Customer Success With Salesforce Customer Portal | The Ultimate Guide

Tech writers are in a unique position to understand the products and portals they write about thoroughly. Not only portals but also how self-service changes the approach to business. Writers are also customers, and we appreciate the self-service option. There is no issue with calling up support reps and asking for help, but being put on hold on calls and email replies getting lost in the ether are not fun. Some people prefer solving problems on their own and having control over their activities; it’s seen as a challenge to learn how to undertake intricate problems.

Don’t take my word for it; Statista says 88% of customers go for self-service compared to interacting with customer support reps. What would your solution be if customers wanted self-service as their first line of assistance?

The answer is quite simple: customer success portal. This is a tool that will make it effortless for customers to dig themselves out of the problem they’ve run into. This is a great way for businesses to deliver the promised services more smoothly and complement the customers’ experience; all this without adding to the business costs.

Let’s get into what a customer success portal is and how you can use it.

Customer Success Portal: What is it?

Customer Success Portal is the digital solution of your dreams. It prepares for all your customers’ challenges and problems and supplies them with answers that are dynamic. The work of a customer portal is to provide self-service through a knowledge base that gives out relevant information that helps its users. Its main focus is customer support, and this it achieves with the help centers like Zendesk and Freshdesk.

An added benefit is that this is a gateway that can help maintain customers’ relationships with your business and, on top of that, supports opportunities to share, grow, and connect communities. The Hubspot and Drift communities are good examples of this.

Apple Support is an excellent example of the kind of self-service we are talking about. Users are provided with search tools, which can be personalized using their personalized workflow options. They have shareable links to provide support through a knowledge base, social media, and community. Customer success provides value to your customer while increasing integrity and credit.

Customer Service or Customer Success?

As is in most things, support and success are linked; the result is customer satisfaction. These are two things that are taken as synonymous. Here’s how they are not the same:

• Customer success will offer support and services proactively. Businesses tend to stay alongside the customer throughout the journey, which enhances their overall experience.
• Customer support comes in once the customer reaches out.

Don't forget to check out: Here's How You Can Ease Operations for Your Non-Profit Organization: With a Salesforce Customer Portal

Is Customer Success Portal Important?

Customers have a standard they expect to be met in regard to self-service. Customers themselves are quite tech-savvy and do sometimes solve problems on their own. This leads them to have high expectations from their customer service. Therefore, you need to bring your A-game. Your customer portal needs to be ever-changing, adapting to the changing customer expectations, and should address the urgency in solving problems.

A customer success portal streamlines your work by solving problems, saving time, and boosting your productivity and communication. It does away with needless interactions and entrusts the users to find results on their own. It offers facilities like large file sharing, document sharing, email, access to information, etc. It reduces the churn rate and boosts efficiency. In short, it makes customers’ and agents’ life easy with regard to service and support. It offers everything they potentially need to achieve their tasks. Thus, picking the right portal is of utmost importance.

Customer Success Portal: Adding Value to Your Business

A customer success portal doesn't just automate support. It grants freedom to your customers to experiment with different technologies and tools. It empowers them by giving them instant access to information they may require.

Let's dig into how such a portal attains the desired purposes and goals.

Everything in One Place

A portal is a multiservice solution that links all the data from various channels and displays it in one place. It guarantees that agents and customers don't have to switch between multiple platforms to find pertinent information. With all data incorporated in one place, businesses can make more informed decisions.

Detailed Level Access

The customer portal provides users with only role-specific access, limiting it to only authorized users. Additionally,  it supports multi-factor authentication with social login options.

Dynamic Customer Support

The customer portal offers help that customers may potentially need. Let's say you have an ecommerce business. Your portal will allow users to track order status, view transactions, and more without the need to contact customer support service.

Check out another amazing blog by CRMJetty here: How to Build a Legendary Partnership with Salesforce Partner Portal in 2023?

Engage with Customers

Community and knowledge base promote customer engagement. It allows users to find pertinent information and engage with other customers via community forums. This way, they can help one another by offering solutions, sharing ideas, and giving feedback about the services and products. These forums are a way for businesses to assemble a strong support network.

Self-Regulate Repetitive Tasks

A great customer success portal has features like a ticketing system and workflow, which can be automated to clarify internal operations, which will reduce the support team’s burden. For example, if a ticket is raised,  it should be automatically assigned to the corresponding rep. It should update customers about its status and allow them to look up queries. If there is an article or a ticket with a similar query, the customers should be able to view it.

Boost Agents’ Output

As the basic queries are solved by customers themselves via self-service and troubleshooting, agents can focus more on complex queries. They don't have to go through the usually repeated basic questions -  about the refund policy or changing the password. They can redirect customers to relevant articles and FAQs. When you solve a complex query, it creates curiosity which then enhances productivity.

Make Plans for the Future

During demanding times, a customer success portal helps maintain business continuity while also supporting multiple channels. It accumulates data at touch points and supplies businesses with beneficial insights about sales, customers, marketing, and overall business operations. It helps you take a dicey risk,  maybe one where the chances of earning a profit far outweigh one with a loss.

The Road to Success with CRMJetty

Developing a customer success portal can be effortless or precarious,  depending on your business requirements. They are promptly available solutions that you can integrate with your CRM or have customized if you have particular requirements.

The most recommended path is a Salesforce Customer portal. Terms, features, workflow, UI, and UX are all designed and developed with the customers in mind. As a Salesforce user, you are used to having a powerful tool at your disposal, and the Salesforce customer portal will only add to that.