What are the benefits of a customer service portal?

Customer support portals offer lots of advantages to both businesses and their clients. The following three benefits are particularly popular.

1. Businesses save time and money

Let’s face it, customer service is expensive. In fact, a 2021 study reported that 1,500 B2B SaaS companies spent an average of 11% of their revenue on customer support and customer success.

Customer care is also time-consuming, so businesses have to expand their service teams as they grow to deliver the kind of high-quality service that will keep people coming back in the future.

Self-service portals cut down on customer support requests, ultimately saving you time and money. They let customers access the information they need and answer questions by themselves. That means spending less time and money on repetitive customer service tickets, streamlining your workflow, freeing up time for higher priority matters, and getting customer questions and concerns addressed more quickly.

2. Customers enjoy the convenience and higher satisfaction

Most of the time, customers don’t want to contact a business’s support department. They don’t want to spend hours on hold or days waiting for an email response. They’d rather access the information they need, figure out their own problems, and continue with their lives.

Online portals aren’t just useful tools for businesses—they’re great for customers too. They give people easy access to useful resources and let them carry out necessary tasks without any fuss.

Customer service portals can also provide customers with added value information like educational resources and free downloads, which certainly increases customer satisfaction.

All in all, people who have a convenient and satisfying customer service experience with your company will be highly likely to keep coming back in the future.

It’s also worth noting that a great customer experience can help set your company apart. As much as 81% of businesses compete primarily on customer experience, so providing top-notch customer care could be the deciding factor on people choosing you over your competitors.

3. Everyone experiences better engagement and a sense of community

At their core, customer service portals are practical tools. They let people access customer-specific information and carry out online actions whenever they like, which is both convenient and efficient.

But they can go a step further than just presenting and receiving information. The best customer portals bring people with similar interests, problems, or circumstances together.

If you integrate elements like community forums or knowledge bases into your customer service portal, you’ll start to see customers interacting with each other and forming communities around your products. That results in a richer brand experience, a more engaged audience, and increased brand loyalty in the long run.