Customers have always been the most important part of any business, something that is self-explanatory and isn’t just a “trend” being followed. Whereas, a customer portal specifically has only become an integral part of a company’s success over the period of the last few years. What has got it trending is its amazing ability to resolve and cater to all of customers concerns and helps without including any human interaction in the process. The idea of whether we can replace human interactions with digital ones may sound absurd today considering we have digital interfaces to assist customers at every hour of the day. But to what extent digital interactions can replace human interactions is still an ongoing debate. To make the scenario clearer, imagine you call customer services expecting to be forwarded to a representative but instead, you are welcomed by a robotic voice. You will feel that bridge of miscommunication because you required a human interaction that you did not get eventually leading to a disconnect between you and the brand.
Companies have started to lean more on the digital side of things, especially ever since the pandemic hit the world in the worst manner ever. Businesses not only found digital routes to serve customers in a safe way but also realized they should ditch their old boring and lengthy processes and modernize the way customer interactions take place. What makes this decision easier for them is the fact that they can control what happens in the digital world much better than the real one. Being behind a screen makes it easier for them to right wrongs and get back to you, something they wouldn’t be able to do as quickly if face to face, hence putting them in a better position when everything is digital.
So, let’s look at the top 5 reasons to how much a customer portal aids to the needs of customers whilst benefitting the business on many levels. It sounds like a win-win situation doesn’t it?
1. Enhanced Customer Engagement
Customer portals are a perfect tool to enhance customer engagement, allowing the business to share their ideas and receive immediate feedback from customers. This feedback helps the business grow and become better at what they are doing. No business can know where they are going wrong unless their customers are vocal, guiding them through the process to achieve perfection. Such a portal also helps educate your customers by increasing their knowledge through publishing blogs, blogs and SuiteCRM demos showing various stages of product development. As a business you can also share tips related to products, news and other topics as well as directly communicate with your customers through customer forums. Here, customers can share their problems and questions and you can reply with possible solutions. This may be a small gesture but it goes a long way because it shows your customers you care for them.
2. Improved Customer Satisfaction
There are still many companies out there who consider customers a baggage that should be ignored rather than catered to. They believe the time they can save on ignoring customers can be used somewhere else to carry out more productive work. Companies who still follow the "client is never right" outlook can say farewell to progress and loyal customers. The question is, why is all this directionally proportional to loyal customers? Well, customers have each other’s back when it comes to word of mouth and reviews about a particular brand. Money is only spent where there is consensus that purchasing here is worth the value for money. Customers demand good quality products, a sense of satisfaction, and fast delivery of services. So, it is no secret high customer satisfaction drives more sales and revenue.
Customer portals can a great tool to achieve just that. Having 24/7 support services to aid your customers means your customers know there is always someone there on the other side to assist them. This topped with self-service gives them a 360 view of satisfaction that if they are in any hurry and there is time in assistance then they can resolve their issues by themselves. Quick solutions mean happy customers and happy customers are bound to recommend your product or service to friends and family.
3. Reduced Cost
In the absence of customer portals agents have to use call tickets when resolving issues. Whereas, with a customer portal for SuiteCRM you can save both cost and time of your support staff. How? As discussed above, customer portals help you offer round-the-clock support, saving you from having to allocate extra resources to working hours above their shifts. All in all, reducing overall costs of the business and reducing the number of calls not picked up.
4. Self-Service
As many customer self-services there may be out there, customers don’t really like resolving issues on their own with contacting support representatives. So, a customer portal helps customers find solutions to their problems, gives them a sense of control over their support queries and where help is needed they can easily contact their support reps without leaving the customer portal. They also have available for them multiple articles and blogs present on the customer portal to educate them and aid them in finding self-solutions too. Where something is not clear they can directly contact a SuiteCRM support representative without having to go back and forth on emails.
5. Boosts Web Traffic
Customer portals are also famously known as driving web traffic because if customers find the right solution at the right place at the right time they will stay longer. The more number of customers stay and for the more time they stay your websites ranking in the search engine will improve.
Concluding
Customer portals have become the need of the hour for businesses across the world today. There are multiple top-notch customer portals available in the market, like SuiteCRM, Salesforce CRM customer portal, and many more. All comes with its own several benefits. We have discussed those for you, but it is up to you to leverage these benefits for your business with the help of these amazing customer portals.
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