Manage Households and Groups
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Outline the different ways to model individuals and businesses in Automotive Cloud.
- Describe how contact contact relationships, account contact relationships, and account account relationships are used.
- Explain how to use party relationship groups and party role relationships.
How to Model Individuals and Businesses
Automotive companies strive to tailor their services to specific customers and dealers. By understanding their interactions with different groups and households, companies can create effective messaging, offers, subscriptions, warranties, and services.
Typically, a household is represented as a business account in Automotive Cloud and the members are represented as contacts.
When it comes to representing customers and their households in Automotive Cloud, Neo Motors has a few options:
-
A person account and multiple contacts: Use a person account to represent the customer, and then create a contact record for each household member. Using this approach, Neo Motors would create Account Contact Relationship records to associate each contact with the person account.
-
Person accounts only: Create person account records to represent each member of a household. Remember, a person account is also a contact. In this scenario, Neo Motors would define Contact Contact Relationship records to associate the person accounts to each other and then use Account Contact Relationship records to associate the individual to other businesses.
-
A business account and person accounts: Create a business account to represent a household, and create contact records for each household member. In this case, Neo Motors can create Account Contact Relationship records to relate members to a household.
While each approach has pros and cons, after careful consideration, Neo Motors goes with the third option: creating a business account to represent a household.
One Contact, Many Accounts
With Automotive Cloud, you can define relationships between a business and an individual using Account Contact Relationship records.
First, consider how a dealer contact relates to multiple accounts. Jean Roe is a trusted sales executive at the Dream Dealers Dallas dealership, overseeing the sales of all Neo luxury vehicles. Here’s an example of how Neo Motors tracks Jean’s relationship with all households and companies.
Contact |
Account |
Direct Relationship? |
Role |
---|---|---|---|
Jean Roe |
Dream Dealers Dallas |
Yes |
Employee |
Shah Household |
No |
Sales Manager |
|
Acme Building Solutions |
No |
Sales Manager |
Each contact can relate to multiple accounts, with one account as the primary. Here’s an example of an account contact relationship record where Dyan Oldroyd is a primary contact for the Neo Gen Dealers Austin business account, and his role is decision maker.
Next, discover how a customer contact relates to multiple accounts.
Leah Smith is a young college student who just purchased her first car from Dream Dealers in Miami. Her parents are separated, but both are loyal customers of Neo Motors, which wants to track Leah’s relationship with both households. To do this, they use Account Contact Relationship records.
Contact |
Account |
Direct Relationship? |
Role |
---|---|---|---|
Leah Smith |
Smith Household |
Yes |
Child |
Mason Household |
No |
Child |
The Importance of Your Role
Party Role Relationships establish the clearly defined roles between individuals and companies. Some relationships are reciprocal, such as between two spouses or between a supplier and a buyer. Other relationships are linear, like the one between two dealerships or between two clients of the same legal firm.
The table shows how Neo Motors creates party-role relationships to define common stakeholder relationships in Automotive Cloud.
Role Relationship Record |
Role Relationship Name |
Related Role Name |
Relationship Object Name |
Create Inverse Role Automatically? |
Related Inverse Record |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Sales Dealer-Sales Dealer-AAR |
Sales Dealer |
Sales Dealer |
Account Account Relationship |
No |
N/A |
Technician-Customer CCR |
Technician |
Customer |
Contact Contact Relationship |
Yes |
Customer-Technician CCR |
Subscription Provider- Subscription Buyer AAR |
Subscription Provider |
Subscription Buyer |
Account Account Relationship |
Yes |
Subscription Buyer-Subscription Provider AAR |
Legal Expert-Client AAR |
Legal Expert |
Client |
Account Account Relationship |
Yes |
Client-Legal Expert AAR |
Sibling Sibling CCR |
Sibling |
Sibling |
Contact Contact Relationship |
No |
N/A |
You can also use party role relationships to create a standard list of relationships between two accounts or two contacts. The screen shows the relationship between a retailer account and a client account.
Next up, Neo Motors uses these party role relationships to create relationships between two contacts or two accounts.
Are You Related to Me?
Two accounts or contacts can be at the same level of a hierarchy, such as two colleagues or two dealerships reporting to the same parent account, or share a parent-child record relationship such as a daughter and a parent, or a parent organization and its subsidiary.
Account Account Relationships
Two business accounts can be linked to each other using account-account relationships. The table shows a few examples.
Account |
Related Account |
Hierarchy Type |
Party Role Relationship |
---|---|---|---|
Smith Household |
Mason Household |
Peer |
Family-Family AAR |
Dream Dealers Dallas |
Dream Dealers Miami |
Peer |
Sales Dealer-Sales Dealer-AAR |
Neo Financials |
Neo Financials Texas |
Parent |
Parent Company-Subsidiary AAR |
Neo Financials Texas |
Neo Financials |
Child |
Subsidiary-Parent Company AAR |
The image shows a relationship record with George Smith, who’s an independent automotive sales dealer, related to the parent Dream Autoservice California account.
It’s an example of a reciprocal party-role relationship.
Contact Contact Relationships
Two contacts can be linked to each other using contact contact relationships. Remember, person accounts also have corresponding Contact records in Salesforce, so you can also link two-person accounts using contact contact relationships.
Contact |
Related Contact |
Hierarchy Type |
Party Role Relationship |
---|---|---|---|
Tina Mason |
John Smith |
Peer |
Spouse-Spouse CCR |
Sheikh Khan |
Tina Mason |
Peer |
Technician-Customer CCR |
Dylan Black |
Julia Rose |
Parent |
Regional Manager-Sales Manager CCR |
Julia Rose |
Dylan Black |
Child |
Sales Manager-Regional Manager CCR |
The image shows a Contact Contact Relationship record.
The spouses Harry Minor and Nancy Minor have a reciprocal party role relationship.
Groups and Families
It’s time to look at the final piece of the puzzle. For each business account created by Neo Motors, it’s important to know some additional information. Create party group relationships to store additional information about dealer groups, conglomerates, or households. Here are some examples.
Name |
Type |
Category |
Size |
Lifetime Vehicle Purchase Count |
Lifetime Service Purchase Value |
Lifetime Accessory Purchase Value |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Car Oh! Dealers |
Group |
Dealer Unit |
70 |
300 |
$100,000 |
$200,000 |
Mason Household |
Household |
Staying Together |
3 |
2 |
$2000 |
$6000 |
Lakeview Housing Society |
Group |
Society |
190 |
85 |
$38,000 |
$10,000 |
This screen shows a party group relationship for the Minor Household account.
The relationship has key details like group size, lifetime vehicle purchase value, and lifetime vehicle purchase count.
After you create a new party relationship group, use a guided workflow to associate contacts, related contacts, business accounts, and other party relationship groups to the record.
Party Group Relationship for a Household
John Smith and Mary Mason are separated and have two children, Leah Mason and Bob Smith. The family has bought multiple vehicles and accessories from Neo Motors through dealership-based sales. They’re also customers of Neo Financials because they’ve taken loans to finance their purchases.
The graphic represents two separate household accounts related to two accounts: a financial institution and a dealership.
This table shows the different records related to the Smith-Mason Household party group relationship.
Party Relationship Group |
Contacts |
Related Contacts (Account Contact Relationships) |
Business Accounts |
Other Groups |
---|---|---|---|---|
Smith-Mason Household |
John Smith |
Leah Mason |
Smith Household |
Xela Motors |
Mary Mason |
Bob Smith |
Mason Household |
Xela Financials |
Party Group Relationship for a Commercial Business
Landmark Hospitality Services is a commercial company with multiple recreation centers, hotels, and spas under its umbrella. Many hotels have leased fleets of buggy cars and other vehicles for their guests from Neo Motors.
Here are the records related to the Landmark Hospitality Services party group relationship.
Party Relationship Group |
Contacts |
Related Contacts (Account Contact Relationships) |
Business Accounts |
Other Groups |
---|---|---|---|---|
Landmark Hospitality Services |
Mary Ann, Hospitality Manager at Landmark Resorts, California |
John Smeed, Financial Consultant at BlackRobe Financials, which offers services to Landmark group |
Landmark Resort & Spa, Miami |
Landmark Resorts |
Raghav Patel, Customer Relationship Manager at Landmark Recreation Centre, New York |
Jassi Bhindra, Service Manager, Landmark Recreation Centres |
Landmark Recreation Centre, New York |
Landmark Recreation Centres |
But relationships are volatile in nature, so Neo Motors must be ready for change. Scenarios like one company acquiring another or a household splitting due to divorce aren’t uncommon.
With Automotive Cloud, you can merge and split party relationship groups in a few quick steps using a guided workflow. When you merge two-party relationship groups, you add all members, related contacts, groups, and businesses from the secondary group to the primary group. Splitting a party relationship group moves the entities to a new or existing group.
In the next unit, learn how dealers and customers use Experience Cloud and how Neo Motors visualizes stakeholders.
Resources
- Salesforce Help: How Groups and Households Are Modeled in Automotive Cloud
- Salesforce Help: Create Account Contact Relationships in Automotive Cloud
- Salesforce Help: Create Account Account Relationships in Automotive Cloud
- Salesforce Help: Create Contact Contact Relationships in Automotive Cloud
- Salesforce Help: Create Party Role Relationships in Automotive Cloud
- Salesforce Help: Create Party Relationship Groups in Automotive Cloud