This type of information is considered to be vital when it comes to making decisions as well as directing how a business will function.
Historical information is based on past information that is gathered, processed, and archived. This type of information although not critical to the day-to-day function of a business is vital in making projections as well as record keeping.
In order to simplify the exchange of information, admin users must distinguish each piece of information and designate which one can be and will be viewed to your business partner. With Salesforce, admin users are able to designate which information or data can be viewed by their business partners.
This allows the business partners to view critical information and not be confused with a large amount of redundant or irrelevant information.
Monitor, Analyze, and Optimize Your Communications Channel
When a business is being run by both the admin user and their business partners, admin users must monitor and analyze the performance as well as how their business partners interact, work with, and use these channels.
This can be done by using Salesforce’s features of customizability, which allows admin users to make custom dashboards much easier to navigate and understand. Admin users can also use other third-party applications with Salesforce to further connect their business partners to any source of information without any mind-breaking actions.
Use Salesforce’s built-in Customer Relations Features
As a CRM software, Salesforce was built upon maintaining and managing customer relations. With Salesforce’s features, business owners can improve customer satisfaction, and customer service productivity, as well as minimize money spent on other customer service means. Overall, with Salesforce, admin users and team members are able to support and help customers with their concerns.
This can be also done with a Business partner relationship. Here are the following ways to do so.
Adapt Security Measures
Although Salesforce already has its own built-in security measures such as secure login details, movement and action trackers, and identity trackers. It is vital for business owners to also have their own security policies and measures such as specific login details such as unique email addresses and email passwords.
Business users must also constantly review the security structure as well as the status of the platform to make sure it is constantly updated in terms of security measures and no unknown individual has access.
This strategy is by far the most useful when it comes to building trust with your business partners, after all by maintaining the integrity and security of their information displays that you are a dependable partner in the long run.
Implement Mobile Access and communicate with Partners
With mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, a large number of people such as customers, users, and business partners have 24/7 access to information.
And so make sure that your platform and dashboard can be accessed to mobile devices, and make sure that the experience of viewing it through the pc is also similar to viewing it in your business partner’s mobile devices
It is vital to allow your business partners to have constant access or easy access to your platform. This builds trust in your business as it grants them access to important data 24/7 creating a sense of transparency.
Reduce Channel Conflict
Despite Salesforce being a successful CRM platform, it also has its own fair share of shortcomings that have not yet been addressed by their developers.
This may result in somehow conflicts between business partners. To avoid issues such as miscommunication, information conflict, and whatever else, here are strategies and tips to follow
Create a Centralized Channel and Backup
To ensure that your business partner will not be confused when it comes to sharing data and communication. You must build a single central channel where you can maintain constant information.
After all, if you use multiple channels your business partner may become confused and conflict will occur.
As such, create specific channels -such as Facebook messenger group chats- and a central channel- such as Salesforce Dashboard-, these specific channels will function as backups in case there are some technical errors in using or accessing your central channel.
With this strategy business owners and their partners are able to have an simple, constant, and effective means of communication.
Establish a Knowledge Hub
A good way to archive information while still keeping it accessible is by creating a knowledge hub.
In customer relations, the knowledge hub functions as a feature where customers can have frequent or constant concerns answered without raising them to specific team members or any designated customer service, very much like “Frequently Asked Questions”.
In partner relationships, it is also similar as business partners also have access to critical and vital information already which creates a sense of transparency. These knowledge hubs could also contain vital information such as current data which further simplifies a business partner’s ability to access data.
Conclusion
To conclude this article, it can be said that software and tools such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) have become vital in a number of businesses and companies tin terms of customer relations. But at the same time, many businesses have also started to realize that by using the Salesforce CRM platform, it could also be used as a tool for improving relations with the business’s partners.
This is possible due to Salesforce Experience Cloud’s features which grant’s users the benefit of establishing collaboration, community building, integration, mobile access, and data security.
But to effectively improve partner relations, businesses can use Salesforce to create channels for partners to communicate, share information, as well as share sales revenue and other necessary data that displays business workflow allowing for transparency and collaboration.
