7 Must-Have Features to Build the Best Customer Portal

Create customer onboarding workflows in Blaze

According to a 2022 survey by Statista Research Department, 88% of customers expect a brand to have a customer portal. Capturing customer onboarding information by sending emails back and forth or Google webforms lack the professionalism and seamless experience you want to give customers. Instead, secure customer portals are the best way to launch your relationship with customers. It’s the preferred way for many to communicate and organize their interactions with a brand, but not all customer portals are created equal.

Here are the 7 must-have features to build the best customer portal:

1. Client portal username and password

A username and password is a strong signal for the beginning of your customer onboarding process. You're letting customers know you want to securely store all their information. Once it’s created, your clients can enjoy secure access to a personalized interface with your business. Give customers the option to select "remember me" so when they can log back in automatically next time and complete their onboarding.

2. Signed agreements and important files

Providing easy access to signed agreements and important files solves a common pain point for customers. This feature can include version history for agreements, giving the customers' legal team an easy way to follow the evolution of the agreement and reference terms discussed already. Hosting the agreements in secure customer portals also encourages your customer to return back to your site. Furthermore, customer portals can be a great place to have customer renewal agreements ready for them to review and sign in the future. This added layer of convenience, in today's customer journey, has become an essential part of customer service.

3. Digital payments and billing history

A poor payment or billing issue experience can quickly deter potential and returning clients. Integrating billing information and controls through your customer portal reduces friction and makes your payment process more flexible. Show your customers that you believe in business transparency by offering an easy place to reference their billing history. Allow for customers to update their credit card in their customer portal to also save your customer support team time with fewer billing-related support tickets.

4. Ticket tracking and customer support

Integrating customer support into your client portal can help streamline service requests, automate simple tasks, and connect your client to the right resources. This feature can also improve the quality of support you offer clients by reducing the burden on live customer support representatives. According to a survey by American Express, 60% of US customers depend on self service software for most questions. Your comprehensive customer portal can provide links to your knowledge library on your product. If customers have the same questions, they can easily log onto their customer portal to reference a prior service ticket that already answers their question.

5. Track and save customer onboarding 

Tracking and saving onboarding progress is an essential feature for services that require more information about their clients. When a client can’t save their progress, you risk losing a potential lead. The convenience of coming back to the onboarding process can increase conversions and significantly improve the customer experience. Using progress bars with % completion also is a great way to remind customers they are near completion of their onboarding. Remove the customer's anxiety about not knowing how many more forms or questions they need to complete to start using your product.

6. Add team members and colleagues

If your client is part of a larger team, your customer portal should allow them to add team members and colleagues. This avoids having only one point of contact for purchase orders and service requests, making things a lot less complicated. Integrating teamwork into your customer portal is also a great way to boost its functionality.

7. Brand integration 

Brand integration will keep your image consistent across all of your customer contact points. This promotes trust with clients because it builds familiarity with your image and presents a professional appearance. Your customer portal will likely be the main point of contact clients have with your business, which is why it should be considered the face of your organization.

Customer portals — no coding required

Try these must-have features and more with Blaze, a drag-and-drop software builder that gives you total creative freedom without ever having to write a line of code. Learn about more features you can use when building your customer portal using Blaze.