CRM software helps employees stay organized, facilitates improved communications with customers and allows for better customer service. But what if customers have issues after office hours? A major feature of a customer portal is to allow customers to find solutions to their problems at any time.
Here are some customer portal offerings by major vendors:
Salesforce Service Cloud Customer Portal – With Salesforce Service Cloud, companies can offer their customers access to support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Through the customer portal, customers can log support cases, get case updates, view the knowledge base, and use online communities to submit ideas and get answers.
The customer portal allows for design customization, from functionality to branding and colors. Companies can also upload training presentations and documents to assist their customers.
Customer Portal by Microsoft Dynamics Labs – This application allows customers to schedule services, manage cases, use an event calendar, register products, peruse the knowledge base, and manage content.
Here are some other third-party apps that provide similar functionality: Customer Portal Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Customer Portal by Ignify.
Sugar Customer Support – Within Sugar’s customer support, Sugar Case Management helps companies organize customer service requests and history. Sugar’s Self-Service Portal allows customers to create cases and track them until a solution is reached. The Knowledgebase helps both employees and customers structure information and create FAQs. Sugar Bug Tracking helps companies track and solve bug issues reported by customers.
Sage CRM Self-Service Web Site – With Sage CRM, companies can create a Self-Service Web Site for their clients. They can add any standard HTML field types, for example: text entry fields, drop-down lists, and radio buttons. Companies can also see a list of registered and anonymous visitors to the site, and view and edit their visitor profiles.
Keep customers happy by informing them of their customer portal self-service features. Stay on top of their requests with the managerial functionality offered by customer portals. Support costs will be kept down, and customers will appreciate the organization’s accessible aid and its receptiveness to their ideas.
