5 Great Salesforce OMS Feature Add-Ons

These days, consumers have higher expectations than ever before. Of course, they expect great products and services, but they also expect winning experiences. Research from Salesforce showed that 88% of consumers feel the experience a brand provides is as important as its products or services. 

But delivering winning experiences that attract and convert shoppers is only the beginning of the story. Once a customer has hit the “buy” button, the pressure’s on to meet (or exceed) their expectations in the post–purchase journey. Doing so is key to boosting customer satisfaction, retention, and advocacy. And so, a strong order management process is essential to delivering seamless post-sale experiences – Salesforce Order Management is the ideal tool for the job.

If delivering seamless, end-to-end experiences is a priority for your brand (and it should be!), there are some important, additional features you’ll want to incorporate into Salesforce Order Management. In this blog, we’ll cover the top five…

What is Salesforce Order Management?

Before digging into must-have OMS features, let’s take a step back to define what an order management system is – and what makes Salesforce Order Management the ideal choice

Customers have high expectations. They want fast, easy shipping and simple returns. And they want to know the status of their orders in real time.

There are a ton of moving pieces involved in meeting these expectations. And even a single hiccup can cause problems. A shipment may arrive much later than expected, or perhaps the order gets lost completely. When something goes wrong and you don’t have the right processes in place you’re likely to lose a customer – for good. This is why a great order management system is key. 

As Salesforce puts it, an order management system is “the brains behind the scenes in the ordering and fulfillment journey”. 

Essentially, an order management system (often called an OMS) is a platform for managing everything that happens after a customer checks out. An order management system helps brands streamline a whole host of moving pieces, including:

• Order management
• Customer records
• Fulfillment
• Inventory
• Payments
• Customer care 

But not all order management systems are the same. It’s important to find a unified platform that integrates the systems and technologies your brand already uses – including your ERP, CRM, sales, service, and commerce. It should also be easy to use for all stakeholders. Salesforce Order Cloud checks all those boxes. 

Today, many of the world’s best brands use Salesforce Order Management, which is a part of Commerce Cloud. Salesforce Order Management leverages the latest technology to empower your brand to effectively manage orders across any platform where your products are sold. 

The result? Seamless omnichannel experiences that delight customers and bring them back time and again. And, a boost to your bottom line. According to The Forrester Total Economic Impact of Salesforce Order Management (2022), brands see a 26% profit boost from omnichannel fulfillment.

5 Features to Add to Salesforce Order Management

Salesforce Order Management is a powerful tool right out of the box. However, there are five additional features that’ll extend the capabilities of Salesforce Order Management and empower you to manage your entire eCommerce presence from one place.

1. Popular eCommerce Integrations 

It probably comes as no surprise that out of the box, Salesforce Order Management supports brands using Commerce Cloud. But these days, brands often use multiple platforms and sell through multiple channels. 

For example, a brand might run multiple direct-to-consumer websites, which each run on a different eCommerce platform. They might also sell their products through Amazon and eBay. Managing each of these channels separately is inefficient and time consuming, leaving you ill-equipped to deliver seamless experiences to your customers. 

If you’re a brand that sells through multiple channels, you’ll want to add eCommerce integrations to Salesforce Order Management, such as:

• Shopify
• Magento
• BigCommerce
• Amazon

That way, everything is integrated into one central location. Customers will have great post-sale experiences, regardless of where and how they purchased your products.

2. Lightning Order Entry

Generally, a customer will make an eCommerce purchase by adding items to their cart and then completing the steps of the check out process. However, there are instances when brands need to be able to create a manual order for a customer. This isn’t something Salesforce supports out of the box.

If your brand has a need for manual order entry, consider adding Lightning Order Entry to Salesforce Order Management. This allows users to easily create orders for customers via a simple, intuitive interface. In addition to choosing products, users can apply discounts, input shipping and payment information and submit orders. It’s quick and easy – which frees up your agents’ time to delight more customers and grow sales.

3. Order on Behalf Of (OOBO)

Research from Baymard Institute tells us that two-thirds of potential eCommerce purchases are abandoned in carts. Ouch.

A key way to reduce cart abandonment is by removing friction in the purchasing process. This can be done by incorporating the Order on Behalf Of (OOBO) functionality to Salesforce Order Management. With OOBO functionality, your support team can take a deal all the way to the finish line.

For example, a consumer might reach out to a customer service agent to ask some questions about a tandem kayak. After answering their questions, the agent places the order on behalf of the customer, but they also then check the customer’s order history and see they’ve only purchased one life jacket in the past. So, they offer to add a second life jacket to the customer’s order.

4. PCI Compliant Payments

All businesses must ensure they’re taking action to protect customers’ data. It’s important to commit to payment card industry (PCI) compliance, which is a set of standards businesses are required to follow to protect customers’ credit card data.

As such, PCI-compliant payments are a must-have feature to add to Salesforce Order Management. Adding this feature is a key way to protect your brand – and preserve the trust you’ve worked hard to earn with your customers. 

5. Cancellation and Refund Flows

In an ideal world, all customers would love the products they ordered. But the reality is, there will be times when customers request a cancellation or refund.

Out of the box, Salesforce Order Management provides brands using Commerce Cloud with cancellation and refund flows. However, if your brand uses other platforms to sell – like Amazon, eBay, Shopify, BigCommerce, and Magento, that’s not the case. You’ll want to consider adding a feature to Salesforce Order Management that allows for cancellation and refund flows for all of your key eCommerce platforms.

Summary

There are many moving pieces set in motion after a customer makes a purchase. Salesforce Order Management is a great platform for seamlessly managing them. 

The five added features we explored in this blog will help enhance Salesforce Order Management and empower you to simplify and streamline processes, so you can deliver seamless end-to-end customer experiences that boost satisfaction and repeat business.