“Where is my delivery?” “Could you send me that invoice again?” “Has the order been approved yet?” In many businesses the office fields questions like these all the time, by phone and by email. Each one is answered quickly. Together they add up to a noticeable share of one person’s job.
A customer portal is the place where customers answer these questions themselves. Large suppliers have had them for a long time; mid-sized businesses often lack one because their inventory system does not include a portal or the one it includes does not fit the way they work. This article describes what a portal can do, what it needs and what makes portals fail in practice.
What customers do in a portal
- Check orders: status, expected delivery date, what has already been shipped
- Retrieve documents: order confirmation, delivery note, invoice - without calling
- Order or reorder: at their own prices and from the items released for that customer
- Report complaints: with a photo, order number and description, so nothing needs chasing
- Arrange appointments: installation, maintenance, collection
- Maintain their details: delivery addresses, contacts, invoice address
Not every portal needs all of this. A portal that shows only documents and order status already saves the most frequent calls.
What it saves your business
Queries nobody has to raise any more. Documents nobody has to look up and attach. Complaints that arrive complete, with picture and order number. And a side effect that is often underestimated: customers who can see their order status themselves do not call when a delivery slips - they already know. That leaves sales with time for the enquiries that really need a conversation.
What a portal needs
Current data
A portal is only as good as the data in it. The order status has to come from the system where it is maintained - usually the inventory system or the ERP - and, where possible, directly through an interface. Whether that works depends on the system: some offer interfaces, with others a regular export is all there is. Settle that before anyone designs a screen. What such a connection looks like is described in the article on connecting an online shop and ERP - a portal follows the same rules.
Sign-in and permissions
A customer sees their orders and only theirs. The customer’s buyer may place orders; their warehouse manager may only see delivery notes. That check belongs in the system, not in the user interface - more in roles and permissions. Then there is everyday upkeep: forgotten passwords, new contacts to set up, departed ones to block. It sounds minor, but it is the part that needs looking after continuously.
Somebody to look after it
A portal is not a project that gets finished. New items need releasing, prices updating, customer questions answering. Name a person responsible for the portal before it goes live.
A place for it to run
The portal is reachable from outside and therefore has to be protected differently from the inventory system in-house. Whether it runs with a provider, in the cloud or on your own server is a decision of its own: cloud or your own server.
The typical mistake
The portal is built but not connected. The office then maintains the order status twice: in the ERP and in the portal. Before long the status in the portal is out of date and customers start calling again - this time to ask whether the portal is right. A portal without a connection is a second data entry with customer access.
If a connection is not possible, the portal should show less, but show it reliably: documents that are generated once and uploaded, rather than a status that changes all the time.
The second mistake: the portal is meant to do everything. It is planned big, takes a long time to build and goes live with twenty functions of which customers use two. Start with the most frequent questions and extend when customers ask for more.
Standard portal or your own
| Customer account in your ERP or shop | Your own portal | |
|---|---|---|
| Connection | built in | through an interface, where possible |
| Workflows | the vendor’s | yours |
| Look | the vendor’s | your brand |
| Extension | within the vendor’s limits | free |
| Fits when | the standard functions are enough | your workflow or customer base is particular |
First check what your inventory system or shop already includes. Shop systems such as Shopware or Shopify and some inventory systems offer customer accounts with order history and documents. A portal of your own pays off when the workflow with your customers is particular: approvals in several stages, project orders, service contracts, technical documents per installation, customers who order on behalf of their own customers. A portal is an example of software we build as a standalone application and connect to your system where possible.
Questions before you decide
- Which three questions do your customers ask most often?
- Which system holds the answers today, and does it have an interface?
- Who looks after the portal once it is running?
- Which customers would use it, and have you asked them?
- Is the customer account your shop or ERP already includes enough?
Start with the most frequent questions. A portal that shows documents and status reliably is worth more than one that promises everything.
