Your Business Needs a Customer Portal — Here’s Why

Today’s consumers want a seamless customer experience. They can tap for a coffee, swipe for a ride, or text for food delivery. And their expectations for your business are the same. Your customers don’t want to have to make a phone call, send an email, or mail a check. The easier you make it for them to schedule service, get their questions answered, and pay their bills, the higher customer satisfaction and the more likely they are to do business with you.

This isn’t just conjecture, either. Studies have shown that nearly 90% of people expect brands or companies to have a self-service support portal. They want to be in charge, and they want you to make it simple.

Customer Portals: The Easy Way for Customers to Do Business With You

Your customers and potential customers have tech-elevated expectations – expectations you need to meet in order to keep their business. They’re looking for fast, easy answers to their questions without having to sit on the phone with a business rep, leave a message and wait for a return call, or visit or call a series of product- or task-specific websites or phone numbers to get their questions answered.

With a customer portal, you can offer them one simple, customer-friendly solution to explore, buy, use, maintain, upgrade, renew, and replace the products and services they’re interested in. You can provide them with the answers they’re looking for, 24/7/365. You can offer them the seamless customer experience they expect – and it will benefit everyone.

How Does a Self-Serve Portal Make Life Easier for You and Your Customers?

• Improved customer satisfaction – When they’re getting what they want when they want it, the way they want it, your customers will be happier with the service you are providing.
• Efficient business processes – Drastically reduce the number of incoming phone calls, messages, mail, and checks. Save time by not having to make manual account updates. Get more done in less time when your customers can manage their own accounts.
• Automate sales and service – Giving your customers the power to schedule their own services, request additional services, or change service means you don’t have to. Do more, with less.

Move Money Through Your Business Faster and Improve Cash Flow

Healthy, consistent cash flow is essential to any business. A self-serve portal that smooths the way for your customers to pay you will help you avoid the “boom and bust” cash flow issues that can plague field service or seasonal businesses. A customer portal will help streamline your payment processes and get money flowing through your business faster.

• Reduce late or missed payments when customers can pay at their convenience
• Eliminate trips to the bank with paper checks – and avoid having to wait several days for checks to clear
• Accept each customer’s preferred form of payment
• Increase pre-pay and auto-pay

What Should a Customer Portal Look Like?

It’s right there in the name: A customer portal is designed for your customers. So it should put their needs and expectations front and center. The best portals are simply and efficiently designed; easy to navigate for those with all levels of computer literacy; and work well on both desktop and mobile devices.

Consider the experience you want your customers to have when they visit your portal. Make sure they can quickly find what they are looking for and point them to common navigation areas like your FAQs, payments, and scheduling. You might even want to give your customers the option to personalize their own portal, so they can access the parts of their account that they use most frequently.

Add a Customer Portal to Your Business and Watch it Grow!

It’s pretty simple. When you give your customers what they want, they’ll keep coming back. A customer portal makes your company available to your customers on their own time and lets them interact with you the way they want to. It makes your business more customer-friendly, more efficient, and more self-sufficient. And most importantly, it helps improve your cash flow.

Want to learn more about how a customer portal can help your business? Schedule some time with one of our product experts. Get started today!