How Customer Portals Bring Your Business into the Digital Age

Every day there are new enhancements emerging from a number of technology and software companies. The digital age is among us and available to us are a range of new, advanced capabilities designed to make our lives easier. As technology grows, our businesses need to grow with it. Is your business ready for digital improvements?

This digital era has impacted businesses in a way that we all probably never thought it would. Customers are now in the driver’s seat of the business and are pushing full speed ahead. Technology has enabled an on-demand world, meaning a new age of digital-savvy customers who are looking for service whenever and wherever they want it.

A customer portal is the perfect digital solution to providing businesses and customers with the improved service and engagement they may want. Digital transformations, like a customer portal, can enable businesses to reduce business costs, provide service in an on-demand environment and educate/communicate with users. In sum, a customer portal is a customized, branded online tool that compliments and extends your customer service and enhances customer experience.

The customer service representative that is your customer portal

Customer service representatives are valuable employees to your business. They are your frontline staff and play a key role in representing your brand and retaining customers. While a customer service team is essential to any business, a large team is not.

A customer portal can introduce efficiencies to customer service teams that will allow businesses to reduce costs and free up time for customer service representatives to leverage other valuable skillsets. A customer portal provides support similar to the way a human representative would, but on-demand. This means no wait times or call center hours for your customers and reduced costs for your business. 

The mobile-first customer portal 

We’ve become accustomed to an on-the-go environment where customers can get access to a number of things outside of their home and office. This idea of on-the-go and on-demand services was brought in to play by the break-through of mobile devices.

It’s more important than ever to ensure that everything you offer digitally is mobile-first and friendly, meaning that the experience is just as exceptional on a mobile device as it is on desktop. A mobile-first customer portal caters to the needs of users wanting on-demand, mobile-ready service. Allowing users to access a customer portal and engage with your content from anywhere, and at any time, provides users with service on their time.

The self-service customer portal 

With the hustle and bustle of everyday life, customers are not interested in waiting on phone lines to speak with a representative. Most customers would prefer access to a tool, on-demand, that will provide them with the answers to their questions.

Here’s where a customer portal comes into play. A self-service customer portal provides users with service without requiring human interaction. Your business is still engaging with your customers through online content like videos, PowerPoints, group forums, etc. but it’s accessed by the user themselves, allowing for that self-service to come to life.

Useful information

Remember those gigantic manuals or contracts or on-boarding booklets you would get with some purchases? A mile-long index would require a single finger to follow each line item to find the right section that would hold the answer to your question.

A customer portal puts an end to these comprehensive paper books and opens the gateway for organized searches. Users are given the capabilities to access content for troubleshooting, training, community support and more. Providing information at their fingertips is a great way to use technology to enhance the customer experience.

Learn how other companies are integrating into the digital age of business with their own customer success portals.

If you have any questions about customer success portals and whether it’s right for your business, please reach out to us and we’ll be happy to advise you.