When was the last time you enjoyed calling a business to ask about the status of your purchase?
You have to set aside time to do so. You have to prepare yourself mentally to be placed on hold, or having to tell your entire story, or being transferred from one department to the next.
And from the business’ standpoint, your team may already be dealing with a long to-do list, sometimes making status calls disruptive.
What’s a person to do? Well, since being able to communicate exactly what’s going on with a service is crucial, you’ll be happy to learn about one of HubSpot’s newest features: The Customer Portal.
What does it do? Why should you care? And why is it the next best thing since cappuccinos and lattes were invented?
Just like the name states, HubSpot's customer portal is a platform where all of the lovely people who’ve hired you can log in and do all of the following:
In a nutshell, it’s an online location where customers can log in to check any information relating to their relationship with your company.
The benefits of the customer portal are many. In addition to keeping your client base happy because they have access to their information whenever they want it, it also provides the following advantages:
Clients aren’t left wondering what the next steps are, or when they can next hear from you. Since they are able to see it all in one centralized location, they are reassured at all times that things are moving along the way they should.
And any time they come up with additional questions, they can simply log in and get their answers.
Yes, your team is there to help customers. However, since the portal provides so many answers right there on the screen, this frees up their time to focus on actually getting the work done.
So you end up with increased productivity and happy customers. It’s a win-win.
Developers are wonderful. They make sure your site looks good and performs well. They know how to use all sorts of features to add functionality to your website.
Yet, sometimes, you just need to create something quickly, and the customer portal lets you set it up without any coding knowledge — freeing up your resources for when you really need to bring in a professional.
Alright. So the customer portal seems pretty practical. But wait. There’s more!
In addition to being easy to set up and increasing your company’s transparency, the feature also comes with the following benefits:
As with everything else on the HubSpot platform, the customer portal can be customized to match your brand:
Add your colors, fonts, your logo, and whatever other images that would make the portal look like it’s an extension of your business.
Any activities in the portal will be available on HubSpot’s CRM platform, giving your team a full picture of the client’s account.
This allows for personalized service and prevents having your customers needing to repeat themselves or give a brief explanation of previous communications with your company .
Having a customer portal lets your customers look at the information they’re seeking exactly when they need it, for as long as they need it. Maybe they have a simple question that requires a quick answer; or they need the data to keep their own team informed as to the status.
Customers are able to look at the status of their support tickets, regardless of where they send the communication from — email, social media, live chat, or form submission.
However, do make sure to associate such conversations with customer tickets in order for them to be available.
If you don’t have a knowledge base yet, now it’s a good time to get it started.
Doing so is yet another way to free up your team’s time by providing customers with a wide array of resources — easy to read content, tutorials, frequently asked questions, infographics, and anything else that’s relevant regarding your industry and the products/services you offer.
Once that’s set up, your customers will be able to access it through their portal.
If customers are short on time — or if they still have questions after browsing through their account content — they can use the live chat feature at any time that’s convenient for them.
It’s quick and easy, and it provides customers with yet another method of reaching out to you.
The most effective way of knowing whether customers are happy with your service is to ask them.
The HubSpot customer portal allows customers to make suggestions and/or leave feedback on the services they’ve received so far. This is also a great way to gain insights as to how to improve the customer experience.
As you can see, the benefits of offering a customer portal are many. It’s also a simple way to keep everyone happy:
Your team, your customers, and even your leads; since letting them know about this feature can be part of your list of selling points. And at the end of the day, those are the things that will help your business grow.