Should You Choose a Salesforce Customer Portal or a Partner Portal

What thought/brand crosses your mind when you think about CRM and portals?

For us, it's always Salesforce. Not because they are in the industry for long and are widely popular. But they understand customers' pain points and needs. They also understand the business requirements and what solution can help them achieve profits. Salesforce knows the market. They launch products that would enhance customers and clients' interaction. They bring in products that complement their CRM. Mostly, those products are portals and communities.

If you know about Salesforce or have used it, you might know about Salesforce Customer Portal and the other types. You might be aware of their functionalities like that of a Salesforce Client Portal.

However, sometimes they can raise a question like which one to choose?

Should you go with a customer based or a partner one?

Hence, in this article, we'll discuss two types of Salesforce Portal, i.e., Customer and Partner. We'll also help you choose one that's right for your organization.

Salesforce Customer Portal

Salesforce Client Portal is an interface that helps your customers/clients solve their issues about your products/services.

As an organization, you can create a custom solution for your customers with features like ticket generation, knowledge base, and so on. You can include sections, information, modules based on your requirements.

If you go for this solution, you can provide your customers - omnichannel support, easy integration, and an online forum. Besides, you can provide 24/7 support without any extra resources. Also, it can eliminate the drawback of having customers in multiple time zones.

Salesforce Partner Portal

Partner portal allows your partners outside the organization to log in to Salesforce. It helps companies create indirect sales. Here, the partners have limited access to the interface and can only view the modules they have access to.

With the help of PRM, companies can create, manage, and handle sales. They can invite partners to manage, track, and analyze campaigns, sales, and more.

The benefits of using a partner portal include efficiency in the sales funnel, increased ROI, and data retrieval from anywhere, anytime. It means partners can access the data and insights while on the go. They can share documents, reports, and so on.

Salesforce Client Portal V/s Partner Portal

Let us see what makes one better over the other.

• Purpose

A customer portal aims to solve queries and issues without interacting or asking for a representative's help. Partner’ shows partners with leads and sales opportunities.

• Audience

A customer portal is for end-users whereas partners one are for salespeople or third-parties.

• Access and Cost

A customer solution is easy to access. They may or may not have advanced features as their basic purpose is to solve queries. Partner solution has access to core CRM features. Besides, it requires additional features to plan sales campaigns. And so it is expensive.

• Role-based Access

In a partner solution, you can provide your partners with role-based access. For example, they can access sales reports but not invoice reports. This is not the case with the Salesforce customer portal.

• Knowledge

Salesforce customer solution has a huge knowledge repository to help customers solve their queries. The partner one may or may not have such a huge knowledge base.

What You Should Choose?

A solution that meets your company's requirements. There's a thin line between these two solutions. However, both have their own set of uniqueness and peculiarities.

If you want a solution to solve your customers' problems, manage their activities, then go for a customer one. But if you want a solution to manage your partners, then go for a partner one.

That's all for now.

If you still need guidance in choosing one, talk to a portal development team. They will guide you in the right direction.

Also, you can leave a comment here. We will try to help you in every way possible.

Mr. Maulik Shah is the founder & CEO of CRMJetty, a hub of innovative customer relationship solutions, provides ready to CMS integrate portal solutions for SuiteCRM, Sugar CRM, Salesforce, and Dynamics CRM including WordPress Customer Portal.