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Updated 18/10/2021
Today people expect 24/7 access to the business from which they buy products and services. If your business doesn’t respond promptly to the enquiries of your customers or prospects, then they will look elsewhere. In this article, I will cover a solution to this issue that doesn’t involve hiring 24/7 staffing support, or drinking 10 cups of coffee and staying up all night!Giving your clients access to the information you hold about them promotes self-service, communication, collaboration and integration of business processes. It saves you time spent on delivering information from your system to your customers via email, phone call or meetings, letting you focus on what matters. By providing a self-service customer portal, you can give your clients direct access to your business around the clock, with several clear benefits.
Self-service
Keeping job information centralised allows you to work from the same page as your customer sees. Don’t miss tasks – your team can prioritise time-sensitive work, promoting a quick response. You can apply your SLAs directly to this centralised task list. Do you get swamped by clients calling and emailing you to find out the progress of their work?You can end these chase calls to check on the status of ongoing tasks as your clients can follow-up their enquiries online. You can keep them in the picture all of the time. Do your clients keep losing your invoices or other documentation?With a client portal, you can prevent unnecessary requests for file copies, as clients can download and upload supporting files.
Communication
Any sound client portal system should allow you to interact with your clients through a messaging system, keeping your business flowing. As well as providing a method of direct communication with your clients, you will also get a transparent audit trail of communications sent to you by your clients, as well as those you submit to them.
Staff Management
In the world of B2B, you can give your client’s management team increased oversight of business-wide tasks as they can see all the assignments for their team or broader organisation. You can keep up to date with accurate information about your clients through self-updating of contact details and the addition of new staff members. Self-updating also helps your business to comply with GDPR, as not only are you giving people access to their data, but also the ability to amend any errors in their information.
Integration
With your enquiry management and customer information held within an online client portal, rather than spread across phone calls, emails and post-it notes, you have the opportunity to leverage other technologies. Integrating your online portal system with your CRM, payment gateways, accounts, email listings and management information systems, will enable you to use your data smartly and to reduce errors in transcribing information between systems.
Conclusion
Giving your clients access to your business 24/7 through an online client portal will save you time in responding to requests for information that you can provide directly. You can also save money on not having to hire support staff to cover outside of office hours. Once you gather information in a central location, you can leverage integration to make better use of the data you hold. You will have a transparent communication system, through which you can converse with your clients, leaving a complete trail of any contact. Finally, you can keep your information up to date, while staying compliant with GDPR regulations to give your clients access to their data, and the ability to amend any mistakes. SwiftCase helps thriving businesses, swamped by growing demand, automate and organise, to focus on what matters. Loved by 1000s of users across Insurance, Finance, Legal, Service & Contractor sectors.
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