What is a customer portal and why do you need it

The customer portal is any self-service web page that customers can use to find what they need to solve their problem or answer their questions without directly contacting customer support.

The main reason for interest in customer portals is saving costs: According to the latest comparative data, the cost of solving a customer’s problem via a phone call costs an average of 4600 CZK, in comparison with only 1000 CZK while solving the problem through the customer portal.

In the beginning, customer portals used to be just an offshoot of a company website with a completely different design, another login ID/password, and often with a flavorless user interface. Large companies often had a different portal for every product, each one with a totally different design of user interface, different functions, and a separated login. Today, the self-service is usually well integrated into the company website with a more intuitive design of the customer portal.

While designing a customer portal, one of the key points is deciding what content should be included to satisfy the needs of as many customers as possible without overwhelming them with information, so they would not know where to search. The type of content, which is included, varies in each company depending on what their needs are.

Typical examples of customer portal usage:

• Incident management
• Product documentation
• Knowledge base
• Software update/downloading files
• Online community
• Online training