Here’s How a Customer Portal Simplifies E-Commerce Operations

For any business, their customers are their top priority. Making sure they get the right information at the right time to convert them into customers is very important. This generally means some of your staff will constantly have to work on client management, doing tasks that are mostly repetitive.

However, there are tools available now that can do just that. CRM customer portals take the hassle out of repetitive tasks and making the process more efficient. Customer portal bridges the gap between the business and the customer with its robust functionalities. It also means that you can fulfill your customers’ basic requirements at all hours of the day without a staff that works at all hours of the day.

Additionally, with a good customer portal development company, you can have a customized customer portal which works according to your business flows & operations.

Here are 4 scenarios where you can simplify your business operations with a CRM customer portal:

Data Management

Scenario:You manage your critical customer data in CRM and your web data in a CMS. Ideally, you capture leads from your websites and then transfer that data to your CRM by adding them as leads. And then you nurture them to turn into customers and once they are your customers you will have to manage all the transactions between you & your customers. Now, this is where it gets tricky. It can be a bit overwhelming to manage customer data and related transactions of so many customers. And also providing customer services when required.

Solution:Customer portal extends the functionality of CRM and creates CMS based portal giving necessary CRM access to your customers. This portal allows provides an aggregated view of your customer data helping in you making informed decisions.

Customer Support:

Scenario:

In the current digital era, customers tend to want a quick fix when it comes to solving their queries. They don’t want to spend time sorting it out over an email thread or phone call. This increases the time you take to provide a solution, which is never a good thing.

Solution:

They can also find a solution from the knowledge base, which they can access any time for a customer portal. If the customer is not satisfied with the solution, they can raise a ticket. In this way with the ticketing system, a portal reduces the possibility of a delayed solution and the chance of miscommunication that can happen over emails. Some customer portals can also come with a live chat option, where a user can communicate with the team 24*7 to get an answer immediately.

Cost:

Scenario:

Every business wants better profit margins against optimal investment. And to make that happen, deciding where to cut the cost can become a major obstacle for any organization. There are some departments that can use automation to reduce the costs massively. One such department is the sales department. Adding automation for customer support in the sales department can help your team focus more on the bigger picture.

Solution:

Instead of hiring a bunch of professionals to handle as simple as support tickets can be a bit expensive. With a CRM customer portal, your customers can easily find their way around. And such a portal will also have ticketing system automating the process to some extent. This way, you can cut down on hiring and training costs. A customer portal solutions is also an added bonus in terms of the additional tasks it can handle.

Data Security:

Scenario:

When you have customer data in your CRM, it is crucial that that data remains safe. So how do you give your customers secure access to your CRM so that they can solve their questions promptly?

Solution:

You can provide your customers with the login of a CRM customer portal, which gives each customer private, encrypted access to the CRM in order to see their own data. They can use this secure login into your CRM to modify personal details in your CRM, as well as keep track of their orders and invoices.

Conclusion:

These are just some of the scenarios where you can benefit from having a customer portal solution for your ecommerce store. You can easily find a customer portal development company which can customize a portal for your store and it would make your life much easier.

Must-Have Features For A Third Party Salesforce Portal Solution

Salesforce Portal

If you are in the business of ecommerce in any capacity, then you probably know that it is important to give access of your CRM to your customers, so that they can manage their wish list, orders, payments, as well as refunds and returns. Now, of course, there is no way to give direct access to the CRM. This is where a customer portal comes in.

After all, a demographic based marketing approach is getting old now, with customers preferring a more personalized approach. Personalized marketing means that the customer will never miss out on deals and coupons for the things that they actually want. A portal makes it even better when it gives the ability to create wish lists and allows signing up for notifications.

And for this instance, let us look at solely, Salesforce customer portal. Salesforce is one of the most popular customer relationship management tools. And its combination with the most renowned CMS WordPress would work wonders. So, let’s see what does a third party Salesforce portal do?

  • Enterprise level build:

Salesforce is an enterprise-level CRM, so it would need a portal that is also enterprise level. By this, it means you have the functionality that you would expect out of a premium product. It should take the premium features and tools of Salesforce and tune them for the use cases of a portal.

  • Cost effective:

Since we are exclusively talking about third-party portal solutions, it would be cost effective. Since Salesforce already has a portal that is expensive to buy and maintain, with a fee for each account, it would be the right move for a third party developer to make a Salesforce portal that does not charge a fee for each member. This is the best way to make it cost effective.

  • Security:

In the last six months, we have heard of more data leaks in the tech industry than we can keep a count of. The right portal would have to be secure in a way that the data is only on the CRM and the portal is able to fetch it directly from there instead of storing it internally. When data leaks, it tends to lose customers because they can no longer trust you with their information. Especially when the information that an ecommerce store is of extremely sensitive nature that of home addresses.

  • On-demand information:

The most convenient thing about an online store is that a customer does not need to go out of their way to interact with your store. So they shouldn’t have to go out of their way to get anything they need. A Salesforce customer portal should have a ready set of information that a customer could potentially need. Customers should be able to access this information whenever they want without having to interact with a customer service staff member, over long email threads or phone calls.

  • Customized look and features:

Since it is your store’s portal, it should match the various design and experience aspects of your store. Your Salesforce portal should provide a quick-action dashboard that shows relevant information to your customers at the right time. It should also prompt them with coupons for the products that are in their wish list or a feedback email after certain days of delivering a product. As an admin user, you should be able to customize the modules that you want to show in your portal, as well as what modules your staff sees, as compared to what your customers see.

All in all, a Salesforce customer portal should enhance the features of your CRM while also providing certain custom features that your customers can benefit from. These features will take your targeted marketing and sales efforts one-step further and help you not only gain customers but also delight them and, furthermore, retain them.

There are many third party portal solutions that are available for Salesforce, so if you are in the market for one, make sure to find one that has all of these necessary features. This will set your store apart and help you give your customers a premium experience.

How WordPress Client Portal Can Help Your Business Thrive Exponentially?

What determines the future of your business is the first interaction you have with your client. Either it be via phone, your website, customer portal or in person. If your first interaction with your client is a pleasant one, you are more likely to retain them forever.

Today, with the increasing internet usage, all the businesses are striving to be ubiquitous by harnessing client portals to better serve their customers. When your customers sign in your portal – you give birth to a brand-new relationship with your customers.

Why Is Client Portal A Necessity?

Traditionally, the only way to deliver customer service was through a call or meeting in person. But nowadays, from shopping to healthcare, all the businesses have started using client portals to build deeper connection points with their clients.

The great advantage that comes with a client portal is that it gives clients the freedom to interact with you when and how they want. However, with changing customer expectations and the fast-paced, technology-driven world that we now live in, many businesses are looking at new ways to interact with customers and client portals are an excellent example of this sort of innovation.

With the help of a client portal, you can interact with your clients, share files, discuss, chat, plan, organize and manage tasks and events in a private online environment.

Some Common Client Portal Use Cases:

Client portals allow a streamlined flow of data between customers and employees. There are many ways a business can harness client portal depending upon their industry and purpose of use. Here are some of the most common real-world use cases of a WordPress client portal.

External File Sharing: This is the most common use case of a client portal. Many businesses have a hefty amount of paperwork to deal with. All of it should be in sync and accessible to both client and employees as and when required for everyone.

Project Collaboration: If you are in a business which requires constant feedback and comments from client to work efficiently, a client portal can be a great tool you can harness to make the communication hassle-free.

Knowledge Repository: Customer Knowledge base is the best way to engage your customers and expand your business reach. With the help of a client portal, you can empower your customers and employees to find information regarding any aspect of your business without wasting their precious time.

Benefits of WordPress Customer Portal:

Company Benefits:

  • Optimized Total Customer Experience
  • Enhanced Customer Lifetime Value
  • Reduced costs on customer servicing, software, hardware, and human interface
  • Identification of potential customers through clickstream analysis
  • Service oriented architecture to enable scalability and zeroed maintenance costs
  • Integrated web services for data integration across wider data network
  • Improved Return on Investment with high customer value, satisfaction, and retention

Customer Benefits:

  • Improved customer services
  • Consistent, instant, and anytime support
  • Rapid problem resolution
  • Personalized interface and content-based information suited to individual preferences
  • Secure access with the convenient single sign-on capability

4 Things A Business Should Consider Before Making the Plunge:

A Client portal can certainly help your business thrive exponentially in today’s rapidly disrupting marketplace. There’s not a single client-centric industry that can’t benefit from client portals.

However, when it comes to integrating a client portal, there are some things that businesses should take care of before making the plunge:

1. What Do You Need Customer Portal to Do?

Each company has different reasons and requirements for implementing customer portal. For example, if you are a small accountancy firm you will need a customer portal to securely share sensitive documentation with individual clients.

2. Personalized UX:

In today’s mad rush, personalization is what helps any business to build a good rapport with their end users. Imagine you are skimming through abyss of hundreds of emails piled in your inbox. While skimming, you simply glimpse at the opening of an email.

“Hello There, we are going to launch xyz today!”

“Hey here, check out our latest products and deals!”

“Hello Aditya, here are some things that you are passionate about!”

Which one from the above three emails you are most likely to open? If you are like the most, you will open the one with your name in it. Hence, it is essential for your portal to deliver personalized user experience to your most valued customers.

3. Consistency Across the Portal:

Along with personalization, customers also expect a consistent experience. The portal should be featuring your logo and work hand in hand with other brand features. According to Kayako’s customer service trends report for 2017, 90 percent of customers want a brand to have continuity across all channels. Having said that, because a client portal is like a digital office front, you should make sure it should deliver just as professional and personalized experience as a brick and mortar store.

4. What if I Mess Anything Up?

Mistakes are part of human routine. And you are not a robot. So, there might be a time when you mistakenly mess something up. What next? Will the software company be there when you really need them? How friendly are they?

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

If you know that the company you are dealing with, will be there when you need them – you won’t be worried even if you mess anything up.

How to Find an Ideal Company for Your Project?

Finding an ideal company to help you in integrating WordPress Client Portal with your CRM is indeed challenging. It is quite tricky to find an ideal solution that works with all major CRM solutions like, Salesforce, SuiteCRM, SugarCRM & Dynamics CRM.

While we have been serving this industry since a decade now – we feel extremely proud to have a privilege of serving the giants of the industry. We believe in offering robust web solutions that has the potential to help you grow your business beyond any limits.

If you are seeking for an ideal WordPress client portal, give us a call and we will be on your marks to help you turn your idea into a blazing reality!

Source: https://www.crmjetty.com/blog/how-wordpress-client-portal-help-business-thrive/

Supplier Management – What, Why, & How

The way an e-commerce business chooses and handles its vendors determines their overall success. In this blog, we are going to take a deeper look into how vendor management can make or break your e-commerce business.

What is Supplier Management?

Supplier management is the process of maintaining relationships with your vendors. It includes managing contract negotiations, having meetings about quarterly reports, and sharing regular sales data analytics. In simple words, it is the management of the people who supply all the products that you choose to sell to your customers.

Why do we need Supplier Management?

  • To Create Better Relationships

The vendors and your relationship with them define the quality and availability of the products. Which directly affects your relationship with your customers. At the end of the day, sales and customer satisfaction decide the fate of your business. If you build a mutually satisfying, and a growth-oriented relationship, it will pay off in the long term.

Pro Tip: The best way to manage a healthy and functional relationship with vendors is to regularly send them quality analytics of the customer behavior patterns. This will simplify your communication with them.

  • Efficient Process

Keeping in constant touch with your vendors is vendor management in simple terms. This practice makes it easy to negotiate products prices. Sending emails back and forth can do the trick, sure, but when you have to do it every few days, then it can be a bit cumbersome.

  • Protects Brand’s Goodwill

Supplier management influences your brand name. When done well, your vendors will be more than happy to work with you, and this will also attract more vendors or vendors may turn to exclusive partners.

  • Minimizes Risk

The biggest risk of downfall that your e-commerce business can face is the unavailability of high in-demand goods which is directly dependent on the vendors. If you manage your vendors as well as you generally aim to manage your customers, then you build a relationship with them.

Your success is dependent on the efficiency of your communication with vendors and suppliers. The most effective way to manage your vendors is to have a proper vendor management portal. A portal bridges the communication gap and makes everything accessible easily for both the parties.

Apart from that, let’s see what are the best practices for Supplier Management.

Best Practices for Supplier Management:

  • Proper Supplier Selection

This point goes without saying. It is extremely important to choose the right vendors, as it is to choose the right partner.

  • Be in Touch Constantly

You have to be in constant touch with your vendors. You can get a clearer idea of the quality that they maintain and they can get a clear idea of your sales practices, so they know they are getting fair treatment.

  • Supplier Management Portal

Communication via emails and meetings can be time-consuming, and often confusing. This is where a Vendor Management Portal comes in. This is a tool that makes managing simple for you. Once a vendor data is in, it connects to every aspect of the communication with them.

A supplier management portal is more than just a database of all the vendors that you work with. It also connects to your Customer Relationship management portal in case you need to give your vendors access to a specific module.

Vendors from all over the world can simply register with your portal. No need for them to be in the same place as you geographically.

The Vendor Management Portal also has a procurement module that allows your procurement manager to easily compare quotes from various vendors regarding all the products. The manager can compare based on both price and quality of said products, as well as other metrics that you want to set.

Conclusion:

With a huge business comes a lot of small responsibilities. And a whole lot of them are managerial, which you can easily manage with the help of a portal. If you want to explore options for supplier portal solutions then CRMJetty has an excellent supplier management portal that you can check out here.

And if you want any additional information on vendor management portal, then feel free to contact us here.

Source: https://www.crmjetty.com/blog/supplier-management-what-why-how/

How to Grow & Manage Your Partnership Program

Let’s first clear the concept of Partnership Program: It’s usually a business strategy adopted by vendors and business owners where they create an additional source of income by joining hands with other vendors, business consultants, etc. who promote their products/services.

Business partners or partnership programs stimulate growth. The only reason why so many businesses have partnership programs.

The startup Rindagoc experienced 1,983% boost in overall annual revenue and 1,000% user growth within six months without any upfront costs. Almost all size of companies are turning to partnerships to help them expand their customer reach which eventually drives revenue.

Considering another example that is Hubspot. It has one of the most successful partnership programs based on Saas model. Soon after the launch of its partner program, it generated an ample amount of monthly recurring revenue. With smart efforts and investment, the first quarter produced approximately 42% of the company’s customers and 33% of revenue.

Keeping aside the success stories, here are some other benefits of having a partnership program.
Benefits of having a partnership program:

  • Increased Revenue

Without any doubts, it generates a significant amount of growth in sales and distribution of your business in the targeted areas. Having partners who are regional experts can help you penetrate those markets without you having to invest much.

  • Extra Sales Channel

Every business has its own sales funnels. Having a partnership program opens the doors to new opportunities. Such programs work as an extra source of income for the business.

  • Extended Network

When a company partners up with a vendor, business, or consultant, they’re essentially partnering with their customers and partners as well.

But maintaining a Partnership program is not easy. Managing, communicating, etc. with your partners spread across the country or globe is not a cakewalk. To get partners might be the easiest step of developing a partnership program.

What’s not easy is to grow the program and sustain the partnership(s).
So, we analyzed our partner program and here we are with some tips to grow and manage a partnership program.

How to grow a partnership program?

As mentioned above, it is harder to sustain the partnership(s) rather than questing for the new ones. Here, communication bridges the gap. While in the conventional way you can manage that with emails, calls, messages, etc. But in the longer run, when your partnership program is growing, you will need some permanent way to manage your program.

The best way is to have an online partner portal or CRM partner portal. But before we get into the management of the partners, let’s see how you can grow the partnership program.

  • Partner Management System

When you have 2-5 or even 10 partners, you can smoothly manage them with normal modes of communication like emails, calls, etc. But you don’t want to stop there. To grow your program, you will need a proper management system, in order to focus more on pitching new partners. Having a streamlined partnership program is bound to be a success.

  • Create & Manage Assets

Another proven way to grow a partnership is to have the right marketing and sales assets. Like email copies, brochures, product descriptions, PPTs, and many more. Having helpful assets will create a good experience for partners & motivate them to put in a good word of mouth among their network. And voila! You will have more partners in no time. So, focus on the content and assets you provide.

  • Grade Your Partners

To grow, your program and even business, you will need a grading system. To learn what works best for you and which are the dead and unproductive assets in your system. Similarly, you need a grading system for your partners to identify who is bringing in the quality and enterprise customers. Once you identify such partners, you need to understand their strategies and help other partners implement similar strategies too.

And once you give a boost to your program, it tends to grow itself.

After the growing stage, comes the management stage. So, the next step would be to have a solution to manage your partners. And as mentioned above, a partner portal is the perfect solution.

A partner portal will give your partners a dashboard where they will be able to see their earnings, leads they have forwarded to your business, marketing & sales collaterals, etc. And you will have an overview of your partners’ performance.

To help you understand better, here are some of the ways an online partner portal will help you with the partner management.

  • Group and Role Management

When you have a full-fledged partnership program, chances are you will have plenty of data. And that doesn’t need to be shared with every other partner. You will need an effective portal to create groups and roles by partner tiers, partner classification, partner business model, etc.

  • Marketing & Sales Forecasting

To allocate resources and funds in the marketing and partnership program, you need to forecast ROI. Which you can only if you have the required data including marketing qualified leads, sales qualified leads, converted leads, the marketing pipeline, and what not. It’s crucial to have data from all the previously implemented strategies based on which you need to evaluate what’s working and what’s not. It’s only possible when you have a unified solution like a CRM partner portal.

  • Invoice Processing

Suppose you have 3000 bills to process. And you need to calculate partner’s share on more than 1000 bills, how will you do it? Manually? No! You need to have an automated process intact to take care of all these details. If you have 300-500 partners, then I am sure, you don’t have time to look into these small details.

  • Single Interaction & Communication Point

With a growing network of partners, your salespersons would need to contact them on a daily basis. And maintaining contact on multiple platforms like emails, calls, messages, etc. will become tedious sooner than later. Whereas with partner portals you will have a single point for all communications. This would eliminate the need for redundant emails and calls and have all the conversations logged at a single point.

Conclusion:

Starting a partnership program might seem easy and effortless but once it’s out of the first phase, you will need to put in constant efforts. And these efforts will definitely result in business growth.

Interested in hearing more about an online partner portal or customize partner portal solutions? Then get in touch today!

View Source: https://www.crmjetty.com/blog/grow-manage-partnership-program/

A Customer Portal: Right Solution for Business or Not?


‘Self-service’. The phrase itself means to serve yourself or to help yourself. That’s where the idea of a customer portal comes from. If you are a business that wants to provide 24*7 customer support without extending working hours or without hiring more support executives, then this is the tool you are looking for.

A customer portal is a single point of interaction between customers and business. Let’s see how effective can a customer portal can be:

The obvious benefit of a customer portal or a self-service portal for your business is the convenience it provides. Both to your business as well as your customers.

If we talk about customers, the popular opinion is that they prefer the self-service option rather than having to have long & tedious human interaction. It helps to get faster solutions, and they don’t have to visit a brick and mortar store. This is why the best option is to provide your customers with online customer portal solutions.

If we were to think based on the various industries of business, healthcare, finance, real estate, banking, education, etc. all benefit greatly from the customer portal solutions. It has made operations more efficient, and it helps provide round the clock services. It is a simple solution that integrates seamlessly into the user experience. It is an effective option to serve your customers properly & if this option is not there, customers experience hindrance in accessing services.  

Now the question is, does your business need a portal?

Read on to find out.

Customers Demand Self Service

These days customers’ demand for self-service has increased. And it becomes a preferred method for them to interact with any business. They don’t prefer email or call support for their queries. They want their answers online by FAQs and knowledge base. Customers always find it much easier to find answers themselves rather than wait for a reply from a support executive.

Here are some facts regarding self-service which will back our statements:

According to Superoffice Blog:

Customer portal enables the self-service option for your customers.

Increase the Productivity of Support Staff

Time management is the biggest challenge for all businesses. The support teams spend most of their time in solving repetitive queries. This decreases their productivity, and it’s a waste of resources.

The ticketing system of self-service portal reduces the workload of agents. Customer portal saves time and provides automation for routine and repetitive tasks. So your customer service representatives concentrate on other important tasks. Thus, a CRM customer portal provides maximum customer satisfaction and increases the productivity of your sales and support team.

Role-Based Accessibility

A customer portal is basically you sharing your CRM with your customers. Now, a CRM contains a lot of sensitive data and sharing all of that data with customers is not a good idea at all. A good CRM customer portal comes with role-based accessibility where you can restrict the information you share with your customers. They will only be able to see the modules to which you’ve given the permissions.

Single and Secure Sign In

Lately, awareness of cyber and data security has increased. If a business is seen being lax about security, they are written off by people. A CRM customer portal takes care of secure sign in for you. It does not fetch any data from the database, but simply gives a secure interface where users can log in using the credentials they have. Only verified users will have access to the portal.

Cost Effective:

A customer portal is inherently cost effective because it helps reduce the time that your support staff spends on repetitive tasks and queries. This way you don’t even need to have a very large support staff. It also helps to retain your customer with clever customer servicing. And a loyal customer is, of course, good for business.

So, what do you think? Can a portal add value to your business? If yes, then find a company that can build you a proper customer portal keeping your business use cases in mind.

Wrapping it up…

These are the main reasons why you should consider offering a customer portal to your customers. There are a lot of companies that offer customer portal development, as well as services to customize it according to your needs. You can find a good company that designs customer portals, make sure they have a good portfolio and pick the right one.

4 Ways a Salesforce Customer Portal in WordPress Winning a Fusion

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is synonymous to the brand Salesforce. It’s the first name that pops up whenever there is any chatter about CRM. They have set the standard for the whole industry to follow. As of 2019, they will complete their two decades into the business. Two whole decades!

One can safely assume they know what they are doing. Moreover, last year, it was the best company to work for, according to Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For. So, you could only imagine the kind of talent working there to keep Salesforce at the top.

Similarly, when you talk about Content Management System (CMS), people are bound to think of WordPress, a company that is five years junior to Salesforce but has a similar reputation in the market. Almost anyone who has ever wanted to set up a quick blog has used WordPress. Needless to say, it is equally popular as Salesforce, for what it provides to the users.

Now imagine the possibilities with the combined power of Salesforce and WordPress.

On Salesforce, you are managing your internal & customer data and on WordPress, you are managing your website content. But how do you create a synergy between the two software? Moreover, more importantly, how can you add the customers in this synergy and create an enhanced experience for them?

All these questions have one answer.

A Salesforce Customer Portal.

Of course, we won’t just say these words and let you do all the research. We have listed down four ways a Salesforce Customer Portal will help you meet your business goals.

  • Activity & Record Tracking

A customer portal’s main purpose is to keep your customers in the loop with all the related activities that your organization is carrying out. They will be able to access & keep records of all the activities such as purchase records, contracts, calls, etc. This will reduce the efforts of your support team, which eventually will result in lower customer acquisition costs.

  • Personalized Dashboard for Enhanced Experience

Now, giving your customers the freedom to choose what they see whenever they access your portal will add delight to their experience. Using a portal, they can create their own dashboard view providing them with easy and efficient access.

  • Secure Sign-In to Build Trust

Providing a secure sign-in to a customer portal can help build trust among your existing customers as well as new customers. When they know that their personal data is in secure hands, then their loyalty with your brand increases naturally.

  • Smart Self-Serve to Save Time & Resources

Customer portal’s primary function is to help customers serve themselves. When provided with a secure customer portal, they will find their own way around your software and look for the answers, which they will get from the solutions module. You just have to make sure that you cover each & every topic & customer query in your the solutions section.

Now, if you are using Salesforce, then you already might know that Salesforce has a customer portal of its own. However, if you go to buy that, you will have to pay a hefty price as they charge per customer.

But that’s not the only solution available.

You can always go for other cost-effective solutions available in the market such as CRMJetty’s Salesforce Customer Portal.

The premium selling point of CRMJetty’s Salesforce customer portal is that it is cost effective, amongst many other great features including:

User Interface:

To add delight to your customers’ journey, it is necessary to provide an overall smooth experience, which one of the strongest suits of CRMJetty’s customer portals. A good UI will help your customers easily find their way around the customer portal.

Knowledge Base:

Customers come with questions. An aware customer wants to make a well-informed purchase decision. Our Salesforce customer portal provides access to the knowledge base, where the customer can know everything they want to know before making a purchase. And if they still have questions, they can always generate tickets.

Data security:

We value data security very highly. In this day and age when security breaches happen every day, we go to great lengths to make sure our products are safe. With this Salesforce Customer Portal, we extend that same security to your business. We don’t store any data on our servers. We simply facilitate the integration of WordPress and Salesforce and host everything on your servers.

Customization:

Your customer portal, after all, should reflect your brand. Our Salesforce Customer Portal is customizable for this exact reason. You can make it look & function however you want. You can select what modules you want to add, the layouts, etc. through the admin access. For the frontend, you can give your users a customized dashboard for a quick glance at their activities.

Apart from these features, there are of course plenty of features that are standard for a customer portal to have.

Salesforce is after all an enterprise CRM, which means you are bound to have a huge customer base. It should be simple to give your customers the kind of ease you experience with the backend of your CRM. This portal is your way of doing just that. It is a great way to share the abilities and features you enjoy on your backend, with your customers.

A customer portal, at the end of the day, is every customer’s limited individual access to your CRM. It also reduces your manual task of having to update the information of a customer. With this access, they can edit their profile, shipping and billing address any time they want, and this syncs with your Salesforce backend.

So, what are you waiting for?

Get started with CRMJetty’s top of the class customer portal to elevate your customers’ interaction with your e-store! Contact us here!

View Source:

https://www.crmjetty.com/blog/wordpress-salesforce-fusion/

Web Portals: The Best Way to Add Value to Customer Experience

Ever thought about how convenient it is that you can get all the details of purchase history when you log in to your account on any e-commerce store? If you had to drop an email every time you wanted to track your purchase, look at past orders or exchange a product, it would be cumbersome, to say the least. And this applies for both, the customer as well as an e-commerce storeowner.

If you are a student and you want to access all your attendance records or assignment grades, would you rather email your professor or the institute? Alternatively, simply have all the details in one place, ready to access whenever you need?

This is where portals come into the picture.

These are two of the most common scenarios for which web portal solutions are already being used. There are plenty of other industries where web portals are used to enhance customer interaction with the brands.

Web portals let a specific group of people or individuals get a specific type of access to the CRM modules through these portals. The web portals help the customers to get the right information at any time and the best part is that it won’t require your involvement. By adding portals you are adding value to your customers’ time and their journey with you.

Whether it is customers, students, or patients, everyone has questions. And these questions will never end. Generally, these questions are about where their shipment is, or if you marked them present in a lecture from three weeks ago, or what their dietary restrictions are.

When you have web portals integrated with your CRM, it gives the right people, the right access so you don’t have to spend time hunting for answers and writing back to them. Nor will you have to have dedicated staff to answer these questions.

Now that we have established the importance of having web portals, let’s walk you through the in-depth understanding of portals for different industries.

Industries that Could Highly Benefit from Web Portals:
Educational Institutes:

Imagine you run a large-scale educational institute with over 1000 students, spread across multiple disciplines. It will require you to have a connected database of students, faculty, your infrastructure, and various other modules. With a web portal solution, you can assign each student and member of the faculty their own access to the information. This way they can see the necessary data and perform the necessary actions they need without having to contact multiple personnel of your institute.

E-commerce Stores:

Another industry that can be greatly benefited by web portals is the e-commerce industry. After your customers make a purchase with you, they would want to track their shipment; once it arrives, they might want to exchange or return the item.

It would be easier for you as well as your customer if they have access to your database. Not entirely, but limited to certain CRM modules. That way, they can do all of these tasks without you having to make any effort.

These are of course just a couple of examples where a custom portal is used. There are a number of other industries that can be benefitted. If you run a business, a hospital, an educational institute, e-commerce store, or a pharmacy, investing in a good web portal can be one of the best decisions for your business.

These portals are an extension of your company and your brand. So of course, a generic web portal solution would not do it justice.

And what do you do when a generic solution is not good enough for you? You look to customize it! A customized web portal that will match with your brand. Getting a custom web portal is simple enough. Look up various companies that provide custom portal development, if the solution they provide works for you, then you can hire them to make a portal for your company, or institute or hospital.

Customization is necessary for the smallest details like printouts. If someone needs to take a print out of an invoice or a mark sheet, your logo should be on it as a watermark and a good web portal development company will pay attention to such small details. You can easily find a decent company that has experts in the field and they will be able to provide the best solution crafted according to your needs.

6 Integral Features To Make Your Web Portal a Success

When you visit any website as a customer, you must have come across several statements like below:

“To submit any product related query, you can contact our support team on this email id.”

“If you need any additional information about our product, you can check out the FAQs page.”

“Our support staff operates between business hours only.”

In such scenarios, you might have felt overwhelmed. Because there were a number of ways to contact for a single query.

In e-business when it comes to customer interaction, it is important to have an efficient and proper flow that helps the user navigate your e-store. And I am sure that you don’t want all the product, contact, services, and other new queries being flooded on single email id.

The best solution for this problem is web customer portals. The portals help you to get rid of this chaotic jumble. They are the single click destination for all types of customer queries. When you consider any of the web portal solutions for your business, it becomes important to solve the real-life problems of your customers exclusive to your industry and build the portal around it only.

And we promise you, a custom made portal can and will make all the difference!

If you are also considering web customer portal for your business, then it’s going to be one of the best decisions you ever made.

But make sure to include below mentioned essential features in it:

Interactive Dashboards:

A dashboard is the first thing that your customer will see after logging in the portal. So, it is wise to provide a quick recap of all the important things right on the dashboard. You can also categorize the major tasks according to their activity history & display them for convenience.

One more thing, when you integrate a dashboard into the portal, make sure that you don’t end up making a complicated hierarchy which might perplex the user. A dashboard means a quick summary of all the important tasks with a simple visual representation. Therefore, ensure that you include the following things to your dashboard functionalities:

  • List the overdue and urgent tasks that need important actions
  • Ability to mark the tasks as complete or resolve them
  • Provide quick links of routine tasks and content

Additionally, make sure that your dashboard looks tidy and clean. Try to avoid displaying lengthy messages and content at the front door of your portal. It might distract your customers from more important tasks.

Tracking:

We all know the importance of tracking. Whether it’s about tracking orders, shipments or support tickets, it is an integral part of customer service. Providing them with the ability to track their things or tickets, adds positively to their experience. Hence it becomes necessary with customer portals as well, to provide them with updates about their support tickets or appointments.

It is all about making your customers feel like they are your priority when they interact with you through portals.

By proving tracking functions, your customers would be able to track their status updates in no time. You can even send them important messages of due tasks and other things via email. And then they will be able to plan their schedules for the next tasks to organize their workflow.

Self Service:

According to a study by Salesforce, 89 percent of millennials use a search engine to find answers before making a call to get customer service. And not only millennials but each of us is obsessed with mobile phones and technology. As a result of it, we expect fast results from all the business brands we interact with.

But when it comes to providing support, the best way of improving customer experience is to provide essential support through knowledge base and resources. And minimal direct interaction. Currently, they might have to contact the support team when they face any inconvenience during the installation or usage of your product.

But with exhaustive knowledge resources, they get one type of freedom. They can freely lookout for the queries they have regarding the product and can solve them to some extent by themselves.

This way, the burden of your support team gets decreased and they can invest the time in more productive work.

Multi-Device Accessibility:

It is simple. Today’s workforce needs mobility. They cannot afford to stick to their desk for the whole day as they need to manage other activities simultaneously. They should be able to access their data from their phones to handle critical business communications from anywhere and at any time.

After all mobile responsiveness is a number one priority for almost each and every industry in order to improve customer interaction. The same way the portal that you will build should also support the other frequently used devices like smartphones, laptops, tablets, iPad and so on.

Business Logic:

If you opt to buy a readymade portal solution available in the market, the overall workflow will be pre-decided. Whereas, when you have a diverse business flow and want the portal to blend with your business logic then you might need customization in the readymade portal.

But when you go for the custom portal development, you have all the control over the build and application of the product. You can get it made from scratch according to your business logic and add a streamlined flow of activities which is crafted according to your users’ requirements.

Reporting:

For most of the vendors, this feature is the key functionality that is a must. To implement a comprehensive business process which is well organized, it is important for organizations to provide effective reporting and analysis reports to their customers.

There should be an option available for your account holders to create interactive reports which give them an idea about the current business affairs and their interactions.

In a Nutshell

Web portal development is a widespread phenomenon and when getting a custom web portal developed it will vary from industry to industry and business logic. What matters the most is to make a scalable web customer portal that supports your customer requirements and makes their tasks easy. Ultimately it makes your business grow.

Do you want to create your own custom web customer portal? Get in touch with us today and we would be happy to assist!

View Source:

https://www.crmjetty.com/blog/features-web-portal-success/

How Customer Portal Personalizes Customer Experience?

If you have your own online business then you must be aware of all the endless responsibilities that come with it. The base of your business growth is how you handle all your current relationships and operations that comes with customers. CRM software helps many businesses across the globe to work on such operations and enhance the customer interaction cycle.

CRM system is capable of streamlining your business operations in an organized manner. They provide you with all the required customers’ details whenever required. When it comes to accessing the same data in real time, your CRM system will need a solution which integrates with it easily and extend its functionality.

A CRM customer portal is the ultimate answer.

Let’s learn more about the same.

About CRM Customer Portals

It is a role-based system which let your customers and you access the CRM data whenever needed. Your customers can have their own account and within a few clicks, they can pass the message to you. On the flip side, your salesperson can instantly revert to such queries and solve their problems in real-time.

A CRM customer portal helps a business in innumerable ways and one such way is personalizing the customer experience.

And in today’s world, where every brand is fighting tooth and nail to get a little bit of consumer’s attention, it becomes necessary to give customers something unique. Something other brands don’t!

How Portals can Provide a Personalized Experience to Your Users?

Freedom

Customer portals allow your customers to solve the majority of their problems to some extent by themselves. How? Because they have access to a vast variety of knowledge base and other resources like FAQs, product guides etc. Therefore, they will not need to raise concerns for such small problems and they can easily solve it quickly.

Lower Operational Costs

As your customers have the freedom to solve all the problems by themselves, it helps you reduce the operational costs of your organization. Plus, they can focus more on the other productive work which will be fruitful for your business.

Better Strategies

Custom customer portals reduce the needed manpower behind the small tasks. As a result of it, the business flow becomes well organized. It lowers the load on your support team. It helps them to make strategies on a better level and make a roadway towards progressive business growth.

Customer Satisfaction

When you buy a product for your business, make sure that it helps your customers. Customer portals are mainly focused to guide your customers. All the features of it work around the idea to make prompt solutions of customers’ queries which provides an instant feeling of satisfaction. Plus, it comes with a feature that allows them to offer your services/products to their friends and other contacts.

Visual Representations

Sometimes there are simple questions about your product which your customers might feel are complex to solve. But with the help of portals, you can generate helpful guides using insightful visual charts and graphs that will guide your customers. Overall it boosts the user experience and enhances the user experience cycle.

Other benefits of a CRM Customer Portal:

  • Customers Turned Promoters: By creating a good overall customer experience, you will be turning your customers into advocates. These customers will be showing a positive image of your products/services and this will generate new business.
  • Smooth Business Operations: You can create customer-centric content like blog posts, guides, etc in your customer portal which will help your customers help themselves. And as mentioned above, this will create a huge impact on how your business operates.
  • Optimized Resource Utilization: When your team is not up to their heads with customer support tickets and cases, they will be able to expand their horizons like studying customer behavior. This will eventually help your sales team come up with more creative ways to retain the customers.

In a nutshell

Customer portals impact your business and encourage steady business growth. It assists your customers to improve the way they think about your business and products just by providing them the right way to approach and shoot their query for you.

Customer satisfaction is an important aspect of every successful business. Hence, portals have become a necessity for business success.

If this article got you thinking into getting a customer portal that goes with your CRM, then there are many customer portal solutions out there. The customer portal solution providing companies can create, design and develop customer portal according to your business needs.