If we look at the past customer service trends, the normal behavior of firms regarding customer service was to develop a separate department whose duty is to cater customer’s queries and complaints. But, with the developing business culture, we can witness a major shift in customer service practices. It is considered to be an attitude rather than a job formality.

Customer Service is not a Department; It is an Attitude

On the customer side buying behavior is also very complex nowadays. They consider a number of different aspects before making a purchase and customer service is one of them. Take a look at the telecom industry; Samsung and HTC two mobile manufacturing giants provide almost same features on their cell phones. But, while deciding which phone to buy, customers give good enough weight to their customer services. Same is the case if we compare Thai airways and Emirates, a big factor which their customers consider before purchasing their tickets is customer service. So no one can deny the effectiveness of customer care. Now question is that how can you enhance your customer service experience for your valued clients?

VTiger 7 Customer Portal

The answer to the previously asked question is VTiger 7 Customer Portal. The purpose of this tool is to make your customers feel that they are part of the family and they owe their own space. Using Customer Portal, your customers can register their complaints, check their purchase history, get answers using FAQ area etc. This tool provides extended interaction between clients and the firm, which creates a feeling in the customer’s mind that the firm really cares about them and value their participation.

Setting up the Customer Portal does not take much of an effort. But on the other hand, its benefits for companies are enriched with customer satisfaction and highly cost effective.

Let’s discuss the setup and configuration of Customer Portal.

Things that Require Special Care while Configuration

Although the process of setting up Customer Portal for your business is not a troublesome one, but still there are some areas in which users make some mistakes. If you want to avoid hassle just consider following points

1. Portal Url: it is the address using which your customers can access your online portal. While choosing URL, make sure it is easy to remember and not so lengthy. Else users will find it hard to remember, which would result in lack of usage of portal by the users.
2. Default Assignee: The person who will look after the tickets registered by the clients, the whole responsibility of managing customer’s complaints registration process through the portal is looked after by default assignee.
3. Contact Support Notification: This tool helps in making your clients aware of when their customer service period ends and they have to renew the subscription if there is any kind of subscription. For example, you set it 20 days before the end date and your customers will be notified 20 days prior to their customer service ending date.
4. Home Layout: what will be the appearance of the Customer Portal to the users? What features can they access using Portal? All of this can be configured using Home Layout.
   • Announcement Widget: This tool is used as a message board; important announcements are pinned on portal using this widget.
   • Charts Widget: This tool is used to display charts on your customer portal. The chart can be of two types; Open Cases by Priority and Cases Resolution Time by Priority.
   • Recent FAQ: This feature helps to show FAQs that are recently used by other users. It saves the hassle of going through all the FAQs as recently visited FAQs are displayed on your screen.
   • Portal Shortcut: Using this instrument you can upload a file that you want to make available for your clients who use the portal.
5. Modules and Fields: You can also use VTiger 7 Customer Portal to make different modules available for the clients. You made a module available for the customers and now you want to hide it? Do not worry at all, it can be done just by making a few clicks. You can grant two kinds of permissions to your customer Read and Write, without write permissions clients cannot make any changes in any module or field.

Always try to remain a step ahead of your competitors, only then you can yield the profits you want. According to a research, it takes about 12 positive experiences to make up for one bad customer service experience. So, make each and every customer service experience count, and to do so, incorporate VTiger 7 Customer Portal in your business today and make your firm’s customer service experience a pleasant one.

You can learn more about the VTiger Customer Portal’s benefits in this article.