According to one of the surveys by Harvard, 81% of customers like to solve the query by themselves before reaching out to a customer representative. This clearly states that having a customer portal can turn out to be beneficial for your business when you offer what your customers want. Having a self-service portal where customers can resolve common queries by themselves will save their time from trying to contact your support rep. And at the same time save your support reps time from solving basic queries and focus more on complex queries that require more attention. Here are some features that you can add to your WordPress customer portal to make it successful.
Customer Forum
To have an online community in your customer portal is one of the best ways to engage with your customers and clients. It promotes discussions related to various topics, products, and services. It is one of the excellent ways to know what a customer feels about your products and services and what more they expect from you. The customers can receive help from the people who might be facing the same issue. The customers resolving their issues by themselves by interacting with the online community will reduce your support team’s work. If you analyze the conversations then you will get inspiration for new ideas and what more you can do. You can add a link on the customer’s dashboard that takes them directly to the community forum.
Search Option
This is a simple yet effective feature to help customers navigate to the right folder. It will help them find relevant information like knowledge base articles, questions from community forums, etc. They will have results quickly so that they do not have to spend time by going through each category or folder. You can add the suggestion mode in the search bar so that users get the idea if they are searching something similar. You also have auto-corrective mode to ensure there are no spelling mistakes and display relevant search results.
Responsive Layout
There is no second thought that we use our phones more than desktops while purchasing or scrolling the products. So, having a portal that is mobile responsive is what you need. Having a portal that works well in both computers and mobile will give your customers the flexibility of choosing whatever they prefer. You can ensure that the portal loads fast or else customers will leave in-between. And the style should be consistent for the mobile view as well to make both look uniform.
Customizable Dashboard
Dashboard is where we centralize the data from CRM. So, it should have all the important content related to your business on it. This way it will be easier for the clients to quickly navigate to the information. You can configure your layout by targeting specific user groups like customers, clients, vendors, etc. Having all the necessary information handy helps in collaborating with the teams. You can include buttons, task list, images, videos, etc. on the dashboard. The portals have easy drag and drop features to customize the dashboard. You can add the features to the vacant space available on the custom dashboard. There is usually no restriction on the template and you can redesign it as per your preference.
Analytics Tools and Reports
Reports do not lie, they will help you understand the performance of the customers and clients. It will give you the insights on whether all the incoming tickets are being resolved or not. If not, then what are the reasons behind it, so that you can take corrective actions. The resolution time of tickets based on categories will define what queries take longer for resolution and you can find the reason behind it. Thus, corrective actions can be taken quickly with all the data and reports. It also helps you find what is working best for your business and you can design strategy around it and make some profits.
Conclusion
When your WordPress client portal has amazing features like a customer forum where they can discuss what the product and service you provide, the customers will know insights of others and you can know what they are looking for. The search options, responsive layouts, custom dashboard and reports are some other reasons to have a portal for your business to make it even more successful.
