What is Salesforce Commerce Cloud?

In order to stay ahead of the game, retailers find it necessary to incorporate more and more channels for improving sales. Yet a unified and scalable ecommerce solution is hard to find.

When Salesforce acquired Demandware in 2016, it launched ‘Commerce Cloud’ – an enterprise-grade platform with all the scalable technology including the world’s top CRM, marketing, workflow automations, reporting, help desk software, sales, AI technology for order management and more. Enterprises can integrate multiple channels via this unified commerce cloud-based solution.

Back in 2016, Oracle was winning marketing deals in ecommerce solutions whereas Salesforce and Adobe were lacking ecommerce functionality. At that time, Demandware was the leading cloud based ecommerce solution. However, now, the demand for Commerce Cloud has been increasing and more enterprises are shifting to this platform.

Now let’s dig deep and see what is Salesforce commerce cloud and how it is shaping the retail businesses today.

What is Salesforce commerce cloud?

Salesforce commerce cloud is a unified cloud-based eCommerce platform with a mobile-first approach designed as a Saas solution for enterprises. The primary objective is to enable customers and stores on multiple channels for engagement with a seamless experience.

This is how Salesforce defines Commerce Cloud:

“Commerce Cloud​ is the world’s leading B2C and B2B commerce solution. Commerce Cloud is a multi-tenant, cloud-based commerce platform that empowers brands to create intelligent, unified buying experiences across all channels — mobile, social, web, and store.”

Over the last few years, Commerce Cloud has become another integral and powerful solution offered by Salesforce.

Salesforce B2B Commerce Cloud

Salesforce considers C-level executives as their primary customers but that isn’t a rule. Anyone with a growing business on multiple channels can use this solution.

Salesforce B2B Commerce is designed natively on the Salesforce platform which connects the commerce, CRM and marketing cloud in order to meet the complex purchasing needs of the business retailer.

Salesforce B2C Commerce Cloud

B2C drives customers’ engagement across all devices, and geographies for transforming shopping experiences across different digital channels. You get a rich set of capabilities which includes merchandising, fulfillment, AI technology, promotions, open development environment and mobile-first custom options which can further be customized.

Here is the demo of Salesforce Commerce Cloud:

Who is using Salesforce Commerce Cloud?

If you are new to the Salesforce Commerce Cloud concept, you might be wondering if this solution is viable in the market. Some of the top brands using Salesforce Commerce Cloud are listed below:

• Puma
• Coca Cola
• Boggi Milano
• GoPro
• Ethan Allen
• Godiva
• Fila
• Converse
• Joann
• Pandora
• Skullcandy
• Under Armour

Practical use cases

Order management feature

This use case is taking B2C storefront for illustrating the ‘order management’ feature of the Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Order management is natively integrated with B2C commerce.

As soon as the customer places an order on an ecommerce site with Salesforce commerce cloud suite, it will be available to the store owner in the Salesforce console. Reference screenshots are given below as an example quoted by Salesforce.

We will take a look into Salesforce order management to see the order. Go ahead and open ‘Order Management app’.

In ‘Order Summaries’ you can see all orders, given the one placed above i.e. by the name ‘Anna Cloudy’.

Here the catch is, one can create custom list views and see the health of their orders. For example, there are charts and figures showing the number of orders approved, dispatched, cancelled etc.

By clicking on the settings icon on the top right of the orders summaries page, you can see ‘List View Controls’. From the menu, you can choose ‘Select Fields to Display’.

Fulfillment order is another great feature where anyone can see a complete lifecycle of an order with all the details. From order placement to fulfillment (where and how), all the information is there.

Customer support

The customer support of Salesforce is pretty powerful. Let’s say, a customer wants to return an item he bought from the store and he chats on the chatbot of the site.

User can fill the chat information i.e. name, contact email and subject and then ask for the return.

The bot will show all the orders a user/ customer has placed.

By clicking on the order a customer wants to return, he will be given an option to chat to an agent.

Now by going into the service console and by accepting the chat, the admin can view all the chat history/details. A case is developed where order number and contact details are given. Meaning, customer chat, account, and the case details can be seen in one concrete screenview.

Given comprehensive customer details on the service console, an agent can make a return on behalf of the customer.

REMEMBER, this is just one use case that we discussed under customer support.

Final Verdict

One of the note worthy features of Salesforce Commerce Cloud is that it unifies all sales channels and creates a powerful one-stop customer experience. Rather than thinking of your brick and mortar store, online store, social media selling, customer support etc. as separate entities/flows, this single commerce suite automates workflows quite smartly.

Salesforce implementation, customization, integration, and commerce cloud are core services that Phaedra Solutions is offering.

Contact us for consultation on how we can automate your commerce workflows using Salesforce commerce cloud.