4 Ways to Use the Customer Portal to Enhance the Relationship with Customers

88% of consumers expect brands and organizations to have some sort of self-service portal. As this offers the quickest solutions to their problems most of the times.

While traditional support channels like email and messages are still relevant, they don’t give the quick access to simple answers. Hence the customer portal is the best way to solve the doubts quickly.

Some of the best customer portals are WordPress client portal and WordPress customer portal solutions. But don’t worry about the CMS. There are a lot of client portal available for Shopify, WooCommerce, and custom build as per your requirement. In this article, we will cover how the customer portal can be very helpful to you.

Offering Instant Support

A customer portal can let you empower the business by offering constant support to your customers. According to this report, 90% of customers expect an online portal for customer service. For example, your portal has the dozens of educational articles, videos, and FAQs. Now the customers don’t need to reach out to you, with the help of above online materials they can resolve their queries. If you offer an instant support like this, then it will boost your business.

If you have an e-commerce company, you might connect portal with other systems for the instant support. For example, if your customer has any query related to your services then they can chat with you live. This saves their time as they don’t have to reach out to you for such details.

Empower Your Customer with Self Service

The self-service portal consists of knowledge base articles, a place to submit tickets, and a community forum. So let's discuss how all of them can help you to empower your customers.

Knowledge Base Articles

Many customers come to your customer portal to find the solution to their problems. Your knowledge base should have all the relevant information about your services or product; getting started guides, FAQs, and more. These articles should be so precise and value-giving so that your customers don’t need to look up to customer representative for any issues.

Community Forums

A community forum is a place where your customers can talk to each other about the best practices and common questions. What would be better than your customers helping each other and solving problems? This will keep your customers engaged as it offers quick resolution of their queries.

Submit Tickets

Finally, if all above fails, then customers can help themselves with the human interaction. Once you generate the ticket, a support representative will quickly resolve their queries. They can even check the history of tickets and can view the status in your help center.

More Personalized Support

As discussed above, customers can spend more time with the support agents one-on-one to resolve the complex and urgent issues. This personalized attention helps customers feel as their problems are taken seriously, which enhances their overall experience.

System agents can refer to prior support requests through ticketing and offer personalized recommendations while talking to their customers.

Better Overall Engagement and Customer Satisfaction

The customer portal makes the customer and agents feel more engaged. By offering customers - how-to videos, knowledge base articles, and other educational content, you can increase the overall engagement with your brand.

On the agent's side, you are giving the opportunity to connect with your customers. The agents will feel more engaged not just with their work but also with the customers whom they are helping.

Conclusion

A customer portal can be the backbone of your support system. As it has the potential to offer instant support to a customer which will help you to build loyal customers. The self-service portal also ensures that your customer's doubts are solved through the ticking system or educational materials.

And the best part is in the midst of hundreds of tickets, the customer portal manages tickets very well, saving your agent from being overwhelmed.

Mr. Maulik Shah is the founder & CEO of CRMJetty, a hub of innovative customer relationship solutions, provides ready to CMS integrate portal solutions for SuiteCRM, Sugar CRM, Salesforce, and Dynamics CRM including WordPress Customer Portal.