One of the most amazing innovations in recent memory is the access to all of the world’s information in the palm of your hand. No longer are arguments settled on the strength of someone’s conviction (“Tom Brady has 5 MVP awards. He does!”). Now it takes seconds to verify that information (Mr. Brady has two regular season and four Super Bowl MVP awards. So that’s a hard “no” any way you cut it). This accessibility has created expectations not only around the ability to answer NFL trivia, but also for customers or partners to interact with companies. Without a quick, easy way for customers to find information or solve problems quickly, a company could quickly find itself on the wrong end of a frustrated social media tirade — something that could negatively influence many potential customers. Luckily, Salesforce Community Cloud enables businesses to easily create an online community to engage with customers, generate and understand data, and resolve issues quickly.

Create a community

In a study from the University of Michigan, customers that are engaged with companies spend 19 percent more money than those who aren’t engaged. The interesting part is that the 19 percent bump is specific to a company’s online community rather than general social networks like Facebook or Twitter. Salesforce Community Cloud gives you the tools to quickly and easily set up an online community including FAQs and user-generated questions and answers for power users to assist others. Powerful moderation tools ensure that you are also a part of the conversation and can reward those who participate with badges or online rewards. Apart from developing a relationship between a company and its customers, an online community fosters relationships between customers. These relationships can be a major source for a company to understand what resonates about its products or services, hacks that might not had been considered, or its buyers’ personas. The value from communities like this is extraordinary.

Generate and understand data

When customer service information is scattered across your website, call center, and social media interactions, it’s much more difficult to understand trends and common issues. Community Cloud brings all these customer interactions into one central area. Tracking usage and visits across your product guide or FAQs can surface common pain points, which can guide you to process or feature improvements. Kristen Smaby has said, “When customers share their story, they’re not just sharing pain points. They’re actually teaching you how to make your product, service, and business better. Your customer service organization should be designed to efficiently communicate those issues.” Community Cloud will surface important feedback for maximum impact to your customers.

Resolve issues quickly

It takes twelve positive experiences to make up for one unresolved negative experience. With that in mind, a company needs to bring the big guns when it comes to its customers’ problems; the faster you can resolve a customer’s problem, the better. Community Cloud brings those big guns with easily updatable FAQs, product guides, customer experts, and in-house support. Beginning with customer experts, there is tremendous value behind the human face that passionate fans bring to your brand, in addition to the basically free support that they offer to customers in need.

Salesforce Community Cloud is the standard bearer for online community platforms, enabling businesses to easily connect and engage with customers. Using communities, generating and using data, and resolving issues will ensure that customers can add interaction with your company to the list of easy things to do, like Googling trivia or texting a friend. Reducing friction in resolving issues and minimizing workflow confusion can make a massive impact on your company’s success.