Salesforce.com is testing an application that lets companies build social networks for their customers to interact with the brand.
Salesforce.com initially launched a ‘Chatter’ application was launched 2 years ago as an internal company tool to let employees interact, but now the service is being upgraded to ‘Salesforce Communities’ for customer-facing communication.
The tool also integrates business processes into the Chatter stream. For example, a company can invite their retail partners into a network. While the sales rep is chatting with a retailer answering questions, the rep can place an order, or credit an account from within the tool.
Salesforce Communities won’t be generally available until 2013. The tool is being tested with a number of partners, including GE Capital. Salesforce Communities is at the heart of GE’s new community tool, and 50 other custom communities.
At launch, the tool will not connect back to public social-media campaigns. But Salesforce.com recently bought social media ad management firm Buddy Media for $689 million in June, suggesting integration with the likes of Facebook and Twitter will be a feature soon.
“Salesforce Communities lets you bring together customers, partners and employees into one or more communities,” said Doug Bewsher, senior vice president of Chatter.
These external networks can be set up for various purposes, including as customer service hubs, as marketing sites for promoting products or events, and as partner sales support communities.
A company needs to have a Salesforce.com license to set up a community, but the other participants don’t need to be Salesforce.com customers.
Through integration with Salesforce.com’s core CRM (customer-relationship-management) system, Salesforce Communities lets users capture data from the social networks and add it to existing CRM files to help generate sales leads, improve customer support and involve product development teams, for example.
Like all Salesforce.com applications, Salesforce Communities is a cloud-based service.
Chatter now has 150,000 “active networks,” Bewsher said, which means paying users of the tool, not just those in trials.