Customer portals, also sometimes referred to as B2B portals or even extranets, offer a secure area on a website that is exclusive to customers, allowing them to buy products, update their account details, gain access to product updates, submit support requests and more. visit here
However these portals offer much more than just extra convenience for customers. When customer portals are made use of in the correct manner they can help to improve the efficiency of a business and even boost revenue.
Customer portals can be offered by banks to allow customers to access their information and pay bills, by medical practices to allow patients to schedule appointments with their doctor and check their medical records, or by colleges and universities for both students and faculty members to download homework assignments and course syllabi. Of course they are also commonly used by commercial businesses.
A customer portal offers a secure bridge that allows companies and customers to share information with each other.
How businesses are helped by customer portals
There are a number of ways in which a business can be helped by customer portals.
One major way in which customer portals help businesses is by creating a revenue stream that is open twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. A company that only takes manual orders is limiting the window of time in which it can generate revenue to business hours, but one with a customer portal is able to take orders at any time the customer is willing to make them.
Customer portals also mean that support staff will have their time freed up to enable them to take on tasks that are more mission-critical. When a business does not have a customer portal, support staff are responsible for manually handling new orders and dealing with customer complaints. However the multitude of self-service options provided by customer portals many such tasks can be dealt with by customers on their own, meaning that support staff have more time to deal with more pressing issues.
Customer portals have also been shown to improve customer satisfaction. Customers expect to be able to receive service 24/7 in today’s “instant” world, so providing them with a customer portal that allows them to meet their requirements whenever they need to is a great way to improve the overall satisfaction of customers.
Customer portals actually also help businesses to increase security, with features such as encryption making customers feel safer accessing and uploading important information. Customer portals are also able to provide more capabilities than is the case with many other forms of customer support, such as SMS or email and larger file size limits, which makes it easier for necessary documents and files to be uploaded by customers.
The majority of today’s customers will expect businesses to have an online customer portal and a company will be seen as very behind the times if they do not. The good news is that it is simple to build a customer portal with the right software for your brand.
