If you are in the business of ecommerce in any capacity, then you probably know that it is important to give access of your CRM to your customers, so that they can manage their wish list, orders, payments, as well as refunds and returns. Now, of course, there is no way to give direct access to the CRM. This is where a customer portal comes in.

After all, a demographic based marketing approach is getting old now, with customers preferring a more personalized approach. Personalized marketing means that the customer will never miss out on deals and coupons for the things that they actually want. A portal makes it even better when it gives the ability to create wish lists and allows signing up for notifications.

And for this instance, let us look at solely, Salesforce customer portal. Salesforce is one of the most popular customer relationship management tools. And its combination with the most renowned CMS WordPress would work wonders. So, let’s see what does a third party Salesforce portal do?

Enterprise level build:

Salesforce is an enterprise-level CRM, so it would need a portal that is also enterprise level. By this, it means you have the functionality that you would expect out of a premium product. It should take the premium features and tools of Salesforce and tune them for the use cases of a portal.

Cost effective:

Since we are exclusively talking about third-party portal solutions, it would be cost effective. Since Salesforce already has a portal that is expensive to buy and maintain, with a fee for each account, it would be the right move for a third party developer to make a Salesforce portal that does not charge a fee for each member. This is the best way to make it cost effective.

Security:

In the last six months, we have heard of more data leaks in the tech industry than we can keep a count of. The right portal would have to be secure in a way that the data is only on the CRM and the portal is able to fetch it directly from there instead of storing it internally. When data leaks, it tends to lose customers because they can no longer trust you with their information. Especially when the information that an ecommerce store is of extremely sensitive nature that of home addresses.

On-demand information:

The most convenient thing about an online store is that a customer does not need to go out of their way to interact with your store. So they shouldn’t have to go out of their way to get anything they need. A Salesforce customer portal should have a ready set of information that a customer could potentially need. Customers should be able to access this information whenever they want without having to interact with a customer service staff member, over long email threads or phone calls.

Customized look and features:

Since it is your store’s portal, it should match the various design and experience aspects of your store. Your Salesforce portal should provide a quick-action dashboard that shows relevant information to your customers at the right time. It should also prompt them with coupons for the products that are in their wish list or a feedback email after certain days of delivering a product. As an admin user, you should be able to customize the modules that you want to show in your portal, as well as what modules your staff sees, as compared to what your customers see.

All in all, a Salesforce customer portal should enhance the features of your CRM while also providing certain custom features that your customers can benefit from. These features will take your targeted marketing and sales efforts one-step further and help you not only gain customers but also delight them and, furthermore, retain them.

There are many third party portal solutions that are available for Salesforce, so if you are in the market for one, make sure to find one that has all of these necessary features. This will set your store apart and help you give your customers a premium experience.