Key features of a strong customer portal

A customer portal is a secure online environment where clients take care of their own invoices, orders, documents and account details. This article covers the five features of a strong customer portal and how to avoid investing in a portal nobody uses.

It's 8:30 on a Monday morning. The inside sales team at a technical wholesaler opens the shared inbox and finds the same questions as last week: can I get a copy of that invoice, when will my order ship, where can I find the certificate for this product? Each one takes a few minutes of digging through the accounting and order systems, and in the meantime the quote requests, which is where the revenue comes from, sit untouched until after lunch.

The client isn't happy about it either. He wants to download his invoice at 9 p.m. and has to wait until the next business day. A customer portal can take over that work, as long as it meets a few conditions.

What is a customer portal?

A customer portal is a secure online environment where logged-in clients view and manage their own details, documents and open requests. You probably know it from your energy provider or favorite online store: log in, download an invoice, update your address.

In the B2B world, portals usually go further. A B2B customer portal, built for business clients, shows contracts, order history, quotes, certificates or reports. Each user or branch often has its own permissions. Business clients now expect the same self-service they're used to as consumers: handling things on their own, at any time, without picking up the phone or sending an email.

1. Clients handle their own questions

In many organizations, routine questions eat up a large share of the support team's time. Where's my invoice? What's the status of my order? Can you update my contact person? The work has to get done, yet it keeps your team away from the questions that really need their attention.

A strong customer portal handles those questions because the answer is already waiting for the client. So start with the reasons clients get in touch today. Track calls and emails for a few weeks and see which questions come up most often. Those questions decide what belongs on the homepage of your portal.

Personas help here. A persona is a detailed profile of a type of user, with their tasks, questions and frustrations. A purchasing manager looks for something different in the portal than someone in finance who only needs to download invoices.

2. Connected to your existing systems

A portal that stands apart from the rest of your organization creates extra work. Staff end up uploading invoices by hand, copying order statuses or updating client details in two places. That takes time, leads to mistakes and gives clients information that's out of date.

A strong customer portal pulls its data straight from the source. Through an API, a fixed connection between two systems, invoices come from your accounting software. Orders come from your ERP, the system for orders and inventory. Client details come from your CRM, the system where you manage client relationships. When a client changes their address in the portal, your CRM updates automatically.

Read how to set this up in our article on APIs that keep your content and client data in sync.

3. Built around your processes

Off-the-shelf portal software assumes a standard process. If the way you work is different, you either bend your process to fit the software or build workarounds that nobody understands a year later. Clients notice it in the extra clicks and in screens full of fields that mean nothing to them.

A custom portal follows the way you and your clients actually work together. For a leasing company that means contracts and damage reports, for a training provider courses and certificates, for an energy company connections and meter readings. You build only what your clients need and add more as your organization grows.

Learn more about a custom customer portal.

4. Easy to use and secure

If clients can't find their way around a portal, they won't use it. They'll keep calling, while your team now has one more channel to maintain. Usability is what decides whether your portal actually saves time.

A strong customer portal has a clear structure and a search function, and it works as well on a phone as on a laptop. Test the design with real users before development starts. A clickable prototype, a test version of the design without working technology behind it, quickly shows where clients get stuck.

A portal also holds sensitive information. Set up roles and permissions for each user, two-factor authentication at login and an encrypted connection. With single sign-on, one login for multiple systems, clients don't have to remember yet another password.

5. Room for communication and collaboration

When client communication is spread across email, phone calls and loose files, it's hard to track down what was agreed. If the regular contact person is out sick or on vacation, a colleague often has no idea what a client is waiting for.

In a strong customer portal, communication lives in the client's file. Clients approve quotes, upload documents and follow the status of their requests. A notification by email or in the portal tells them when something new is ready. That way, everyone on your team has the same view of the client.

Having a customer portal built

A portal touches your customer service, your finance team and your IT department all at once. That's why portal projects often stall on getting departments aligned.

We build custom customer portals and always start with the end user. In the Discover phase, we work with you to map out the questions your clients have and the systems involved. In the Build phase, we develop the portal and its integrations, with one dedicated point of contact who knows the project inside and out. In the Grow phase, we improve the portal based on how clients actually use it.

Something we see regularly in those first conversations, and it sometimes surprises our clients, is that the questions costing the most time are about one or two documents that never made it onto the wish list, like an annual statement or a certificate clients need for their own records.