What Makes a Great Customer Portal
Customer experience is what can differentiate businesses that offer similar products and services.
Customers these days are becoming more self-reliant and want to help themselves rather than endure the frustrations of dealing with humans in a drawn-out manner.
Giving customers what they need when they need it goes a long way when it comes to increasing customer satisfaction and enhancing their experience with your organisation.
One way to improve your customer relations and satisfaction is by offering a customer portal, whereby your customers can engage with your organisation in a user-friendly way.
WHAT IS A CUSTOMER PORTAL?
A customer portal (also known as a client portal), is an online platform that allows customers to access their account and act as a system of engagement that allows for self-service and enhanced communication.
Customer portals are ever-present in many industries such as eCommerce online shops, travel booking platforms, and SaaS (Software as a Service) to name a few. Industries that typically require a customer portal are ones where online purchases, bookings and transactions are generated, with the customer portal complimenting the transactional part of the website.
These self-service portals are typically custom-designed to ensure that users experience a consistent user journey from the public-facing website to the logged-in customer portal, and to ensure that the branding is always visible.
The features and functionality of each customer portal vary vastly depending on the nature of the business and what information and engagement tools the customers need to have access to.
In our experience of developing customer portals for our clients, it is safe to say that all clients have unique requirements and the features need to be custom developed to meet the client’s expectations.
SO WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?
1. WEB-BASED
As customer portals are web-based (they run in a web browser), there is no need to install fancy software on your desktop computer or a mobile app on your smartphone.
The beauty and simplicity of this approach mean that these platforms are all accessible via a web-based interface through all major web browsers, both on desktop and mobile, making it easy and convenient for your customers to access the portal when needed.
2. ALWAYS AVAILABLE
As customer portals are driven by web-based technology, this means that customer portals can be accessed 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Accessibility is also available on desktops, tablets, and smartphones.
Having this “always on” access is extremely important, especially when customers are spread across the globe all in different time zones. With a customer portal, customers don’t need to wait for support staff to be available during office hours.
Now that your customers know that they are able to access what they want when they need it, their journey on your website becomes more pleasant, and you have improved your customer relations with them.
3. INCREASED CUSTOMER SATISFACTION
With the evolution of technology, customers have become increasingly tech-savvy. Customers want and expect to be able to self-serve. They’re not wanting to wait in line on a call to speak to a consultant, nor do they want to wait for responses to their emails, they want faster responsiveness and even instant solutions.
Empowering the customer to access important information through the customer portal results in a happier customer and increased customer satisfaction.
4. CUSTOMER PORTALS ARE AN INVESTMENT
Many customer portals are custom designed and developed based on the client’s unique requirements, and based on what they want their customers to access and engage with.
These types of development projects can be fairly complex, time-consuming, and somewhat costly, however, once the customer portal has been developed and launched, it can start paying itself back.
Think of all the manual tasks that are done by back office staff that can be automated through the customer portal.
Customer portals lend themselves to increased productivity through this automation as the technology does a lot of the processing and heavy lifting that would normally be done manually. The time your business saves can allow staff to focus on other value-adding areas of the business.
Not only are customer portals an investment from an automation, productivity and streamlining perspective, they are also hugely important, as mentioned above, as an investment in the happiness and satisfaction of your customers.
5. PERSONALISED AND FUN
Depending on the products and services you offer, you could introduce gamification into your customer portal to make it more engaging, fun and interactive.
For example, we’ve custom developed a web portal for school students. This custom-developed portal allows learners to access all the information that they require at their fingertips, and engage in learning exercises.
We’ve found that making the entire journey fun and personalised with gamification elements, leaderboards, and the ability to win prizes dramatically increased engagement rates.
6. CUSTOMER LOYALTY
Being able to provide your customers with solutions, through a customer portal that enhances their experience and increases their engagement with your business in an automated way, goes a long way to increasing customer loyalty and improving your customer retention.
Customer portals are a way to differentiate your business from your competitors. If you’re offering a cutting-edge solution that your customers are looking for and your competitors aren’t, you’ve increased the odds of retaining your customers and attracting new customers.
As your customer portal grows and more features are rolled out, your customers will notice and realise how you’re investing in their experience and satisfaction.
WHAT ABOUT THE FEATURES?
Now that we’ve uncovered the various benefits of customer portals, you’re probably wondering what features form part of a typical customer portal.
Firstly, there is no typical customer portal. Each company that offers a customer portal will in some shape or form be unique in terms of the products and services that they offer as well as how they interact with their customers, and what sort of automation they provide through the portal.
The customer portals that we’ve developed for our clients have varied quite significantly, and the features are endless. The good news is that this means that any custom feature that is needed to be housed in the customer portal can be designed and developed. There are hardly any limitations as to what can be developed, which allows companies to use technology as much as possible to make their customers’ lives easier and automate as many processes as possible.
In terms of features, there are more commonly provided features, such as allowing the customer to update their profile, and to access bookings/purchases. Wish lists are also popular when it comes to transactional websites such as eCommerce shops. Providing customers with support is often part and parcel of a customer portal with the ability to launch support tickets and direct message each other.
Other more advanced features include things like dashboards, comprehensive reporting tools and eCommerce payments.
As mentioned, providing some sort of gamification can lead to high retention and engagement of customers and users. Combining this gamification with personalisation and elements of fun really takes the customer portal to the next level.
SO WHAT’S THE VERDICT
Smart companies, from startups to massive corporations, take advantage of what technology can offer their business, their staff, and more importantly their customers. Customer portals are a great way to engage with your customers in an automated way, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Customer portals are also a fantastic way to get one up over your competitors, by offering tech solutions that make your customers’ lives easier and more convenient, you will end up with a much more satisfied customer. Your customer portal will leave your customers satisfied, excited, and ready to spread the word about your innovative platform.
At Elemental, we’ve custom-developed many customer portals, each designed to solve unique problems for businesses across all kinds of sectors – from travel to education and finance to eCommerce.
We’d love to hear what your customer portal requirements are and how we can build the portal that will shift your business forward.
To get started working with us, or to find out more about what we offer, get in touch with us.
