Customer Portal Solution
Software and Business Overview
Since 2005, ScienceSoft develops customer portals with strong self-service capabilities and industry-specific functions.
What Is a Customer Portal: Summary
A customer (client) portal is a digital environment where customers can submit service requests, get their issues solved, and access a company’s products/services online. Companies from different industries benefit from launching a collaborative space for their clients. Some industry-specific examples are Airbus Helicopters (aviation, manufacturing), Spire Healthcare (healthcare), DSM (agriculture), Parkland Corporation (fuel retailing), Zions Bancorporation (banking).
5 Must-Have Capabilities of Customer Portals
A customer portal solution is an online platform where customers get 24/7 access to your company information and interactions. Regardless of the specifics of your customer relationships, the following feature sets can form the core of your solution.
Domain-specific portal features
Building customer portals for different industries, we at ScienceSoft mind the goals a portal pursues in each case and complement the core functionality with specific capabilities.
Audience-specific portal features
The analysis of the behavior and needs of individual consumers and business clients shows that B2C and B2B types of customer portals will have different goals and functions.
Customer Service Portals Implemented by ScienceSoft
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Sample Architecture of a Customer Portal
On the diagram below, ScienceSoft shows a customer portal solution built with a Progressive Web Application (PWA) technology as it enables convenient mobile experience for customers. Among its clear advantages are the ability to work in low-speed networks and during network breaks, fast website speed and a possibility of home screen installation like with a native mobile app.
- Customer portal + ERP: to avoid manual exchange of information on products and sales transactions.
- Customer portal + CRM: to complement customer information in CRM with the data on a customer’s product/service preferences and customer support interactions.
- Customer portal + ticketing system: to let customers conveniently submit service requests via a portal.
How to Drive Customer Adoption of a Self-Service Portal
Estimating the success of a customer portal is easy – customers eagerly use it as a self-service tool and prefer it to other communication channels (like phone or email). To achieve that, ScienceSoft encourages you to follow several rules:
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Estimate the workload of your customer service first to understand the feasibility of a customer portal launch. As a rule, larger companies see higher customer involvement into self-service while smaller companies can do well with in-person communication channels. |
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Even if you want to launch faster, invest time in UX research and usability testing. This will help keep the focus on the convenience of end users. The ROI of customer portal implementation will be higher if customers prefer the portal to person-to-person interactions to get the required information or address a problem. |
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At the desk or on the go, customers will use a customer service website with the same comfort if the viewing experience is optimal for any devices and screen sizes. There are several ways to achieve that – make a portal with adaptive design that adjusts the website for a screen size and may hide some functionality inconvenient for mobile viewing, get a standalone mobile app, or implement a portal as a PWA. Your portal development vendor will help you choose the best solution. |
Technologies to Build a Customer Portal
Based on our experience in customer portal development, ScienceSoft recommends choosing between two implementation scenarios: a customer portal as a monolithic platform-based or a microservices-based application. Our sample technology portfolios are tailored to customer portals not intended for product/service sales. If you want to read more about ecommerce-focused development, explore our guide to ecommerce portals.
Sample technology portfolio for a platform-based portal
Built on Dynamics 365
Description
- Power Apps portals – used for low-code customer portal setup.
- Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service – used as a ticketing system.
- Microsoft Power Automate – used for portal integration with external systems and for automated workflow creation (e.g., emails triggered by various customer actions).
- Dynamics 365 Customer Voice – used to create customer surveys.
Best for
- Quick portal deployment (about 3 months for portal development).
- Companies seeking for minimum development support after the portal deployment.
Sample technology portfolio for a microservices-based portal
Custom-built
Description
Back end:
- Docker for app containerization
- as app framework
- MySQL as an open-source database
- RabbitMQ as an open-source message broker
- PHP as a programming language
- Symfony, Swoole as PHP frameworks
Front end:
- React/Redux
- Ant as web components framework
- Responsive Design
- Webpack
- JavaScript, HTML and CSS
Data layer:
- Oracle Database
Best for
- Full flexibility in customer portal functionality.
- Iterative development: different functional modules can be developed one by one.
Factors Affecting Customer Portal Implementation Cost
The cost of your client portal software will depend on the functionality you want to provide.
- Customer self-registration procedure.
- Self-service capabilities: submission of customer support tickets and price quotations, booking, online buying, payment transactions, e-forms completion, more.
- Content management capabilities: the diversity of content types you will need to create.
- Customer communication channels to integrate: email and text messaging, phone calling, video calling, live chat, more.
- Advanced functionality: an AI-powered chatbot, sentiment analysis, a tiered loyalty program, and more.
- Back-office process automation: management of customer support tickets (number and complexity of ticket routing and escalation rules), payment gateway integration, order management, integration with business systems (ERP, CRM, etc.).
We estimate the starting threshold for customer portal implementation as $70,000.
Commonly, companies see the return on customer portal investment within one year after the implementation. For example, the case study for a municipal utility company indicates that the very first year of customer portal usage brought a 20% increase in customer self-service involvement and a 65% reduction in call center traffic.
Want to know the cost of your future customer portal?
Launch a Customer Portal with ScienceSoft
Each business has its unique requirements to a customer portal. Our team can help you unlock all the needed capabilities and implement a customizable client portal with due quality and in time.
Customer portal consulting
- Conducting UX research to better understand your customers.
- Choosing an optimal development approach and the right technology stack for your customer portal project.
- Estimating project duration and cost.
- Recommending a risk mitigation plan.
Full-cycle customer portal development
- Making a project proposal based on a thorough business requirement study.
- UX-wise user interface design.
- Platform-based or custom portal development.
- Customer portal integration with business systems according to the planned solution architecture.
About ScienceSoft
ScienceSoft is an internationally present software development and IT consulting company headquartered in the US. Our experience in web portal development relies on 19 years in the domain. We have implemented customer portals for diverse industries including manufacturing, retail, healthcare, logistics, public services, banking, telecoms.