I think we’ve all been here, right? We shop online or on our phones in between meetings, while on the phone or while otherwise multitasking. We enter payment information, complete checkout, and just when we’re about to check this purchase off our todo list — horror strikes.

In our haste, we purchased the wrong size, the wrong color, the wrong quantity, the wrong version — or sometimes, the wrong product. But, the order confirmation email verifies that we placed our order successfully. At moments like this, wouldn’t it be nice if there was a way to cancel the order with a simple click? Or at a minimum, through a conversation with a service agent?

For today’s digital customers, the ability to cancel an order moments after it was placed is an expectation. Providing this level of service can be a brand differentiator. In our State of the Connected Customer report, we found that:

• 84% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services

• 73% of customers say one extraordinary experience raises their expectations of other companies

• 74% of customers expect companies to use new and existing technologies to improve their experience

Here at Salesforce, our number one value is Trust — and we believe it is the key to customer success. To earn and maintain the trust of customers, brands have to provide a superlative customer experience. Brands can explore how to deliver these experiences by integrating Salesforce Service and Commerce Clouds.

How to get started

Salesforce has published six solution kits that focus on integrating Commerce, Marketing, and Service Clouds. These kits represent authoritative guidance from our product, success, services, sales, and partner teams on how to implement cross-cloud use cases. This is a great place for customers and partners to start their cross-cloud education journey. 

The View Order History and Cancel Orders Solution Kit contains implementation guidance describing how to:

• Implement and configure the Service Cloud Connector for B2C Commerce*

• Provide a consolidated view of customer order history, including guest and registered purchases

• Enable service agents to cancel orders from the Order details display from within Service Cloud

*Commerce Cloud customers and partners can access the Service Cloud Connector for B2C Commerce via the Salesforce Commerce Cloud GitHub community. If you are not a Commerce Cloud customer and wish to access the connector — please contact your success manager.

While the View Order History and Cancel Orders Solution Kit is not a technical implementation guide, it will ground any conversations had between customers and partners on the Salesforce-recommended approach to integrating Commerce and Service clouds. 

About the Service Cloud Connector for B2C commerce

The Service Cloud Connector for B2C Commerce is a development framework designed to facilitate the integration between Commerce and Service clouds. It addresses a core set of cross-cloud use cases, including:

• Providing a shared view of customers and order data between Commerce and Service clouds

• Enabling customer self-service through automated case creation via the Commerce Cloud storefront

• Enabling service agents to cancel Commerce Cloud orders placed within a “grace period” from within Service Cloud’s Order details display

• Empowering service agents to convert service interactions into cross-sell and upsell opportunities via the connector’s “Order on Behalf Of” capability

As a development framework, the connector can also support custom customer and service use cases. This makes the connector and Salesforce Solution Kits a logical first step at integrating Commerce and Service clouds.

Person accounts must be enabled in Service Cloud

The connector requires that person accounts are used to represent customers in Service Cloud. If your Service Cloud instance does not have person accounts enabled, please consult with your Salesforce Administrator about this decision before enabling this feature.

Please note that once enabled, person accounts cannot be rolled back. We do not advocate that customers enable person accounts solely to support integration with Service Cloud. We do, however, recommend that this feature be enabled in a sandbox — so that the impact enabling person accounts has on customer data can be safely examined.

Be prepared to customize your Commerce Cloud storefront and Service Cloud org

Installation of the connector will require configuration and code-changes in both Commerce and Service clouds. The connector’s installation documentation is a trustworthy guide that step-by-step explains what to customize and configure. At a minimum, developers should be familiar with both clouds’ development models and how to interact with both platforms’ REST APIs.

The connector leverages Commerce Cloud’s Open Commerce APIs and exposes a collection of custom REST APIs within Service Cloud. Additionally, Commerce Cloud’s storefront reference architecture leverages Javascript for its codebase, while Service Cloud leverages Apex for platform customizations. The ratio of Service Cloud to Commerce Cloud effort when implementing the connector is roughly 4 : 1. That said, ensure that your delivery team has Service Cloud administrative, development, testing, debugging, and deployment experience.

Order history considerations for Order Management System owners

An important question to ask when implementing the view order history use case is what system is the system of record for order data? For a number of our customers, Commerce Cloud is often the system of transaction for orders. Orders are captured in these systems, but their status and history aren’t actively maintained. Conversely, an order management system like Commerce Cloud Order Management serves as the dedicated system of record for orders. Orders are ingested by these systems from systems of transaction and then placed through a workflow that supports appeasement and return use cases.

If Commerce Cloud is the system of transaction, it likely will not maintain an accurate order history for service agents to leverage. In these scenarios, it will be necessary to integrate Service Cloud and your OMS to present service agents with an accurate and trustworthy history of order data. Developers can use the integration patterns and code found within the connector as a starting point for OMS integration.

Empower service agents to cancel Commerce Cloud orders

Within Commerce Cloud, the successful implementation of the cancel order's use case is dependent on the order’s status. Orders in Commerce Cloud can only be canceled if their status is New, Open, or Completed. Attempting to cancel from any other status will generate an error. For this reason, we recommend implementing this as a “grace period” cancellation (e.g. up to 30 minutes after an order is placed) — and before the order’s status changes to a processing status such as Exported.

In order to provide service agents the ability to cancel orders, each Service Cloud service agent must have a corresponding Commerce Cloud Business Manager User account. These accounts are mapped to each other using named credentials within the Salesforce platform and are then used to authorize the order cancellation REST API call performed by Service Cloud. The order cancel and order refresh use cases cannot be implemented without successfully creating and maintaining this mapping for each empowered service agent.

Present Commerce Cloud order data to service agents via Service Cloud Lightning

Through the connector’s integration, Service Cloud receives the header, order line items, shipment, and payment details for every order placed via Commerce Cloud. The order data is stored via the native Order object and several custom objects created by the connector. Storing order data in Service Cloud enables agents and administrators to create and relate custom list views in Service Cloud — making it easy for agents to view, search, and filter order details. Agents and administrators can also customize record detail views to visually prioritize key order fields.

The connector also includes two custom Lightning Components that enable Service Agents to refresh order details and invoke the order cancelation — both with the click of a button. Collectively, the customization capabilities of Lightning in Service Cloud coupled with the custom Lightning Components provided by the connector allow agents and administrators to customize their visual experience in an optimal way.

Download and read the View Order History and Cancel Orders Solution Kit

If you are a Service Cloud and Commerce Cloud customer interested in building dynamic customer journeys that leverage incentives, download and read the View Order History and Cancel Orders Solution Kit.

This document contains authoritative guidance from Salesforce product, sales, success, and partner alliance teams — and includes best practices on how to create engaging service experiences for your customers.