The Orca platform is developed by a small team with strong enthusiasm for the future of customer advocacy. The organization doesn’t subscribe to the ethos of single-destination advocacy. With the development of embeddable components, Orca supports the idea that advocacy can happen anywhere.
Organizations evaluating advocacy platforms may also want to explore our reviews of SlapFive and ReferenceEdge, which take different approaches to reference management and advocacy workflows.
For administrators, the Orca platform is a fully native Salesforce app. That will be important to consider as we go through the various features below. You must use Salesforce to use Orca and, ideally, it is the source of truth for all customer information. Even more important is that all your customer contacts reside in Salesforce with up-to-date information.
The relationship with Salesforce also comes into play with regard to pricing. Their pricing isn’t based on usage or seats but is entirely related to the number of licenses you have in Salesforce. This ties pricing to company size and the number of potential users in the organization.
Salesforce is used to nominate, add, manage, and track all advocates in your program. Their Copilot artificial intelligence tool helps to find potential advocates from among your Contacts using customer data and health information.
Once advocates enter your program, the Orca platform allows them (or a rep on their behalf) to specify the types of advocacy activities they are interested in as well as the frequency and number of asks. This ensures advocates don’t get burnt out or overused.
In this article, we’ll cover the key features of the Orca platform starting with the core Reference Management feature, discuss a variety of advocacy types available through “Missions,” and cover the embeddable advocacy options. In subsequent sections, we’ll discuss integrations, customer service and support offerings, and review customer sentiment.
This review is part of our series analyzing customer advocacy platforms used for reference management, advocacy workflows, and community engagement.
Table of Contents
1. Core Features
This section reviews the core capabilities of the Orca platform, including reference management, embedded advocacy engagement, segmentation, and advocacy missions.
1.1 Reference Management
If your company is on the hunt for a reference management tool, whether you are migrating from another platform or starting to spin up a program from scratch, the Orca platform should be one of the first places you look. We believe their reference matching and request workflow is a great example of the benefits that being a native Salesforce app will bring you.
The company is still small, so you are likely to reach an executive (or even the CEO), so we’ll want to track this as time goes on and the customer base grows.
As you might expect, the Orca reference request tool lives on the Opportunity record. From there, sales reps will set the criteria and offer a list of referenceable advocates. If there are no matches from the existing pool in your program, reps will also be presented with customers who match the criteria.
From there, the customers can be nominated and invited into the advocacy program to participate in the reference call (should they choose to accept). When a rep requests a reference call, the Program Manager will be notified via Slack and/or Chatter message.
What happens next helps Orca stand out, as the Program Manager doesn’t need to get involved in scheduling at all. The system will ask the advocate to provide available times, then send a scheduling link to the prospect.
Once the call is completed, Orca will send a follow-up survey using the tool of your choice. It’s important to note that there is no native survey functionality in the reference request process, so you will need to insert your own link from another platform.
Orca can also be used to request, store, and share referenceable content. This is shared via email, but we wonder about the value of this given that there is no tracking of opens, clicks, or time spent consuming the content.
All the data around win rate, influence, and other reference metrics can easily be reviewed in Salesforce reports and dashboards as seen in the image above.
1.2 In-App Advocacy
Orca is going all-in with “Advocacy Everywhere.” It can now be used outside the Salesforce environment to nurture customer relationships directly within your product, website, portal, or community. Similar to the likes of SlapFive, they believe the best advocacy experience is to meet customers where they are.
They achieve this through embedded Salesforce Lightning components, which can be added to your website, product, or portal using a JavaScript snippet.
1.3 Segmentation
Once embedded, the Orca platform utilizes Account and Contact-based segmentation to engage distinct customer groups based on the persona, demographics, or key indicators of your choice.
1.4 Missions
You will see the term “Missions” to refer to advocacy activities in the Orca platform. This can refer to referrals, feedback, speaker requests, surveys, and anything under the sun that can be accomplished via a form. You’ll see that Orca makes use of Salesforce’s Survey feature; and this is something you’ll need to set-up during onboarding.
1.5 Social Proof
You can also leverage the embedded Lightning components to show off reviews on your web properties.
2. Integrations
This section reviews the integrations supported by the Orca platform and how they extend advocacy workflows beyond Salesforce.
As a native Salesforce app, Orca can leverage existing data from other integrations on that platform. In addition to this, Orca offers a Zapier integration, which opens thousands of other potential integrations.
There are a few native integrations besides these that we explore below:
➤ Slack (for notifications)
➤ OpenAI (for extracting key points from content)
➤ Bitly (for content tracking)
➤ ShoutOut
➤ Video platforms: Wistia, YouTube, Vidyard, Zoom
➤ Review platforms: G2, Capterra, Trustpilot
There are no native integrations for reward fulfillment or Marketing/Email Automation Systems such as HubSpot or Marketo. You will need to leverage Salesforce or Zapier for anything along those lines.
3. Customer Service Offerings
Orca offers the basic customer service and support you might expect. Every customer gets email support, onboarding, and available professional services.
There is no mention of CSMs yet. As the company is still small, you are likely to reach their CEO or head of Sales, so we’ll want to track this as time goes on and the customer base grows.
That said, for the time being, customers mention that Orca people are responsive and willing to work with you on product feedback.
4. Customer Sentiment
Independent reviews and customer feedback provide useful insight into how the platform performs in real-world advocacy programs.
The overall sentiment towards Orca is overwhelmingly positive.
Users are highly satisfied with the product, the support, and the value it brings to their reference programs. Orca’s AppExchange rating currently sits at five stars with twelve reviews and their G2 rating is five stars with six reviews.
Most of what these reviews have to say is related to their reference tool and they are getting long in the tooth (the majority are one to two years old), but have a look for yourself as we’ve summarized the reviews below:
Ease of Use: Orca is described as a powerful yet simple tool that is easy to learn and use. Users highlight its intuitive interface and seamless integration with Salesforce.
Customer Support: Reviewers consistently praise the responsiveness, helpfulness, and proactive approach of the Orca support team. They are seen as partners who go above and beyond to ensure customer success.
Customization and Flexibility: Orca is valued for its adaptability to specific use cases and willingness to implement changes based on user feedback. This allows for a tailored and optimized experience for each customer.
Impact on Reference Management: Orca has transformed reference programs for many users, streamlining processes, improving efficiency, and providing valuable data and insights. It has freed users from manual tracking and enabled them to demonstrate the ROI of their reference programs.
Reviewers mention the benefits of features like reporting capabilities, automated workflows, and the ability to protect clients from excessive reference requests.
Other Customer Advocacy Platform Reviews
If you are evaluating customer advocacy platforms, you may also find these reviews helpful:
➤ SlapFive Platform Review
➤ ReferenceEdge Platform Review
➤ Influitive vs Base Comparison and Migration
Final Assessment: The Orca Platform
The Orca platform offers a focused approach to customer advocacy, particularly for organizations deeply invested in Salesforce. Its native Salesforce architecture enables streamlined reference management, automated workflows, and strong reporting capabilities. While the platform’s integration ecosystem and feature set are still evolving, its simplicity, responsiveness, and strong reference management functionality make it a compelling option for teams looking to operationalize advocacy directly within their existing CRM environment.
FAQ 1: What is the Orca platform used for?
The Orca platform is a customer advocacy and reference management solution built natively inside Salesforce. It helps organizations manage customer advocates, coordinate reference calls, track advocacy activity, and integrate advocacy workflows directly into CRM processes.
FAQ 2: Does the Orca platform require Salesforce?
Yes. The Orca platform is a native Salesforce application and requires Salesforce to function. Customer data, contacts, and advocacy workflows are managed directly inside the Salesforce environment.
FAQ 3: What advocacy activities can be managed in Orca?
Orca supports a range of advocacy activities through its “Missions” framework. These can include referrals, feedback collection, speaker requests, surveys, and other engagement opportunities submitted through forms or embedded advocacy components.
