What should a customer portal include?
We have underlined the essential components of a client portal that are integral to its success.
Ticket deflection functionality
A client portal ensures that customers don’t have to contact the customer support team to troubleshoot a problem. A robust customer portal helps deflect incoming support tickets by redirecting customers to a carefully assorted array of self-service resources and extending support via a well-connected community forum. Agents can focus their efforts on answering more complex customer queries instead of handling minor, repetitive issues.
Brand identity
A client portal should act as an extension of your brand landing page. It is important for a brand to extend its identity to its customer support portal to reassure customers that they are in the right place and have access to authentic information. A customer portal should have the brand’s logo, consistency in visuals and design, and an overall look and feel that resonates with the essence of the company’s image.
Customer information repository
A client portal lets a company capture customer information relevant to the issue at hand. This generally encompasses the customer data, the tickets raised, and the frequency with which they have interacted with your brand across channels. You can use client data such as order numbers or any additional detail to give you the complete context of the customer’s problem and avoid unnecessary back and forth.
Status of customer queries
A customer portal enables brands to build a transparent communication channel with their clients/ customers. Customers can easily log in to the client portal to view the status of their tickets. Is it being processed? Which agent is working on their ticket? Is there a time they have been promised by the brand for a reply? This will help them manage their expectations and plan their operations accordingly.
Product updates and company policies
If you’re a business supporting more than one product, you will need a dedicated client portal for each of them. Customer portal software like Freshdesk offers multi-product support so that everything stays streamlined behind the scenes while your customers only see what’s relevant to them. Your agents can seamlessly manage customer requests from these portals in a single, unified location.
Not only will your customer portals host information about your products, but also highlight company policies such as returns, exchange, upgrade, order information, etc.
