Semiconductor Manufacturer Drives Incremental Sales With Experience Cloud and Service Cloud
Telink’s re-sellers and distributors were building deals the company couldn’t see. There was no direct way to track that pipeline, no protected place for premier customers to raise high-priority tickets, and no connection between inbound support requests and Sales data. We addressed all three with a Salesforce partner portal implementation on Experience Cloud, a Salesforce customer community portal for premier accounts, and a Service Cloud implementation behind both. Partners now register and update their deals inside Telink’s Salesforce org, and every support case attaches to the customer record it belongs to. The partner portal has contributed approximately $10MM in incremental partner pipeline.
A Semiconductor Manufacturer With Revenue It Couldn’t See
Telink is a semiconductor manufacturer, and like most of the industry, it reaches much of its market through other companies. Re-sellers and distributors carry the product to end customers, run their own deals, and hold their own relationships. The model works. It also puts a layer of distance between the manufacturer and the revenue being generated in its name.
Semiconductor selling is slow and technical on top of that. A single win can take months of engineering conversation before an order lands, and premier customers expect direct access to the manufacturer when something goes wrong in production. Both of those depend on shared information. Telink had no place where partner deals, customer cases, and sales records lived together, which meant nobody inside the company could see the full state of an account at once.
The Challenge: Channel Revenue the Team Couldn’t Track or Support
Three gaps defined the project at the start:
• No direct ability to track, manage, or support the pipeline their re-seller and distributor partners were building, which left a large share of revenue outside the company’s view
• No way for premier customers to submit, collaborate on, and track high-priority tickets, leaving the most important accounts with the least direct route to help
• No connection between inbound support requests and Sales data, so service activity and commercial activity stayed in separate systems
Underneath all three sat one problem. Telink’s sales side and service side ran as separate worlds, and the partners generating much of the revenue were outside both of them. That made ordinary questions unanswerable. Which distributor deals are live right now. Is the customer raising an urgent case also mid-negotiation on a new order. Which partners are growing and which are coasting. Telink could react to its channel, but it couldn’t manage it.
Our Approach: A Salesforce Partner Portal Implementation, a Customer Community, and One Connected Record
We started with the partners, because that was where the unmeasured revenue was. Our team built a Partner Community on Salesforce Experience Cloud, a portal where Telink’s re-sellers and distributors collaborate with Telink, register the deals they’re working, and update those deals as they move.
That last part is what made the work pay off. Telink’s team stopped asking partners for a pipeline report after the fact and started seeing deals as they formed. Partner pipeline management became something the company could do while deals were still open, which is the only point at which support changes an outcome.
We also built the portal to measure each partner and each distributor separately rather than as a single channel number. Aggregate figures hide the difference between a distributor who’s growing and one who’s coasting, and they hide which partners need help. Splitting the view gave Telink a basis for deciding where to put its time.
Next came the customer side. We built a Customer Community that gives Telink’s premier customers a password protected and secured environment of their own. Inside it they submit cases, follow the content topics tied to their products, and collaborate in real time with internal Telink employees on open cases.
Following content topics does more than it sounds like it does. It moves a customer from chasing Telink for updates to receiving them. Real-time collaboration does the same for live cases, putting the customer and the Telink employee in one thread instead of trading messages across two systems and losing half the context on the way.
Behind both portals we put a Service Cloud implementation in place to handle the tickets now arriving from customers and partners. Every case lands in one queue with an owner and a history, and every case attaches to the customer record behind it. That connection closed the loop Telink was missing. A rep opening an account sees the open tickets. A support agent working a ticket sees the deal behind it. Telink now has a 360-degree view of the customer that runs from prospecting to sale to installation and support.
Tools and Products Used
This build centered on two Salesforce products, delivered across three distinct experiences:
• Salesforce Experience Cloud: the platform behind both portals, carrying partner and customer access into Telink’s Salesforce org
• Partner Community: gave re-sellers and distributors a place to collaborate with Telink and register the deals in their pipeline, and gave Telink a way to measure each of those pipelines
• Customer Community: gave premier customers a password protected environment to submit cases, follow content topics, and collaborate with Telink employees in real time
• Salesforce Service Cloud: handled the support tickets brought in by customers and partners, and tied each case to the customer record behind it
Experience Cloud is where partners and customers do their work. Service Cloud is where what they submit gets resolved. Both write to the same customer record, which is the reason Telink’s sales and support teams now look at the same picture instead of two partial ones.
The Results: Approximately $10MM in Incremental Partner Pipeline
The pipeline number is the headline. The partner portal produced approximately $10MM in incremental partner pipeline, and it counts as incremental because it consists of deals Telink could finally see, measure, and support. Partner activity that had been happening outside the company’s view became registered opportunities inside its Salesforce org, and a visible deal is a deal that can be worked.
The Salesforce customer community portal changed what support looks like for Telink’s most important accounts. Premier customers now raise a high-priority ticket, watch its progress, follow the topics tied to their products, and work the issue with Telink employees in real time. The submit-and-wait pattern went away, and with it the follow-up traffic that used to stand in for a status update.
The third result is structural, and it underwrites the other two. Connecting inbound support requests to sales data gave Telink one continuous record of each customer, covering prospecting, the sale, installation, and ongoing support. Sales conversations now happen with the service history in view, and service conversations happen with the commercial relationship in view.
| Area | Outcome |
| Partner pipeline | Approximately $10MM in incremental partner pipeline |
| Channel visibility | Direct ability to track, manage, support, and measure each partner and distributor pipeline |
| Premier customer support | Password-protected community for submitting, following, and collaborating on high-priority cases |
| Sales and service data | Inbound support requests connected to Sales data for a 360-degree customer view |
Turning Channel Relationships Into Measurable Pipeline
Plenty of manufacturers have a channel like Telink’s: partners generating real revenue with no consistent way for the manufacturer to see or support it. Most treat that blind spot as the price of selling through others. What changed for Telink was treating partners as participants inside its own Salesforce org rather than as an outside sales force reporting in.
The same idea applied on the service side. When cases live apart from sales records, every team works from a fragment. Putting partners, customers, and support into one Salesforce environment is what made Telink’s pipeline measurable and its support accountable.
If your partners are generating revenue you can’t see, or your customers have no direct line into support, our Salesforce consulting team can help. Get in touch to talk through what a Salesforce partner portal implementation would look like for your channel.
