CRM is a powerful tool. Perhaps the most important example of CRM plugins is a customer portal. While using the CRM, sometimes you might end up overlooking the customer’s perspective. How does CRM affect the customer? Check it out here.

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CRM Portals Through the
Customer Perspective
CRM is a powerful tool. Since its inception, it has
helped many companies gain insight into
customer behavior. CRMs have a specific purpose
and they serve it well. But they have a limited
scope. That is why we need plugins. Plugins
significantly increase the scope of the CRM.
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Perhaps the most important example of CRM
plugins is a customer portal.
New technology can be overwhelming. Because of
this, it is easy to overlook a few details. Ironically,
while using the CRM, sometimes you might end
up overlooking the customer’s perspective. How
does CRM affect the customer? When you think
about it, you’ll find how perfectly the customer
portal fits into this picture.
The core function of a CRM is to facilitate orderly
interactions with the prospects and clients.
However, this is the era of self­managed
customers, who can access the quotes, invoices &
contracts with minimal involvement of your team.
This is your average customer today. And to
appease such a customer, you need a way to give
him role­based access to certain modules of your
CRM. Like a Salesforce customer portal integrated
with CMS will help you materialize this idea and
wrap it up in an elegant package.
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A portal will overcome certain drawbacks while
enhancing other features. To understand how this
works, we must consider the various factors
involved in this process:
• Customer Services: Many companies use
CRM to assist in customer services. You may
consider a call center software to be a good
example of this. Portals take this one step
further by giving access to a well­documented
knowledge base. They let the customer issue
support tickets and allow live chat options
through the portal itself.
• Customer Response: For large companies
with a big database of customers, it was
previously impossible to keep track of
customer feedback. CRM helped to overcome
this challenge to a certain extent.
A portal improves upon it further by keeping
track of your chat history with the customer
so that you can review it when required.
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• Response Time: Giving the customer access
to the knowledge base reduces the need for
you to engage directly. And when you do
need to engage, the ticketing system makes
sure that you deal with the customer queries
promptly.
Additionally, when based on a CMS like
WordPress it gives the customizability that you
need to enhance its looks and charm; highlighting
the simplicity that it is known for. A customer has
access to the following features to customize the
way the portal looks:
• Change the name of the portal, upload a logo,
and choose the records to display on the page.
You may even set and change the theme
color.
• Use templates to make it easier to customize.
• Add a profile picture using the portal.
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All these details add up to a simple and effective
client management system. One may infer that a
SuiteCRM Customer Portal or SugarCRM
customer portal or any customer portal is going to
be an indispensable piece of software in the near
future. Presently, it is undergoing mass adoption
with early­users lauding its simplicity.
It is evident that adopting a WordPress client
management plugin will have a positive impact
on customer satisfaction.
Happy customers make happy companies. Let us
analyze how using this plugin can affect you as a
company.
• Brand Loyalty:
One distinguishing characteristic of great
companies is that they treat customer retention
with due importance. Inculcating this in the
company philosophy leads to long term
relationships with the customers. A CRM plugin
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like this gives you the tools to achieve brand
loyalty.
• Automated Communication
You can address common customer queries by
making the required information available to
them through portals. This is important;
especially when you need to keep the info private
and share it with relevant people only. The
customer portal is an easy solution to this.
• Insight into Customer Behaviour
Modern businesses are built on the premise of
customer behavior. This knowledge can be
leveraged in many ways.
You may base your product research on customer
tastes and needs, or optimize your marketing plan
based on this info.
And that summarizes how a customer portal can
guide your business to greatness. Most online
businesses are opting for some form of portal. As
a result, it is becoming habitual for the customer.
Eventually, they’ll start expecting them and it’ll
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appear to be the most obvious way of customer
engagement. However, you can take advantage of
it right now and position yourself as industry
leaders.
In this way, the CRM customer portal extends the
functionality of a CRM. This improves customer
retention by empowering them and giving them
control.
Customer Satisfaction
The self­managing customer can be of great
benefit to the company. If you map your
customers on Everett M. Rogers' Diffusion of
Innovations, you will find these to be the
innovators.
These are the proactive users that you can
convert into evangelists. This is the machinery
that drives your word­of­mouth marketing.
Therefore, you must consider serving them to be
a privilege.
In fact, you should consider it a privilege to serve
all of your customers. And to treat them in this
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manner, what better tool than a customer portal?
When you put it that way, it seems to be a heavy
software but, in reality, it is quite simple.
One More Thing
An important thing to consider is the adoption by
people who are not that adept in technology.
Though this a minority in today's time, it is still a
large number.
With that in mind, any decent portal will come
with an easy to navigate dashboard that uses
icons wherever possible.
Conclusion
The overall experience of the average customer is
generally favorable to portals as compared to the
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traditional methods that use phone calls and e­
mails to communicate.
A customer can access the information and
address their queries at a suitable time and place
making a Customer Portal the best solution for
customer relationship management.
View Source:
https://www.crmjetty.com/blog/crm­portals­
through­the­customer­perspective/
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