Shifting to self-service customer support and service through customer portals has a number of benefits to you. However, you aren’t the only one that will benefit from transforming your customer order management to a cloud-based self-service model. You will find that your customers will much prefer it as well, once the benefits are demonstrated. It’s a win-win situation for both you and your customers.
Why Use an Online Customer Portal?
Providing a customer portal for your online order management gives your customers access to important data in a centralized location, 24/7. They can create orders, track pending orders, view order history, check shipping information, and more, without having to call your office or get in contact with your sales reps. With this “information-at-their-fingertips”, your customers are better able to serve their clients.
It also means their orders and questions to you are processed faster and more efficiently. You don’t need to add dedicated customer service representatives for the purpose of answering client questions and manually entering order data. Less manual entry of data results in fewer chances for mistakes. However, if a customer did need to call, your employees can find the information quickly by searching a centralized data-base. Your customers are happy that they can view the information they need, or are able to place orders at any time. You save money in lower support costs without sacrificing quality service.
What Should Your Customer Order Portal Provide?
Keeping all of your information centralized for everyone to access is key which will provide a big benefit. Your customer information won’t be scattered in different departments or split among different employees. Everyone who needs to can access the information at any time.
To make that information useful, your portal should provide search tools that query all of the relevant data and customers should have their own specific order forms with sorting capabilities.
Your customer order management software will provide each customer with their own portal which means you can provide special pricing and discounts to specific customers. Each of your customers will only have access to the information that pertains to them.
The customer portal needs to sync with QuickBooks in order to transform from a manual entry system to an automated system. When a customer creates an order or changes information, it needs to be automatically transferred to your QuickBooks. When you change information in your QuickBooks, such as pricing or inventory, it needs to be updated in real-time to your customer portal. Again, less manual entry, fewer chances for mistakes. Also, there are no longer questions about what information is current and should be available to you and your customers.
Your customer portal needs to be available at all hours, from any location. This transforms your customer order process from one being driven by you into a customer-centric model that gives the customer more control.
Grow Your Business with Efficient Customer Order Management
It just makes sense to transform your customer order system to one that is easy to manage, provides self-service capabilities to your customer, removes manual entry as much as possible, and automates processes by syncing to your QuickBooks. You save money and time, and can better provide for your customers. More importantly, your customer is more satisfied, better able to serve his clients, and more likely to remain loyal to you.
