Salesforce is undoubtedly the industry leader in CRM today, having propelled several B2B organizations to success. But when it comes to B2C businesses, Salesforce has just as many benefits to offer. With advanced automation options, Salesforce allows B2C businesses to focus on building customer engagement by helping them interact through there digital journey across various channels.
CRM can be a powerful tool for improving customer experience, tracking data, managing contacts, and improving coordination in the company. Given that these are defining factors for a business, leveraging Salesforce CRM can be the key to B2C success. Here is what to keep in mind when setting up Salesforce for your B2C business.
Person accounts for B2C
Salesforce natively supports a B2B model, managing departments by utilizing an account record with contact records underneath. However, B2C organizations may need to manage individual customers not affiliated with the company. Instead of an account record, this needs a dedicated record devoted to the individual – not affiliated with an organization or account.
One of the Salesforce’s solution for B2C is the Person Accounts. The Person Account record is an amalgamated account and contact record. The admin decides the page layout and assigns the Person Account record type to profiles. It acts as an independent contact record that doesn’t need an associated account record. It can be seen in list views like any other contact record. However, instead of the Contact related list, a ‘Partner’ related list is used to relate Person Accounts.
Once enabled, this feature makes permanent changes to the organization’s database that cannot be disabled later. A series of fields are joined to the account object which indicates the contact information of the individual that may be placed on the page layout. Because access to two separate records no longer exists, specific fields from the contact record need to be present on the newly created Person Account record.
Limitations of Person Accounts
B2C organizations may need a way to recognize an individual within Salesforce. When it comes to integrating third-party applications, some are incompatible with the Person Account functionality. Salesforce also sometimes releases new functionalities that are not available to a Person Account until a later release. Because the effect of a Person Account is permanent, B2C organizations must look for a more compatible and flexible alternative.
Using the Nonprofit Starter Pack module
Instead of boxing themselves into an irreversible position, B2C companies can have the Person Account functionality without the associated complications in the future. Salesforce’s Nonprofit Starter Pack (NPSP) can replicate the Person Account functionality with a simple installation of its managed packages. It features a collection of custom fields, objects, reports, workflow, layouts, Visual Force pages etc. The installation is free, simple and is an alternative to the permanent effects of a Person Account. It offers two primary solutions to deal with the B2C need for individual records:
- One-to-One Account: Here, each individual has their own contact and account record. The user is redirected to the same physical contact record regardless of whether they click the ‘Account’ or ‘Contact’ record. Thus, it appears that only one record exists per individual. This mirrors the Person Account functionality by replacing the Lead Conversion and Account ‘View’ pages with Visual Force pages. This means a lead can now be converted into an individual contact record.
- Bucket Account: One account labeled ‘Individual’ is created. Individuals not associated with the organization become contact records in this account
If an organization wants to convert contact records previously under an account record to their Person Account records, recreating or importing them is required. With the NPSP functionality, it is as simple as removing the account name from the particular contact record, effectively converting it to an ‘Individual’ record.
Salesforce Person Account functionality places a window over the account and contact tables for the end user to see data. This compromises the ability to directly access tables for list views and reporting since the user must access it through the added layer. The NPSP module uses Visual Force pages to alter the GUI navigation of the tool and so the end user’s ability to access data from the tables or reports is not affected.
With the ever increasing customer touchpoints an effective CRM implementation is important to build customer loyalty and manage stakeholder expectation. With the capabilities that Salesforce brings to the table in areas like Customer Tracking, Contact Management, Real-Time Reporting and Multi-Channel Integration Salesforce has become a platform of choice for marketers.
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