Explore Integration Capabilities
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Explain the capabilities of the integration.
- Describe the components used to facilitate integration.
Retail on the Go
Businesses are adapting to various trends and innovations to retain consumer loyalty. One way businesses are navigating these changes is by transitioning to online selling.
Customers today expect an excellent user experience, and it’s not all about shopping. They look for quality communication, smooth interactions with customer support or in-store staff, and ease of access across the website, app, and in-store. For this reason, businesses need to ensure that digital interactions are fast and easy for customers. Ideally, they're enjoyable too. Otherwise, customers may abandon the interaction. And the user experience isn’t limited to online stores, but stretches across different digital channels, like mobile devices and tablets. Let’s look at an example of a customer’s experience with a brand.
Nathan Sanders is an adventure-sports enthusiast who works as a journalist for a local news channel. He spends most of his free time discovering new trails, scaling mountains, and finding new heights for bungee jumping.
He’s a regular shopper with Northern Trail Outfitters (NTO), a retailer that sells outdoor and recreational gear and apparel. Nathan recently enrolled in NTO’s loyalty program, NTO Insider, and has been reaping the benefits of his loyalty rewards.
Nathan is on his way to a remote skiing resort. While driving, he realizes he’s forgotten to pack his snow gloves. He browses the NTO website from his mobile phone. Luckily, he has a steady internet connection.
Bingo! Nathan finds a nifty pair of ski gloves and adds them to his basket. On the checkout page, he’s glad to see his accumulated loyalty points, plus an unused voucher from a previous purchase. He applies the points and voucher to his purchase and completes the transaction. To Nathan’s delight, the gloves reach his hotel the next day before he hits the slopes, and he’s not a penny out of pocket.
Behind the Scenes
NTO has been running a successful loyalty program using Salesforce Loyalty Management. The NTO Insider program gives members point-based rewards, tier-based incentives, and other personalized benefits, such as discount vouchers, promotions, and more. As they earn points, they can move to higher tiers, such as Bronze, Gold, and Platinum.
NTO recently took its business online with Commerce Cloud to give customers a frictionless experience and capture perfect orders every time.
Loyalty Management and Commerce Cloud are separate applications but are now integrated to deliver a consistent experience across channels. Salesforce B2C Commerce transforms shopping to create intelligent, unified buying experiences on mobile, social, web, or store.
B2C Commerce integration with Loyalty Management gives loyalty members complete transparency in their transactions. It uses all the personalized data from Loyalty Management to identify members and provide redemption capabilities, rewards, and other loyalty benefits.
Let’s dive into the integration capabilities.
Integration Capabilities
Loyalty Management and Commerce Cloud integration gives customers a single location to shop, join a loyalty program, pay with points and vouchers, and review their profiles and promotions. Let’s see how the capabilities work in a customer’s commerce journey.
Member Acquisition
First, new loyalty members enroll in the program through the site and receive an email welcoming them to the program. Before Nathan purchased the snow gloves, he had created an account and joined the loyalty program from his My Account page. Since he was already an existing loyalty member, he quickly reviewed the program terms and conditions before his purchase.
Member Profile
At any time in the commerce journey, B2C Commerce gets details such as member profile, tier, and points balance. This way, customers like Nathan can view membership and rewards-related information in the My Dashboard section of their account and see details of their activities on the My Activities page of the site.
Promotions on Products
B2C Commerce determines which promotions are applicable for a product and displays them on the product's page. When Nathan opens a product page, he immediately sees the active promotions.
Redemption for Order Payment
The integration enables redemption processing, such as the use of points and other promotional benefits that members accrue. Nathan shortlisted a pair of gloves, and on the checkout page, saw his voucher from an earlier purchase. He could also have paid for the order with a combination of points, vouchers, and other payment methods.
Points Accrual
When a member places an order on the site, the integration uses APIs and rules to create an Accrual type transaction journal record for each item in the order. The transaction journal credits qualifying and non-qualifying points according to the amount the member pays for the item. When Nathan placed the order for the gloves, the program credited him with qualifying and non-qualifying points.
Failed Orders
On order placement, the program deducts the value of points and any vouchers before processing the payment. If an order fails due to technical or network issues, the program charges the member for the order, or the page times out without any deduction.
If the program charges the member for a failed order, the integration creates a redemption reversal-type transaction journal. This way, when the program processes the transaction, it returns the redeemed points, voucher values, or payment amount to the member.
Nathan’s order failed on the first try due to a connectivity issue, yet the program still debited his points and voucher. To correct this situation, the program created a reversal-type transaction journal. Soon, Nathan saw his points and voucher credited back to his account. On his second attempt, the order went through without a hitch.
Order and Item Cancellation
Integration means that members can cancel entire orders or specific items in an order. Cancellations credit redeemed points back to the member. Conversely, any points they accrued for placing the order are debited from their points balance and any vouchers are reversed. Any vouchers redeemed for a canceled order or order item are also reversed. For example, if Nathan had canceled the order, the program would have credited the redeemed points and voucher back to him.
Tier and Benefits Management
The program assigns members to tiers and awards benefits based on the points they accrue or redeem. The integration uses flows to identify members who are eligible for a tier upgrade, moves them to a higher tier, and assigns the associated benefits.
Nathan was a Silver-tiered member. After purchasing the gloves, he moved to the Gold tier and gets even more program benefits. He’s due for a new pair of ski boots soon. Guess where he’ll be shopping? No doubt, the NTO webstore.
Let’s take a closer look at how the integration works.
Integration Components
Loyalty Management for Commerce is a solution kit, which means it’s a reference implementation. It comes preloaded with functionality and code, so businesses can use it as a starter kit and customize it to meet their requirements.
Before getting started, install the Storefront Reference Architecture (SFRA) Cartridge, a starting point for online storefront design. The cartridge contains storefront pages for a loyalty program, terms and conditions, member profiles, and more.
After installing the SFRA cartridge, you’re ready to integrate Commerce Cloud and Loyalty Management using two components: Commerce Cloud Cartridge and Loyalty Management for Commerce Cloud Reference Org.
Commerce Cloud Cartridge
When a consumer opens an eCommerce site, they see the user-facing website, or storefront. It’s where they browse products, place orders, and manage their account.
Businesses can also run the loyalty program on the B2C Commerce site. This way, members can also manage their loyalty details on the site. To do this, businesses must add the Commerce Cloud Cartridge to the site, which has two components.
- A package of codes that extend the UI or customer experience to deliver loyalty capabilities
- Metadata and HTML pages that allow businesses to configure their loyalty program preferences and run the program on a B2C Commerce site
Loyalty Management for Commerce Cloud Reference Org
The Reference Org has a set of custom objects and fields, Apex classes, and flows. It also gives you Batch Management jobs and Data Processing Engine definitions that run different processes.
Integration Architecture
You’ve seen the different components that bring the integration together: Commerce Cloud, a storefront, and the core platform that runs Loyalty Management. API-based connectors are a key component that holds it all together by ensuring constant and uninterrupted communication between Loyalty Management and Commerce Cloud.
APIs perform various operations. For instance, when a customer places an order on the storefront site, an API creates a transaction journal in Loyalty Management. Subsequent order actions, such as accrual and redemption, are triggered from the transaction journal record.
In Conclusion
Loyalty members interact through multiple channels—online, in-store, and mobile, so businesses must deliver a consistent experience across these channels. The Loyalty and Commerce Cloud integration does just that—delivers seamless loyalty experiences on an ecommerce website.
The integration also incorporates personalized data available in Loyalty Management to enable commerce journeys, like member acquisition, product purchase, and launching promotions. The integration is available as a reference implementation that you can customize and extend as you like. How nifty is that?