How to Choose the Best Customer Portal Software
This is the main reason why most businesses and organizations are using client portals and why your enterprise should use one too. This is the real world and you need to have a plan to help you not only match your customer expectations, but make them higher.
What Exactly Is a Client Portal?
Simply put, a client portal is a convenient and secure mobile way your clients have when they do business with you. In a client portal, your customers and clients may not only view, access and manage their information, but they can also share files or even communicate directly with you or your business.
In case your business doesn’t have a client portal yet and you’re looking to discover if it’s worth creating one or not, let us give you a straight answer: having a client portal nowadays is essential. Why? They allow you to improve customer satisfaction and engagement, not to mention that they also help streamline operations without any human interaction. You may have your business client portal accessible through an app, through a website, or both. It’s completely up to you.
Why Do You Need a Customer Portal?
There are many different reasons why you may be considering coming up with a client portal for your company or business. Overall speaking, having a private and dedicated space to your clients and customers only may serve for various things:
- You regularly send brand assets, guides, or invoices manually by email to your customers;
- You keep answering the same questions over and over again;
- You have news to share with your clients but you don’t want to keep sending newsletters to their emails;
- You want to deliver live support to your clients;
- You keep using Word and Google Drive documents but they may feel unprofessional to you.
5 Benefits of Client Portals
As you can imagine, there are many different benefits of client portals. So, let’s just take a look at the most important ones and how this tool helps businesses:
#1: Better Customer Satisfaction & Engagement:
Customers only get in touch with support teams as their last resource. They prefer to search for the answer by themselves and when you provide them with a customer portal, you’re delivering what they need at any time, no matter where they live.
A client portal may also be useful to increase the engagement of your customers. For example, you may allow your customers to share their experiences and where they can find an answer to their problems. You can also encourage your customers to help others there.
#2: Improved Communication With Other Team Members And Customers:
If you decide to create a client portal, all your clients and team members will be able to access it. They will be on top of what your customers need and know what each one is doing to answer their concerns or questions. There won’t be multiple answers or any kind of time lost which will improve the workflow.
#3: Use Automation & AI To Decrease Costs & Scale Operations:
When you choose to use a client portal that uses automation and AI, your customers will be well served. After all, whenever they submit a ticket there, for example, your portal will be able to show the best and most relevant information to solve the issue. This is an automated feature that can even be used in different languages, depending on the providers that you pick.
#4: Keep Information Centralized:
One of the main benefits of client portals is that you may have all your information in just one place. No matter if you’re thinking about having FAQs, user guides, or any other relevant documentation, your customers will be able to find it in just one central location. This enhances the overall customer experience and you shouldn’t have any problem with the storage.
#5: Increased Privacy & Security:
As a business owner, we don’t have to tell you that you need to carefully handle sensitive customer information. Ultimately, you need to make sure that your customers data is well protected and using a client portal is a great way to do so. After all, encryption and two-factor authentication are just two features that help you maintain their data safe.
7 Features The Best Customer Portal Software Needs To Include
#1: Access to Products and Services:
All client portals should enable direct access to their customers of the products and services they already bought. In addition, your customers should be able to easily find their orders and prices they paid.
#2: Contact Updates & Account Management:
A client service portal should allow customers to change their contact details and other business information that may be relevant in their own accounts. In addition, your customers should also have a way to keep track of their orders and access their account history. This is a must have feature.
#3: Make Payments:
Depending on your company and business, you may want a client management portal that allows your customers to make payments and manage their billing details. If managing payments is a huge part of your business, it makes all sense to integrate this feature.
#4: Secure File Management & Communication Channels:
When you add a client portal SaaS to your business, it should allow file management so that your customers can store important files or even upload files when they want to talk to support. In terms of communications channels, a live chat is a must but you should include other communication channels inside the service portal.
#5: Create A Knowledge Base Powered By AI:
Knowledge bases are incredibly helpful to customers and your client portal platform should definitely include one. This is a great and quick way to find solutions for their problems and AI should be a great contributor. Whenever a client searches for information, the service portal should come up with the most relevant information.
#6: Flexible:
A good customer support portal software should be flexible. This means that your clients should be able to customize it the way they prefer.
#7: Reporting & Analytics:
Just like any other area of your business, it’s important that you offer customer portal solutions like reporting and analytics solutions. You want to make sure that you know everything you can regarding the ticket volume, the CSAT, and the ticket deflection rate. All these metrics may help you improve your client hub.
Top 9 Customer & Client Portal Software
There’s no question that having a user-friendly and solid client portal can help your business in many different ways. Besides increasing customer engagement, it will also improve communication and, above all, it will enhance the overall customer experience. However, as you can easily understand, not all customer and client portal software are the same.
There are a lot of options and choosing one may be a bit overwhelming. So, we decided to give you a hand and show you only the top customer and customer login software. Then, depending on what you need and on what you’re looking for, it will be easier to make your final decision.
#1: Flowlu:
When you’re looking for the best customer portal platform, you need to take a closer look at Flowlu. Even though it is a CRM with integrated PM tools, this flexible, intuitive, and secure software has everything your business needs to increase customer engagement and improve their overall experience.
One of the things that customers really like about Flowlu is that it is so easy to use and extremely customizable. In fact, you can put your client service portal exactly as you imagine with Flowlu. But this is only the beginning. With this powerful online tool, you can have a website with a client dashboard ready in no time. You may define what each customer sees and the way he interacts. You may also use this customer portal app to show your clients how their projects are going. From tasks to stages, comments, payments, expenses, everything you want.
From this secure support portal software software, you may also invoice your customers and, at the same time, provide them with expense and payment history.
One of the things that all client portal solutions need to include is a knowledge base and you can create one by yourself on Flowlu as well. Attach tables or files, add images or videos, add the information the way you want, how you want.
But a client hub platform wouldn’t be complete without communication tools to ensure there are interactions between your business and your customers and clients. You may choose between using the built-in messenger or over comments.
According to client portal reviews, Flowlu is one of the best customer service portals for many.
In case you want to try out Flowlu, you’ll be glad to know that the company offers a 14-day free trial. After that period, you’ll need to pay only $39/month per team of 8 users, minimum.
#2: SuiteDash:
When you’re looking for an all-in-one solution, you should consider SuiteDash. With a wide range of features including project management, client communications, customer relations, and invoicing, this software allows a lot of customization. You’ll also like to know that it comes with a client portal template library. On the negative side, we need to mention the integrations that should be more as well as the UI is simply unappealing.
Prices start at $19/month.
#3: Zendesk:
Zendesk is one of the most popular customer support solutions in the market. This is one of the key reasons why it has a lot of reviews. With his software, you can have not only a live chat but also knowledge base creation, among many other tools that will definitely meet your business needs.
One of the best pros about Zendesk is that it allows a wide range of integrations. From Google Analytics to Salesforce, you name it and the company probably has it. However, this all comes with a high price: Zendesk isn’t either intuitive to set up as it has a big learning curve to start using it. According to capterra rating, this customer facing portal is good for all companies.
In case you want to try out Zendesk, you can use a free trial. You’ll then need to pay a minimum of $55/month.
#4: SuperOkay:
SuperOkay is a very easy to set up client portal software and is especially designed for freelancers, software studios, and digital agencies. You have many different customizations you can do and you can easily share connected apps, assets, and project links with internal users. One of the things we like about SuperOkay is that it features many different integrations including Figma, Miro, and Airtable, just to mention a few.
While SuperOkay is a super easy to use platform, you may find it a bit limited especially if you run a different business from the ones mentioned above.
You can try out SuperOkay for free and then you’ll need to pay, at least, $12 each month.
#5: Planhat:
Planhat is a customer platform that is focused on customer support. With a user-friendly interface, you’ll elevate your customer experience. With this tool, you can define outcomes and set goals. However, Planhat isn’t allowing many integrations at the moment and it may be somewhat difficult to customize.
In case you want to try Planhat, you need to know that the company offers a custom price.
#6: FuseBase:
FuseBase is a customer service portal software that is simple, secure, and efficient. With this customer program portal, you don’t need to know a line of code since it’s all done seamlessly. One of the things that you’ll like to know is that the platform offers fully branded portals. In addition, it offers many different integrations that are always important as well as it includes built-in chats, document collaboration features, and you can create your own knowledge base. You may create a single article or multiple articles at once for the entire community or for just a client. You may add the creator name or not, as you prefer.
In case you’re interested in trying out FuseBase, you’ll be glad to know they offer a free trial. In case you like it, you’ll then need to pay $38/month, minimum.
#7: Clinked:
Clinked is an all-in-one platform that provides everything your business or company needs to help you be more efficient. This secure portal software allows you not only to store but also share documents, features different task management tools, and comes with an integrated messaging. One of the things that we really like about Clinked is that it’s incredibly easy to set up as well as it includes features for customizing your brand. However, all this is requiring a very high price for a user portal software that features a somewhat dated UI.
To start using Clinked, you’ll need to pay $119/month.
#8: Client Portal (WordPress):
As you can easily tell by its name, one of the things that attracts so many people to Client Portal (WordPress) is the fact that they love and are used to the WP platform. This easy to use plugin is specific to WordPress and comes with a wide range of features and flexibility. Depending on what you want to offer to your customers, you may have available in your client portal for small business customer data, invoicing, purchase details, brand assets, self-service resources, among others.
Even though it comes with an extremely simple and clean UI, the truth is that it has no integrations available and customization is little as well.
Client Portal (WordPress) is a huge cost since it’s the most expensive customer management portal in this list. Pricing starts at $199/year.
#9: Freshdesk:
If you’re looking for customer web portal software, Freshdesk may be the solution you need for your company.
Freshdesk is a complete solution that comes with many integrations, built-in analytics and automations, and it’s also a customer support solution.
This client document portal software is based on the cloud, Freshdesk allows you to customize portals (even with the domain name), making it one of the best branded client portal on the market. However, since it has so many different features, it is a bit difficult to set up, not to mention that it has a high learning curve.
In case you want to try Freshdesk, you can do so using their free trial. In case you like this online client portal software, it has a starting cost of $15/month.
How to Choose the Best Client Portal System
When you’re looking to choose the best client portal system, there are some factors that you need to keep in mind:
#1: Security & Privacy:
There’s no question that both security and privacy should be on the top of your list when looking for secure client portals. You want to make sure that you pick a software that has access controls, encryption, and data backup. Confirming when the last update was is also something important.
#2: Design & UI:
While you may think design and UI are not that important when it comes to customer portal saas, the truth is that they matter, and they matter a lot. After all, you want to make sure that your client dashboard site is visually appealing, intuitive, and easy to use.
#3: Customization:
The more customization the customer web portal software offers, the better. Since you want to fit your brand identity, you should look for an online customer portal software that allows you to easily change the looks as well as it needs to be simple to remove and add features. It should not only facilitate work as it enables the research work to be completed faster.
#4: Integrations:
When you’re looking for the best portal software, you need to search for integrations. You want to ensure that it integrates with as many tools and systems as you can.
#5: Knowledge Base:
One of the most important features you want to include in your user portal software is a knowledge base. After all, it’s a valuable resource that customers like a lot and that, at the same time, can free up some time for the support team.
#6: Reporting & Analytics:
The best customer portals also need to come with some reporting and analytics. In case you’re wondering why you need those, the reality is that they can be quite handy to make better business decisions and know your customers better. Remember that tracking processes, relationships, organization, performance, and efficiency are very important to control.
#7: Support & Resources:
Even though you’re looking to create a business portal software for your customers and clients, you want to make sure that the software that you choose also offers comprehensive support and has other resources to help you along the way. They may include online forums, tutorials, or dedicated support agents.
#8: Pricing:
Pricing is always a very important aspect and it needs to be. Resources are scarce and you have a lot of places to invest your money. So, you want to make sure that while you should look for existing high-quality platforms, it needs to fit your budget. Notice that most client portal services charge a subscription and you may be billed monthly or annually.
Bottom Line
Choosing the best client portal software doesn’t have to be difficult. Even though you have more than one option in the market like Plutio, Supportbee,or other third party platform, we only reviewed the best ones above.
While you may not be convinced by all of them or believe some aren’t the right ones for your industry or business type, we are sure that Flowlu will comply with all your needs and more. You may read our overall review above or get more insights into what you can expect from their website. From updating workflows to providing tools that allow your workers to collaborate with each other, reduce stress levels, and resolve customers' issues fast, there is only one tool that can serve you as your copilot—Flowlu.
Ultimately, you need to think about a customer portal as more than just some new pages added to your website.
Unlike what you may think, it’s not difficult to build a customer portal. Above, we mentioned the best client portal software in the market. However, if you want to make sure that you’re using the best one, you’ll want to go ahead and try Flowlu.
Overall speaking, whenever your customers or clients are dealing with an issue with your services or products, they can simply go to your client hub and figure out what’s wrong by themselves. They don’t need to wait for answers from you and they’ll be able to solve their problems immediately.
Well, the simple and straight answer is yes, you need a client dashboard. No matter your business type, industry, or size, you want to make sure that you deliver the best experience you can to your customers. And you can do this by having a good client communication portal.
