The best way to provide support to your B2B customers with little interaction from you is through self-service software. This puts more of the control in your client’s hands, allowing them to get the solutions they need when they need them. Not only does this take some pressure off your in-house support team, it gives your customers a lot more freedom. This results in a better customer experience, if done correctly.
When it comes to self-service functionality, ease of use is the most important element. Your system must be user-friendly and provide clients with the most up-to-date information needed to answer their questions. It should also operate smoothly to avoid user frustration. There are some things you can do on your end to make this happen. Let’s look at a few ways to ensure a user-friendly experience through your client portal.
Keep Growing Your Content
If you’re providing clients with the opportunity to find answers to questions on their own, it’s important you always keep your content up to date. This means the resources in your client portal should always be evolving. Make sure you stay on top of changes to your product and tailor your content to represent any developments to the service you provide. The last thing you want is client frustration resulting from outdated or irrelevant information. You should also consider incorporating videos, tutorials, or infographics into your client portal.
Search Functionality
When it comes to customizable customer support software, ease of use is the most important feature. Having quality search functionality can help achieve this. A client should be able to search for a topic and get relevant results immediately. They shouldn’t have to sift through pages upon pages of search results to find what they’re looking for. Consider tagging pages in your client portal with relevant keywords to ensure your clients get well-filtered results and can find the information they need quickly.
Consider an FAQ Section
A great tool for delivering user-friendly solutions is with an extensive FAQ section within your knowledge base. This allows your clients to get information on a wide range of topics they would usually go to your support team for. To ensure your FAQ section is effective, track the most frequent questions and problems your support staff handles. You can then turn it into highly-informative content your clients can access themselves. Consider creating a list of the most popular FAQs to streamline the process even more.
Mobile Optimization
Today, it’s important your customer portal functions well across all platforms, including mobile devices. Your customers should not only get configurable customer service, they should be able to access it from anywhere. This is increasingly important, as mobile use has now surpassed desktop. If your portal isn’t optimized for mobile use, there’s a good chance it will get used less by your clients.
Your client portal is there to provide customers with a better customer experience, but it can’t do this if it’s not user-friendly. Make sure you’re taking every possible step to provide a logical portal your clients will be happy to use. PhaseWare provides customizable customer support software for B2B entities looking to deliver the best customer experience possible. Contact us for more information.