/advantages and benefits of a customer self-service portal

Customers want to get the information they need or make an order as quickly and easily as possible. According to the results of various surveys, between 50-80% of users favor those companies (both in the B2B and B2B sector) that have (convenient and user friendly) customer self-service portal. This not only leads to a higher rate of customer satisfaction, but is often one of the most important factors when choosing a company for cooperation.

Self-solving of customer problems, always available answers to questions, less burden on the customer service and management team, less chance of human errors – these are just some of the benefits that an automated customer self-service portal can offer to your business and customers.

This tool is relevant for both B2C and B2B companies. We’ll take a look at several benefits of customer self-service portals in this article

● Cost savings and efficiency

Every response to a customer’s inquiry by phone or e-mail requires a lot of management team attention and time. You can save money and increase service efficiency by creating and implementing a customer self-service portal. As the name suggests, on this portal customers can place orders themselves and find answers to the most important questions. It’s a tool that’s always working, even when your management team is resting. With the customer self-service portal, your customers’ questions and problems can be solved immediately, regardless of the day of the week or the working hours of your team.

• Convenience for customers

With a self-service portal, customers can place orders when they want to, regardless of the working hours of your management team. Conveniently and clearly presented information about goods/services enables customers to find answers to their questions and place an order anywhere in the world and at any time of the day. Placing orders on the customer self-service portal also reduces the chance of errors due to miscommunication or misheard requests during a phone call. The customer himself sees the entire assortment and relevant product/service information.

● Loyalty

Research data shows a direct correlation between content personalization and customer satisfaction, and high customer satisfaction means that the customer will continue to prefer your business in the future. What role do self-service portals play here? You can use the information received by customers using the self-service portal to improve each user’s experience (UX) or turn it into personalized offers, blog posts on specific topics of interest to customers. This tool is a great solution to understand user needs and, based on that, improve client satisfaction and increase customer loyalty. Thanks to the customer self-service portal, you can easily install a loyalty program of any complexity and combine it with an already functioning loyalty program in other available systems.

A quality self-service portal creates a direct connection between your business in the eyes of the customer, while avoiding a large number of phone calls or e-mails. Research data shows an ever-increasing consumer demand for self-service portals, so now is a great time for businesses to take full advantage of this tool.

● Everything in one place

One of the most common functions implemented in customer self-service portals is data integration and display in one place. Customers can not only place orders, but also monitor the order situation and progress, find all invoices or other necessary documents, see their debts or other relevant statistical information.

In most cases, self-service portals generate invoices themselves and transfer them to accounting systems based on API, but the reverse connection is also possible, when the invoice comes from your accounting program.

The customer self-service portal can be integrated with any systems that have an API, and from them both receive and transmit the necessary information.

● Greater traffic

The customer self-service portal is an excellent channel for informing customers about new promotions, products or other relevant offers. By constantly providing useful information, visiting the customer self-service portal becomes a habit, so you can have a new channel that customers will want to visit again and again without significant additional advertising costs.

These are just a few of the benefits and opportunities that a customer self-service portal can provide. You can find more information about preliminary prices for the development of customer self-service portals here.