Media Portal: Behind the Scenes

Media plays a powerful role in the 21st century. The rise and evolution of how it works, what it says, the narratives it chooses and abandons are a topic of discussion within and outside of the media industry.

Earlier, what used to be largely two separate groups, that of media and news, is now much more complicated and intertwined. One of the common ways to address this middle ground has been news media.

This is not to say that this complication is bad or negative. Just, occasionally messy.

Managing one of these, is of course, messier than it looks to the consumer. Let’s look at how certain tools can help you manage a media conglomerate.

Monetizing the platform

First, if you’re going to have a free model for consumers, you will need to monetize your business with ads. Or you will have a subscription model. Or you will have a mix of both. The thing to focus on is your ad platform. You have to have ads that are relevant to the topics and categories you generate news around. The best example here would be that of The Verge. They talk mostly about tech, science, and space, and the ads shown on their platform are relevant to their readers which not only adds value but also keeps their readers’ experience unhindered.

Content Creation

Now that is just covering the basics of the platform you choose. Your content creation platform should be built to work in partnership with the ad platform you choose, smartly.

Next up, comes the content you actually publish. There are certain guidelines and rules regarding the content you have to publish. There are soft guidelines like making a note of the updates in the content if you make changes, and hard guidelines like not publishing plagiarised content. The way you talk about things on your platform will depend on the things you talk about as well. Be bold, and be careful. You are in a very public space.

As a company, this business leads to heavy investment in the tools you provide to your staff, your writers, editors, curators, freelancers, reporters, guest contributors, and designers.

Now, of course, this software or portal works on login credentials for each role I mentioned above. Since these roles are different, the access that each of them require also differs based on the tasks they need to perform.

– A writer needs to only access their own portfolio of articles, whereas an editor should have access to all the work for all the writers or the writers assigned to them.

– Similarly, freelancers should only be able to submit articles, designers should be able to add media to articles or in the library, etc.

And if your media house is big on collaboration, you can always have a feature where a particular writer/editor can add more writers, freelancers, editors, guest contributors, or designers to their articles providing special limited access when permitted to create holistic articles with verified information from the subject matter experts.

An information and media platform is not limited to news or opinion editorials. It also includes video, podcasts, or all of these things.

If your media house handles podcasts independently of your written stories, but shares them on the same website as stories, then your portal needs a special way to handle audio files as well. You will need to treat that post like a normal story that you write a brief about and then embed the audio file in it.

Same applies to how you handle video stories. However, if your platform is a streaming platform for video, then things shift slightly. Here, video is your central content.

If you have a review team for gadgets, cars, any kind of product or service, this portal can also be a tool to manage that neatly. It can keep track of which review unit you have, when it arrived, when it was sent back, if it arrived faulty or was damaged later. While your review of the service or product will be public, the company that it belongs to should also get the basic facts of your experience. This becomes a good way to keep track of product iterations for your writers, and if a product breaks down multiple times.

Another thing that a media house can use to engage with the audience is polls. You can put up relevant polls regarding trending topics and get the results directly in the backend, and be easily usable inside articles if required.

Content Analyzing

Once the news is out, the natural second step is to try and decipher the behavior of your readers along with finding your voice. If you have started your news media platform with an objective in mind, then you already know your voice as well as your audience. But if your subject matter expertise is widespread, then you will have to spend a good amount of time analyzing your traffic and seeing if your content is being downloaded into your audience the way you want it to, and if it is sparking the right conversations around the topics that matter.

For this, your media portal can help you monitor as well as analyze.

Monitoring:

For creating great user-centric content, you need a 360-degree view of your competitors, your readers, as well as the topics you publish content on. And your portal dashboard should give you that. This can come handy to the editors, strategists, as well as to the senior writers. The dashboard should fetch media data and chatter around your news media from sources like social media, broadcast channels, online sources, etc. This allows you to:

– Monitor your brand reputation: If anything goes south, you can deploy your social media or crisis management or PR brigade to handle the situation. News is sensitive and can spark either revolutionary conversations and movements or violent public outbreaks or public menace. And you don’t want your articles to cause the latter. Something like this can stick to your reputation until the end of your existence.

– Get industry news: Now if you are reporting news and creating media for a particular niche, you can’t afford to lose the happenings in your industry. So, it becomes imperative that you monitor every news in your industry to stay ahead of your competitors. This is crucial in stories that are developing so that you don’t end up missing out on important updates.

– Insights of topics: Similar to monitoring a particular industry, you can also monitor a topic. This can be beneficial for writers who specialize in a subject matter. This way they can monitor topics and write keeping in mind the chatter of the town.

– Analyze your competitors: Monitoring what your competitors are doing can help you to craft strategies that can push you ahead of them. So, you can add the sites of your competitors to the media portal and monitor the frequency they publish, readers’ responses, social shares, etc. This way you will be able to understand the gap and the nature of it, which will allow you to fill it easily and in less time.

Analyzing:

Now this needs to go a step above and beyond getting basic viewership insights. In addition to knowing where your users are coming from, this dashboard/backend should be able to tell you where they are posting and sharing your content. If you know the kind of conversations that it sparks on social media, your social media team can actively participate and add to the dialogue. Also, make sure that your analytical dashboard is configurable so that you can overview your organization’s performance in a single glance.

Here’s what all you can do with an analytical dashboard:

– Campaign tracking: News media houses are there to ask the right questions as well as create awareness. And to do that, it is necessary to run campaigns, do a series of articles, and provide as much information as you can on that particular matter. Not only that but you also need to analyze the performance of these campaigns in order to know the impact you left on readers. So, this dashboard can provide you with insights like viewership, social shares, mentions, comments, tweets, reddits, or any conversations happening around your campaign.

– Identify influencers: Influencers have become a big part of every company’s marketing strategies, and it should be yours too. If your article caught the eye of an activist or an influencer, then they can actually help you to grow your viewership; that is if they are on the same side of matter as you are. They can negatively promote your article too. So make sure to keep a close eye on influencers, activists, etc. with an analytical dashboard.

– Streamline brand communication: It is the most important thing for a news media company. You don’t want to look like a hypocrite on important matters. So for a united front, you should monitor all the channels your articles are being shared and with what message. And this analytical dashboard should be able to do just that.

– Properly handle negative reviews: In the world of hyperconnectivity, missing even a bad comment, review, about you or your content can lead to a huge negative impact. To not let this happen, an analytical dashboard should help you monitor mentions, comments, shares, etc. in real-time so you can counteract in the best way possible and as soon as possible.

Generating news, finding a voice that is original, unbiased, and informative, in this world of hyper connectivity is not an easy task. But with the right tools like a fully specced up media portal with the above mentioned features will help you find your space in this internet universe that we’ve created.

About us

CRMJetty is a web portal development company and we can make a custom portal for your requirements. If you want a retail portal with an ecommerce option, we can make it possible for you. Contact us here to further explore this option for you.

Consumer Goods Portal For Selling in Post COVID World

Consumer goods have a huge range of products. From clothing, household appliances, to perishable goods like food, everything falls under this category. Ordering all of these things online is not exactly new. Ecommerce is not at all new. From online stores that at one point delivered goods at slow intervals, can now deliver within the hour (provided the service is offered in your city.

When social distancing, and lockdowns across cities and countries were not a thing, there was never any shortage of stores that we could shop from. Department stores like Target, Walmart, grocery stores like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, were often frequented. It was only obvious to go to another store if what you wanted was not available there. And this is not even counting the smaller, more local stores for a number of things.

Now, however, things have changed. Over the last couple of months, going out to buy groceries, clothes, or electronics has been difficult. Out of these three categories, the last thing that people may have found a need of, is new clothes. Everyone needs food every day, and since everyone is trying to work from home, we also need electronic supplies, like external monitors, webcams, etc. Apart from that, as cooking at home is the safest way to eat, we are also buying more kitchen appliances like a mixer, which we might not have bought before.

As a local store, the best way to maintain your customers right now is by providing an ecommerce platform and no-contact deliveries.

Let’s dive into the benefits of having an online web portal solution for this:

No special equipment (for the customer):

If your customer has to download one more app, that can cause some friction to get them on board, but a web portal is available with a browser, no need for an app. This way, your local customers can shop from your store over a bigger department store, because after all, you provide equal service while keeping it simpler for them to shop. It gives you an edge.

Database creation:

When customers sign on to this portal for the first time, they get added to your database, or CRM. Now you can use these details to offer them discount coupons, communicate e-bills, and also offer special subscriptions on regular products. Overall, you can use this database for future marketing campaigns.

Payment options:

When you get a custom web portal development company to make a portal for you, you can choose the payment options that you want to integrate. Keep more payment options so that your customers can choose whatever they are comfortable with.

Vendor management:

When your vendors are managed directly from this portal, there are a lot of operations that you can manage from one place. When a product inventory dips under a certain number, you can notify your vendor to replenish your stock immediately. You can also give access to certain purchase statistics and product feedback to the vendors so it can help them refine their products.

Alerts and notifications:

You can notify your customers for upcoming offers, in case of low stock and abandoned carts and even order processing updates.

Online support:

When your customers need you, they will be able to contact you. More importantly, you will be able to help them without having to suddenly hire a special staff for it.

Most importantly, if you already use an inhouse retail portal, then this will reduce your effort significantly. You can turn it into an ecommerce store with very little effort. You already have your catalog prepared, your inventory, and vendor information in place. You just have to take it online, and provide sign up links to your customers.

COVID-19 is not changing the shopping experience just because huge parts of the world have closed down. While the world may slowly open up, certain patterns of living are permanent now. More and more companies will continue to work from home, if not entirely, at least some of it. Large gatherings in places like shopping malls will decrease. The most convenient time to shop for groceries is on the way back from work, but if work is home, those outings are going to decrease. People will still need groceries. They will need to replace the headphones they broke.

But it is not going to be as casual as just stopping on the way. People are more likely to turn to stores that offer online shopping and home deliveries. When it comes to home deliveries, you can offer them with time slots. Customers can choose when they can take the delivery. That way you also save on back and forths of a missed delivery.

Everyone has to adapt for the world that has changed and is still changing. A web portal solution is how you can adapt to it.

Everything about Vendor Management System

Vendor management is a process that empowers an organization to take useful measures to control cost, reduce risks related to vendor acquisition, ensure timely services, derive values from the vendors, etc.

The vendor management portals include modules that let you research suitable vendors, source products, obtaining pricing and other information, check the quality of work, and many other tasks.

But how does a vendor management portal work? And more importantly, how can it benefit you?

It is an online web-based tool that acts as a single node to manage vendor-related activities in any organization or business. It even ensures improved efficiency and long term growth in a cost-effective manner.

Let’s understand the benefits of Vendor Management:

Better Selection:

Implementing proper vendor management can benefit your organization from a large selection of vendors resulting in better choices and costs. This also enables you to avoid unnecessary conflicts with your vendors.

Contract Management:

A multi-vendor scenario lacking a vendor management system might elevate the issues of managing contracts, documents, and any other vital information about your company.

But, if you implement a supplier self-service portal within your company then it benefits by providing you with a centralized view of the current status of all contracts. It even lets you visualize other important information in which you can enable your organization to make better decisions and save your valuable time.

Better Performance Management:

A vendor management portal provides an integrated view of vendors, their performance, and their products’ performance for your organization. Indirectly, it provides your organization with a clear understanding of what is working and what is not. This, in turn, means better efficiency and improved performance of your organization.

Improved Vendor Relationships:

It is difficult to manage multiple vendors at the same time. Some vendors might be fruitful to you while some might not be. But, managing relationships with your vendors is the key to successfully completing delivering value to your customers.

And the vendor management portal helps you do just that by keeping all the data in one place making it easier to access. Additionally, it even helps you take better decisions and simplifies your workflow.

Provide Better Value:

The ultimate goal of a vendor management system is to provide better value and better return of investment. Implementing this system will result in long term savings as well as improves earning over a long time since it enables you to manage your relationship with your vendors in a better way.

Now let’s see the other side of the coin and understand the challenges of not implementing a Vendor Management System.

There are multiple problems you might face if you don’t use vendor Management System properly:

Compliance Risk:

As a company, you cannot avoid risks fully. But, you can avoid them to a certain extent by putting up certain standards. By setting standards while hiring vendors will help you to get the right vendor. These standards will make your tasks to validate vendors easy and you can perform your process according to your company’s requirements.

Background Check:

As a company, you must be dealing with multiple vendors. Some might perform really well and give you better work output. While some of your vendors might not work properly and not fulfill the targets provided.

In the middle of all these, you also have to look after the quality of the work. In such scenarios, it is better to check the background of your vendors. The background check of your vendors provides you clarity of how your vendors are, what do they do and many such things. It also provides you better clarity on how your vendors will collaborate with you.

Lack of Visibility:

Having centralized data helps you in providing visibility and makes accessing this data easier and eliminates any lack of visibility you might have. This, in turn, helps you with better resource allocation and improves efficiency.

Vendor Data Storage:

As an organization grows, it is important to have a vendor data storage solution in your company. If you don’t use it then there are chances that storing and retrieving data might become difficult. So, if you are dealing with multiple vendors at the same time then you might need to have a proper vendor management system.

Payment Risks:

There are chances that different vendors might be using different payment terms or methods. In such situations, you need to ensure that the payment is on time. And to make this a reality, the vendor management system helps you a lot. By providing timely reminders about paying to your vendors.

Final Words:

As a large organization having a vendor management system makes your operations streamlined and helps your employees and vendors to perform better. Not only this, but it also enhances productivity and helps you serve quality work.

6 Ways to Make the Most out of WordPress Salesforce Integration

Salesforce is among the robust CRMs available in the market. It offers many tools for storing and organizing your company’s data as well as your customers’. And as a company, your goal might be to utilize this data optimally in order to serve the best to your customers.

There are multiple integrations available in the market but one of the best and widely useful is WordPress Salesforce integration. This integration helps you to utilize your data properly making it more valuable and as a result, you are able to provide better service to your customers.

Let’s look at useful ways to sync your WordPress and Salesforce data:

Easy User Management:

If you are managing your website on WordPress and capturing leads from there, then integrating your WordPress with your Salesforce CRM becomes crucial. This way you will be creating a cohesive database of your users.

To integrate Salesforce and WordPress, you can configure WordPress functions like site registration, etc. to create new leads in the Salesforce database. You can also configure other fields between two applications so your teams can have access to proper data sets.

It doesn’t matter if you are running a membership-based company or host-specific data on your website which is only visible to your customer, with this integration, you can keep your users’ account status synced dynamically.

Going a step further, you can also tag your leads as customers in Salesforce, and this customer tag update, in turn, gives your customers access to the “customer only” section of your website.

This will directly decrease your sales teams’ workload. This feature will help your sales team to serve your customers effectively and efficiently.

Generate New Leads:

Let’s say you want to convert WordPress form submissions into leads, and if your website is integrated with Salesforce then it will help you smoothen the whole process. With the WordPress filters and hooks, you can send your form data into Salesforce and then you can also track the performance of these forms in your CRM. All this, in turn, will help your inbound marketing team to perform better and convert your leads.

Track User Activity:

If you want to identify the most trafficked area of your website then you can set up “logged-in” user page tracking to get user page history into a custom Salesforce object.

If you are using this feature in your WordPress site, then remember that this level of detailed tracking requires a good amount of computing resources. It also depends on your web hosting provider. Or you can also invest in a Salesforce customer portal that works with WordPress making it a cost-effective option to track the user activity and understand their needs.

Create a Product Catalog or eCommerce Store:

There may be multiple ways for you to include your product database in your Salesforce CRM but there are only a few ways to keep data synchronized with external eCommerce stores. Still, there are some unique solutions available which work with as many Salesforce setups as you want. But what the point of concern here is that it won’t support any of the customizations done in your eCommerce store workflow. This will at the end make the data useless.

Therefore, a custom integration solution can include a product catalog; it even includes a full eCommerce solution that records stock quantities, sales, inventory updates, and other data in your Salesforce database. Having previous purchase data in Salesforce is very helpful when you are targeting customers for new products, promotions, or any other marketing campaigns.

Custom Object Integration:

You can create custom Salesforce objects according to your website. For example, if you want to build a website that tracks your rental cars and properties and stores their data in Salesforce then custom integration is the right solution for you. You can use this data to track car status, tenant rent, due dates, amounts, and payments directly from your Salesforce database. This even allows your customers to pay their bills directly through your WordPress website.

Tag Campaign IDs to WordPress Actions:

Want to link any core tailor-made WordPress actions with your Salesforce campaigns? Then linking WordPress actions with your Salesforce will enable you to track users who register on your WordPress site with a particular sales campaign. You can also add anyone who submits a specific form to a specific campaign by giving it a Salesforce campaign ID.

Additionally, you can even tag particular website activities that you want to track. For example, you can even add a WordPress action that keeps track of the number of blog posts your users are reading in a particular product or the service category.

If you are using any specific metric, you can associate them using a campaign ID that corresponds to each category. There are a number of custom actions you can create and track. In such scenarios, make sure you have specific and clear marketing or sales goals and can align in these actions as well.

Conclusion:

Salesforce and WordPress are among the most widely used CRM and CMS respectively. There are various ways you can use these two in the best possible way. But, the best outcome will be when you have integrated these two.

Benefits of Investing in Dynamics CRM Customer Portal

In today’s time creating, supporting, and deploying customer portal integrated with your Dynamics 365 instance is very easy.

In Dynamics 365 portal, your customers get an online platform to communicate and collaborate with your business. Depending on your customers, you can design the portal and add functionalities accordingly.

Dynamics 365 portal provides functionalities like ticket generation, search knowledge guides, suggest new ideas, and many more.

Dynamics 365 portal provides you the ease from procuring the hardware, certificates to install, web server to provision, etc. In just a few clicks you can set up everything and start with your portal.

So, let’s understand the advantage of having a Dynamics CRM customer portal:

Customer Engagement:

Engaging customers, in turn, helps you retain your existing customers; these customers, in turn, become your advocates and spread the word for you. In fact, they will help you to get new customers as well.

Having a customer portal will act as a cherry on the cake. This will help you to encourage your customers and your potential clients to discuss to learn about your products in depth.

Remember encouraging your customers online is the current trend. Put up questions related to your products, encourage them to answer these questions, and be part of the conversation around your brand.

Don’t engage them only on your community portals, but also engage them on social media platforms. This is what today most of the big companies like Zomato, Swiggy, Netflix are doing.

Coming back to portals, you can even use them as a platform to publish your articles, blogs, or posting questions about your products.

Helping your Customers:

Having customers is important but helping and assisting their needs is the key to making them stay. Using Dynamics CRM customer portal, your clients can easily log in and cater to their needs. Further, this self-service portal will help them to find answers to their questions, know the status of their issues, and many such things.

These self-service portals will help you to decrease the generation of support tickets, customer calls, and many more. And all this helps your support staff to work more efficiently.

Additionally, Dynamics CRM customer portal suggests your customer knowledge base articles on the basis of the keywords they enter, even before clicking on the submit button. Just like Google search engine. This reduces the redundant ticket generation and helps your customers on the spot.

Engaging your partners:

Dynamics also has a partner portal. If you are thinking to engage your partners like distributors, resellers, suppliers, etc. then partner portal is the perfect solution. You can use partner portals to capture sales channel data from your partners.

It gives your external partners a platform to create, manage, and collaborate with your in-house staff. You can gather real-time metrics from your partners and provide your agents with better data you want.

They help to empower your partners to make better and faster decisions. Additionally, you can even enable yourself to collect curated data which can help you in the future to plan strategically.

Engaging your employees:

Employee portals work the same as an intranet for your internal staff. This will provide one platform to your staff where they can curate and share their knowledge.

You can provide groups with target access to CRM features without providing them the front end. This is helpful to your staff and makes it easy for them to interact with the CRM data when and where the need arises. Similar to customer service portals, employee portals are useful to submit and resolve internal issues.

Customer portal framework:

This is one of the most customizable and extensible portal frameworks. It provides you a kick start for minimizing overhead cost that associates with the infrastructure and helps in platform development.

With the help of the framework, you can create multiple portals like agent portal, franchise portal, investments in service technicians, professional portal and various other types.

Final words:

Dynamics 365 portal helps you to stay ahead in the game in this competitive market place. It helps you to use Dynamics 365 to the full potential and manage your clients effectively.

Helping NGOs Help People During COVID-19

COVID-19 has disrupted the economy, and our lives. Some of us are privileged enough to have jobs, especially those of us who can work from home. We have salaries coming in regularly. We have homes to live in and work from. With a few clicks, we can even get groceries, medicines, and meals delivered to our doorstep. All that while following social distancing protocols.

This privilege does not extend to everyone. A number of industries, big and small, are having to lay off or furlough employees. Similarly, because of the lockdown, social distancing, and shelter-in-place, a number of businesses have had to close down, like restaurants, laundromats, movie theaters, malls, small shops. These business owners have no other source of income. Even amongst these, there are disparities.

In such a situation, how can we help at the local or global level? You can support them by donating funds. You can also donate to nonprofit organizations that you support.

If you are a nonprofit organization, you need to streamline your operations now more than ever. Some of the things that you may be doing are accepting donations, volunteers, gifts, etc.

In order to make operations easier and provide the help where it’s needed the most, you need to use a custom portal. Let’s look at what this portal can do for you:

Cause campaigns and crowdfunding campaigns:

As a non-profit organization, you can create a Cause in Salesforce or a page in WordPress and that link or page can be added to the portal, and volunteers assigned to the cause will have access to the portal for their activity updates and donors can also come to the portal to donate.

You can manage the various brands/people you have tied up with via this portal. The volunteers who are working on these campaigns will be able to update the records from the portal. Another way that this can work is that you may have tied up with a brand (let’s call it XYZ for now). When someone buys the assigned products from XYZ, those proceeds will go to your NGO, and then you can add them to your fight against COVID-19. In this case, while the funds will reflect in the campaign analytics, the donor data may not.

Similarly, when it comes to crowdfunding campaigns, you can create it in salesforce. From there you display it on your website. Any actions performed on it, like someone making a donation, will be registered in the portal.

Volunteer Management

One of the ways that people are helping right now is by volunteering. However, simply having volunteers does not solve the problem. You need to manage who does what work based on their skills and your requirements. Potential volunteers can apply via portal, and put in their skillset as well as their available timings. This creates a useful database for you. Now you can accept their applications, and allot them work based on predefined areas. Since they have put in their hours and days, it will be easier for you to schedule work for them without any overlaps. This means that if someone has volunteered as an at-home nurse, you are less likely to assign them grocery delivery. This way the right resources will go for the right causes. The portal not only makes this task easier, but also eliminates potential errors and automates some of the workflow.

Gifts management

Salesforce has a module called Gifts, wherein, if enabled on the website/Portal, people can make contributions from there. The details of that contribution are then stored securely in the CRM. You can manage these gifts and perform actions on them like assigning amounts to specific areas like medical equipment, volunteer reimbursement, medicines, etc.

Social Media marketing

Nonprofit organizations can also take advantage of social media marketing. By putting links of sign ups and landing pages, you can get the attention of people and bring them to your cause. It can help spread the word about your organization and your cause, effectively, and widely.

Salesforce has a special version of their CRM for nonprofits called NPSP, and we can build a custom portal for it if you need one for your organization. Contact us here for even more details on how this can positively impact your operations.

How to Maintain Business Continuity During this COVID-19 Pandemic Using Portal

Everyone’s attention right now is focused on COVID-19. You are worried about how to serve your customers and they are worried about how to get services. In this situation, you have to ensure that your customers get the support they need. Of course, there are challenges that you will face, all unique to your business. Your priority should be to maintain frictionless customer experience. Some of the things you will have to take care of for this is tuning your customer journey and the ways you provide support.

Businesses in the current situation are proactively working on discovering ways to help their customers help themselves, with online and mobile self-service interfaces for everything from raising tickets and tracking, monitoring sensitive financial information, making online payments or getting immediate data for their health.

Recently, customers have become extremely demanding. They want answers right in front, as they raise an issue or want to get in touch with you and if the wait is long, they will leave. Everyone is anxious and it is only natural that they want answers and services. Especially since the services they are looking for right now are essential.

Customers prefer interacting with CRM portals more these days. As the interface for self-service has huge penetration in multiple sectors, there is a high probability of business opportunities and maintaining business continuity for staying in the current market.

Portals benefit businesses in various ways when it comes to customer interaction, like:

Digitize critical workflows to improve speed, accuracy, and efficiency:

Move your support operations to a fully digital model. For example, if you are in the computer business, right now, your support staff is very busy. But not everyone can work. So how do you operate in such a high demand with fewer staff? You can upload tutorials for common issues that customers face, launch AR manuals that show an exploded view of the computer, making it easier to fix, or connect a cable to, etc.

This way customers will find it easier to make certain fixes themselves, leaving your staff to focus on bigger issues.

Optimize customer channel management:

By automating channels for customer requirements, you can save a lot of time and resources. Repetitive questions can automatically be answered, they can be directed to video feeds for certain queries, etc. If your business has multiple products or services, you can also streamline their questions by first bifurcating them in respective channels.

24/7 digital platform accessibility:

The biggest advantage of a customer portal is, of course, its accessibility regardless of time. Even in a pandemic, when people may not be able to work, a business with a robust portal in place will be able to serve their customers almost effortlessly and around the clock.

This situation has really highlighted the importance of leveraging technology to its optimum capacity. It has also highlighted that self service portals come in handy no matter what the situation is. By using a custom portal that can work with the nuances of your business, will make all the difference.

“Choosing the right solution at right time” and having a customer-centric self-service solution for your customers will ultimately help your business to stay unaffected in this pandemic situation and sustain the momentum of growth in the future.

How to Retain your Customers During COVID -19 Outbreak

Social distancing. Our current reality to stay safe.

However, for businesses, it is the exact opposite. They are concerned about its long-lasting impact that is probably going to be bigger than anticipated.

Currently when you have very few chances of acquiring new business, unless you offer essential products, keeping your existing customers engaged with your business can be your shield.

Here is how you can retain your customers from a distance:

Communication is the key

Although it may sound a bit cliché, it is critical.

Keep your customers updated about your business. Whether you are shut temporarily, adjusting working hours, or the steps you are taking for a safer workplace.
Customers are visiting social media the most. Hence, make sure you’ve updated yours with the latest updates.
If you are operating, it is important to assure them that you and your team are taking proper safety measures. Hence your website should have the necessary information.
While they are sitting at home, there will be temptations for shopping. Offer them to Wishlist products if you have an e-Commerce store. If you are accepting orders then it is important to be transparent about the shipping dates.

Expand the self-service capacities

A couple of days back, I was trying to connect with an airline company, to check the status of my pre-booked flights. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any answer. However, they were able to solve my query through emails.

Now the point here is that the customer service teams are overwhelmed by the customers reaching them out for help. And it is impossible to answer each and every customer. That might also mess up with your customers’ experience. Hence, to provide ease, you can empower your customers with self-service apps equipped with knowledge articles. Along with that, you can also improve communication on your digital channels including live chat, emails, etc. This will help you give a personalized experience and they will be able to solve queries on their own.

Investing in a customer portal will help you empower your customers to solve the majority of their problems on their own. Plus, you can invest your capital into your business continuity plan and make it future-ready.

Make it easy for them

Just like us, everyone’s stress levels might be up with very little patience. Hence, when they are accessing your applications, make sure they do not have to authenticate multiple times or change passwords frequently. This may sound like a small thing, but it will help your customers immediately and you in the long-run.

Assure them that your business values are still the same

Yoga8, a yoga studio in Waco, Texas, announced the online courses to interact and meet their customers and employees. Employees of Hans Wittler’s Automotive Service in Albuquerque, N.M., are picking up vehicles for repair from customers’ homes. Now that is the type of value you need to provide to your customers to really assure them that no matter what, you will be always there. Your company’s values are still the same.

Be prepared

It is important to establish a timeline to evaluate the results from the changes made in your business. This is the time to show that you can do more and go beyond limits when it comes to serving your customers despite government limitations.

The temporary improvements that solve customers’ queries today, may also become permanent improvements for your business model. The key here is to take ownership of the situation quickly in order to get the best from the situation.

Create timely and relevant content

It is important to provide educational and helpful content relevant to your readers. Sharing useful tips for your industry will make sure that you care about your audience.

For example, if you are running a retail shop, you could provide tips to manage finance during such times. The key here is to be creative with content around your industry.

It is about giving back to the community

With the customer-centric attitude, awareness of people’s needs, you can navigate from this crisis and strengthen your relationships with your customers and they will stay with you in the future as well.

The Significance of Customer Self Service in the Digital Age

Customers aren’t the bedrock of your business.

But “Happy Customers” are.

They stay longer with you and bring profitable opportunities.

Your marketing should focus majorly on delighting your customers. It attracts new customers who keep buying your products/services again, and most importantly they spread the word through referrals and social media.

Looking at these marketing statistics, the major expectation of customers from any business is getting a quicker response to their queries and questions.

Hence, fast response rate remains at the helm for curated customer experience.

More about customer self-service

But being able to answer all the queries may seem like a daunting task at times. That’s why formulating a one-stop destination that solves all the queries and problems of the customers is important. It can be in the form of a knowledge-base, FAQs, online discussion forums, or a self-service customer portal.

In fact, 70% of customers now expect a self-service application from a business.

Customers’ expectations

Zendesk published an infographic highlighting the results from a global consumer survey focusing on self-service options. Here are some of them:

75% of survey respondents said self service is a convenient way to address customer service issues
67% of respondents said they preferred self service over speaking to a company representative
91% of respondents said they would use an online knowledge-base if it were available and tailored to their needs

The takeaway?

Customers want frictionless experience in finding their answers.

When you empower customers with the tools and resources to solve issues on their own, they feel liberated. Hosting a Suite CRM customer portal will include key assets you want to provide.

For example,

FAQs: This is the collection of obvious questions and queries to your product or service. They are available in an easily digestible format.

Knowledge-base: A database of useful information, usually part of your CRM that you can present through the portal.

Interactive Voice Recognition Assistant: Customers interact with an automated voice system tailored to answer their queries.

How Self Service provides cost savings?

When a business makes it difficult to find answers, or contact an agent, users may feel unwanted. Whereas, the always-on, 24/7 nature of self-service will enable users to receive support anytime and not just during company’s working hours. This reduces the need for a 24/7 support center.

When you provide the resources, it portrays that you are willing to help by going the extra mile. You should empower your users and not just collect their capital and forget about them. Providing self-service customer support eliminates the need for hiring new agents. And your existing ones can focus on more important tasks. This results in a substantial number of agents requiring training as well. Hence, it adds up to your savings indirectly. A study by Forrester Research and Oracle, says that customer support options can reduce the cost of interaction as much as $11 per call.

Self Service Doesn’t Mean Getting Settled

Assuming that your self-service options can set you free from that role is not the right way to look at this solution. Because outdated self-service support can also ruin your brand reputation.

Keep Up with the Change

When your products or services evolve and grow, your self-service options also need to have that updated information. Whenever your product or solution gets an update, be sure to make the changes in your self-service database as well. Otherwise, the information will grow stale and useless after a certain time.

Moderate your Community Forums

Via community forums, customers can come together and discuss things and solve issues. This platform can be useful for users who have very specific or obscure issues, that they were not able to solve by knowledgebase or FAQs. When you moderate forums, make sure that you remove inappropriate or unrelated submissions, recognize common issues and update databases with the fresh information.

The Bottom Line

Providing an omnichannel and connected experience is important as their expectations are getting higher. The most important aspect is that the customers want the support but they want it without any hurdles.

When you adopt self-service tools like SuiteCRM customer portal make sure you are enabling your customers to solve their issues that too without any efforts. Today, when customer experience is a critical aspect to get your business widespread in the market, it is important to empower your customers with information and resources they will be needing on a daily basis.

Retail Portal: The Point of Sale Software

This article is for business owners who have brick and mortar shops. You have already taken a big step opening a physical shop in a time where the ecommerce environment is dominant. You understand the value of face-to-face interaction with your customers. This helps you maintain a much more personal relationship with them.

The place where you interact with your customers the most is your point-of-sale station.

You can choose the hardware that is most convenient for you. It can be based on the number of devices/machines you need and where you want to place them. You can choose between a tablet and a computer/laptop. This hardware then defines certain aspects of how the software will function/or the interaction agent of the software: mouse or touch.

Now let’s look into a software that can help you better your POS station interaction: a retail portal that is a customer portal solution. Not only does it enhance your customer relationship, but such a portal can also provide greater visibility in multiple aspects like employee productivity, vendor management, customer communication, product sales, and whatnot.

In addition to the retail portal software, the POS system will have certain hardware modules to connect with like payment tools and a bill-printing device. But the foundation of this retail portal is your Dynamics CRM and your inventory management.

So let’s look at what all you can manage with a retail portal and how it can grow your business substantially:

– Payment Integration

– Customer Directory (for repeat customers)

– Employee Management

– Informative Dashboard

– Invoice Management

– Vendor Management

1. Payment Options

Payments are no longer limited to magstripe or EMV chip cards. Near-Field Communication or NFC technology in phones and smartwatches has enabled us to carry around virtual cards and money in our regular devices. Therefore, your POS system will require connections with NFC enabled payment terminals.

Hardware aside, the retail portal software will be able to create invoices and have your accounting specifics integrated. It will be able to accept payments via multiple payment gateways. Another useful function that it can have is coupons and promotions. You can apply a coupon code for discounts on the bills during discount campaigns.

2. Customer Directory

With a CRM customer portal in the form of a retail portal, you can run a membership program for your customers. Members can get special benefits like priority supply and first access to sales, point collection credit and longer exchange and return periods. With a customer directory, you can also note down their frequent purchases, and product specifications. You can notify them once a product they want is back in stock. And the use cases are countless.

If you don’t want to have a membership program, you can use a customer directory for your walk-in customers as well. This can help you build future email campaigns and ad campaigns that can help you understand your customers and their needs. Targeted marketing begins when you know whom to target.

3. Employee Management

The retail portal can have an integrated employee management system. This way it can only unlock for employees. These systems can work as employee check-in, check out systems too. Another thing that you can track is, which employee was on duty when each item was sold. This makes it easier to check employee performance.

You can also assign role-based access to this portal to your employees. Everyone can have access to invoice generation, catalog management, inventory view access and modification rights to the customer directory. Whereas managerial employees can have rights to approve leaves, arrange shifts for other employees and create sales reports.

4. Informative Dashboard

Since each employee has their own account, they can also have a personal dashboard for quick information. This dashboard will have details like their shift schedule, leaves, working hours, break hours, etc. Along with this, it will also have access to the customer directory and the inventory.

The inventory module on the dashboard lets them quickly check if a product is running low or if a perishable product is nearing its expiration date. The dashboard also has details like the products they have sold, the discount coupons they have offered and the invoices they have made.

5. Invoice Management

With such an advanced system, it will be convenient to do away with paper invoices too. You can use the customer directory to email/SMS invoices directly to them and save a copy in their accounts on your CRM. Since this is a CRM customer portal, you can also give customers their own credentials, so they can see their purchase history and invoices.

While creating an invoice, the retail portal can show complementary items to the one that a customer is buying. This can help the employee at the desk to upsell or cross-sell items.

6. Vendor Management

The retail portal can also act as a great tool for vendor management. When you see a dip in the stock of a certain product, you can simply send an alert to the vendor to restock your inventory. With the POS system being your connection with the purchases, you can also send sales reports to your vendors to share how their products are doing in the market. Such real-time and periodical feedback can help vendors make better decisions in terms of which store needs what amount of products and if they need to make any changes in their products.

Point-of-sale customer portal solutions go beyond writing up a bill now. It can aid you to build a better relationship with your customer and can make your busiest day easier to handle. Your employees will not call in sick for no reason and your customers will come back.

Elevate your store point-of-sale system from just a screen to your favorite employee with the integration of a retail version Dynamics 365 portal.