Definition
Online Community is part of the broader Salesforce platform offering that provides specific tools or services for building and running applications. It contributes to the extensibility and flexibility that make Salesforce adaptable to diverse business needs.
Real-World Example
When a platform engineer at NovaScale needs to streamline operations, they turn to Online Community to enhance the organization's Salesforce footprint with additional functionality. By leveraging Online Community, the team avoids building a custom solution from scratch, saving months of development time while gaining enterprise-grade features out of the box.
Why Online Community Matters
Online Community, now known as Experience Cloud, is Salesforce's platform for building branded digital experiences that extend CRM data and processes to external users like customers, partners, and vendors. Communities can serve as self-service portals where customers find knowledge articles and submit cases, partner portals where channel partners manage leads and deals, or internal collaboration hubs. This matters because enabling external users to interact with Salesforce data directly reduces support costs, accelerates partner-driven revenue, and improves customer engagement without building custom web applications from scratch.
As organizations grow their external user base, managing the community becomes increasingly complex. Without proper configuration, communities can expose sensitive internal data, provide inconsistent branding, or fail to scale under high traffic. Organizations that treat their Online Community as an afterthought often find that customers abandon self-service in favor of expensive phone and email support channels. Properly implemented communities with robust knowledge bases, intuitive case management, and personalized content have been shown to deflect 30-60% of support cases, dramatically reducing operational costs while simultaneously improving customer satisfaction.
How Organizations Use Online Community
- NovaScale Technologies — NovaScale Technologies built an Online Community as a customer support portal where users can search a knowledge base of 500 articles, submit and track support cases, and participate in peer-to-peer forums. Within six months, 40% of support inquiries were resolved through self-service, reducing call center volume by 1,200 cases per month.
- Apex Channel Partners — Apex Channel Partners uses their Online Community as a partner portal where 200 resellers can register deals, access marketing materials, and check inventory availability in real time. The portal integrates with their Salesforce PRM (Partner Relationship Management) module, giving partners visibility into co-selling opportunities and commission structures.
- Metro City Government — Metro City Government deployed an Online Community as a citizen services portal. Residents can submit service requests like pothole repairs and permit applications, track their status, and access public records. The community reduced in-person visits to government offices by 35% and phone inquiries by 50% within the first year.