What is a customer portal?

If you’ve ever spent 30 seconds with a four-year-old, you’re familiar with the concept of getting way more questions than you’re prepared to answer. What starts as an innocent conversation about why cows eat haybales can, seven questions later, morph into an esoteric discussion about why we haven’t found life on other planets. 

If you’re in a customer-facing role, that’s probably how you feel at work, too. Customers have lots of questions, and you can’t answer every single one on your own.

Client portals can help you answer these questions and resolve concerns without manifesting an existential crisis—and here, I’ll teach you the ins and outs of how they work.

Table of contents:

Customer portal definition

A customer portal is a secure online platform where customers can access information, review resources, and find answers to their questions. Businesses can create customer support portals to act as a source of truth, and they empower customers to do things like:

• View and manage account information

• Submit and track support tickets

• Place orders, track deliveries, and manage product subscriptions

• Engage with other customers via community forums

• Browse self-service resources like FAQs, how-to articles, and training materials

You can think of customer portals as an all-knowing iPad on a long road trip. Whenever your child has a question on the current state of bovine affairs, they can get their answers from the iPad instead of asking you. This helps you focus on driving and ensures you only need to answer pressing questions—like where the next rest stop is.

Customer portals vs. client portals

Many businesses use the terms “customer portal” and “client portal” interchangeably—and sometimes, they are. But there can be distinctions depending on the use case (and the opinion of the person using the terms).

• Customer portals are often used in B2C applications. They focus on retail-like interactions such as order tracking, self-service resources, product help, and other related support. You’ll often find customer portals with eCommerce businesses, banking platforms, or SaaS companies.

• Client portals are often used in B2B applications. While businesses can use them to serve customers, they’re particularly handy for professional services like law firms, agencies, and accounting practices. Client portals excel in secure document sharing, project management, and analytics.

That said, customer and client portals are often very similar, so you shouldn’t worry about the distinctions too much, as most software on the market can support both use cases.

The most important parts of customer portals 

Customer portals are a collection of capabilities and ingredients that make the perfect customer service dish. Here are some of the most important features that make them so effective.

Self-service portals

Consider a self-service portal the homepage of customer portals: it’s the centralized hub that users can access to resolve concerns, troubleshoot, find articles, submit customer support tickets, and more. Teams can use a portal with search features that help users find what they need quickly, or they can use a portal with AI capabilities like chatbots (more on that later) that can help users navigate information even faster.

You can start your self-service journey with a tool like Zapier Interfaces. With Interfaces, you can build the home page of your portal and centralize all the resources your customers need. Use one of the templates or customize a page to match the style of your brand—from there, you can connect the portal to thousands of other apps to automate your entire support system.

Knowledge bases

Knowledge bases are your organizational Library of Alexandria (without the cataclysmic fire, of course). They should house assets like how-to guides, product tutorials, FAQ pages, and even video content. You should aim to populate it with as much relevant content as possible.

Community forums

Community forums are the digital town squares. In these spaces, consumers can access peer-to-peer support by asking other users questions, holding discussions, and chiming in on other users’ problems. They can be another valuable resource for customers to learn and interact with other like-minded users.

AI chatbots

AI-powered chatbots are virtual assistants that can expedite anything a customer wants to learn or achieve. For example, instead of perusing self-help articles hoping to find an answer to a product question, a customer could simply ask a chatbot. Within seconds, the bot will respond to the customer with a helpful reply and can even source related resources for continued learning.

You don’t need a machine learning certification to set one up, either. With Zapier Chatbots, you can build a free chatbot and directly embed it onto your website in minutes. Start by giving it access to your knowledge sources, add a directive, and tailor the tone to match your brand. From there, enable web scraping to ensure all of your data and information is up to date. The result is an easy-to-use chatbot that can help you streamline support and automate your workflows.

Multiple support options

When customers need to reach out to customer support, they want to be able to do so on the channel they prefer. Customer portals should include access to omnichannel support options that help users create and track their support tickets via phone, email, chat, and any other channel you offer. This creates an interconnected experience that gives customers the flexibility they crave. 

Advanced security

Customer portals store and access a large amount of sensitive data, like personal information, account data, billing information, and more—so you need to be sure your portal is a technological vault. Look for customer portals that have advanced security features, or prioritize implementing security measures if you’re building one from scratch. Doing so can protect your most sensitive information from cybercriminals and unauthorized users.

Benefits of customer portals

Customer portals are powerful resources that can help businesses connect with customers, streamline operations, and even cook the perfect Beef Wellington for Christmas dinner. Here’s everything this technology can accomplish.

Boosted customer service

No customer likes waiting on your support team. Even if you have the fastest first response time this side of the Mississippi, many folks would still rather find answers independently and on their own time. With customer portals, customers can immediately access a wealth of information like troubleshooting guides or order status updates. This keeps them happy and results in a better customer experience.

Streamlined processes

Customer portals can help automate customer support. For example, without a portal, businesses may receive several calls about password resets or other basic account management concerns—which is a huge time suck for your support agents. With a portal, customers are empowered to complete these types of tasks on their own, allowing your agents to focus on more important to-dos.

Increased employee productivity

There are only so many hours in the day, and support agents have a lot on their plates. On any given shift, they could be responding to pressing concerns, following up with customers and technical support, and possibly trying their hardest to halt a product bug that could send your organization into a catastrophic free fall. 

If support agents aren’t tied up responding to basic questions that customers could solve via a portal, that gives them more time to focus on what really matters—like saving your business from extinction.

Reduced support costs

Customer portals can help you reduce support costs and optimize your labor budget. When customers can easily find answers on their own, there are fewer support tickets your agents need to address—meaning you don’t need a conglomerate of agents on duty to maintain a positive customer experience. Also, portals can help reduce the number of follow-up interactions your agents need to perform.

Improved customer insights

Businesses can use customer portals to monitor what their audience is searching for and make improvements—but in a good way, not in a HAL from “2001: A Space Odyssey” type of way. 

For example, let’s say one of your most popular how-to articles is about using a specific product feature. In this case, you may want to consider creating a better onboarding program or developing a better user experience with clear instructions. These types of insights can help you improve your product or service and maintain a quality customer experience.

Personalized experiences

Consumers want personalized experiences—they want curated recommendations and information that seems like it was created just for them. 

Businesses can use customer portals to create these interactions—for example, including “recommended reading” at the end of self-service articles based on the customer’s search history and past activity. This can help your customers find relevant information and make their lives easier.

Challenges of customer portals

Customer portals aren’t all sunshine and rainbows; you need to execute a few key tasks and apply a generous amount of elbow grease to turn them into well-oiled customer machines. Here are some things teams typically trip up on.

• Customer adoption: Portals won’t do you any good if your customers don’t want to use them. Increase adoption by making your portal easy to use. Also, make sure they know about it—consider posting on social media or sending an email to your customers when you first promote your portal. This can help you educate them on its value and how it can improve their experience.

• Employee adoption: Your portal won’t succeed if your employees can’t access it effectively, either. It should be linked and integrated with the tools your team uses daily to make it easy for them to interact with it and support customers.

• Data organization: Customer portals expose your business to a tremendous amount of data: customer information, support conversations, internal help documents, and, quite possibly, a map of the location of the Ark of the Covenant. If you can’t store and access this information easily, you could be swimming in data—defeating the purpose of an efficient customer portal. 

• Automation: Customer portals without automation are like stopping at first base when you could’ve easily made it to third. Automation can help you streamline internal processes and customer communication even further. As an added benefit, it can also make for a better user experience.

Create a secure customer portal with Zapier

The dreaded “why” can plague any business, road trip, or family gathering. That said, the right customer portal can help organizations and parents alike successfully answer those never-ending questions. 

With Zapier, you can create a customer portal with Interfaces—a no-code app builder that lets you create custom forms, client portals, and internal tools. From there, you can connect your favorite apps to stay expertly organized and one step ahead of customer concerns.

Get started with one of these client and customer portal templates.

Customer portal FAQ

Still have a few questions about customer portals? Here are a few more answers. 

What is another name for a customer portal?

Businesses often use “client portal” as another name for a customer portal. You can use the terms interchangeably, but customer portals specialize in B2C interactions, while client portals are better suited for B2B and service-based businesses. 

How do you create a customer portal?

There are several ways to create a customer portal, but the general steps are as follows:

• Identify goals: Select what’s most important to you when building a portal and keep those goals in mind while moving forward. It can help target specific SaaS KPIs you can measure over time.

• Use software: Partnering with the right software makes the portal creation process easier. You can try Zapier Interfaces to get started, or look for dedicated customer portal software.

• Design the interface: A good portal creator should have pre-made templates you can use and edit to build a portal with the features your customers need right out of the box, while others may require you to design them yourself. 

• Customize and integrate data: Upload your logo, branding, colors, and relevant data so they match your company style guidelines.

• Test before launch: Ensure there are no hiccups by testing the software with your internal team before unveiling it to the public.

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