What thought/brand crosses your mind when you think about CRM and portals? 

For us, it's always Salesforce. Not because they are in the industry for long and are widely popular. But they understand customers' pain points and needs. They also understand the business requirements and what solution can help them achieve profits. Salesforce knows the market. They launch products that would enhance customers and clients' interaction. They bring in products that complement their CRM. Mostly, those products are portals and communities. 

If you know about Salesforce or have used it, you might know about Salesforce Customer Portal and the other types. You might be aware of their functionalities like that of a Salesforce Client Portal.

However, sometimes they can raise a question like which one to choose? 

Should you go with a customer based or a partner one? 

Hence, in this article, we'll discuss two types of Salesforce Portal, i.e., Customer and Partner. We'll also help you choose one that's right for your organization. 

Salesforce Customer Portal

Salesforce Client Portal is an interface that helps your customers/clients solve their issues about your products/services. 

As an organization, you can create a custom solution for your customers with features like ticket generation, knowledge base, and so on. You can include sections, information, modules based on your requirements.

If you go for this solution, you can provide your customers - omnichannel support, easy integration, and an online forum. Besides, you can provide 24/7 support without any extra resources. Also, it can eliminate the drawback of having customers in multiple time zones. 

Salesforce Partner Portal

Partner portal allows your partners outside the organization to log in to Salesforce. It helps companies create indirect sales. Here, the partners have limited access to the interface and can only view the modules they have access to. 

With the help of PRM, companies can create, manage, and handle sales. They can invite partners to manage, track, and analyze campaigns, sales, and more. 

The benefits of using a partner portal include efficiency in the sales funnel, increased ROI, and data retrieval from anywhere, anytime. It means partners can access the data and insights while on the go. They can share documents, reports, and so on. 

Salesforce Client Portal V/s Partner Portal

Let us see what makes one better over the other. 

• Purpose

A customer portal aims to solve queries and issues without interacting or asking for a representative's help. Partner’ shows partners with leads and sales opportunities. 

• Audience

A customer portal is for end-users whereas partners one are for salespeople or third-parties. 

• Access and Cost

A customer solution is easy to access. They may or may not have advanced features as their basic purpose is to solve queries. Partner solution has access to core CRM features. Besides, it requires additional features to plan sales campaigns. And so it is expensive. 

• Role-based Access

In a partner solution, you can provide your partners with role-based access. For example, they can access sales reports but not invoice reports. This is not the case with the Salesforce customer portal. 

• Knowledge 

Salesforce customer solution has a huge knowledge repository to help customers solve their queries. The partner one may or may not have such a huge knowledge base. 

What You Should Choose? 

A solution that meets your company's requirements. There's a thin line between these two solutions. However, both have their own set of uniqueness and peculiarities. 

If you want a solution to solve your customers' problems, manage their activities, then go for a customer one. But if you want a solution to manage your partners, then go for a partner one.

That's all for now. 

If you still need guidance in choosing one, talk to a portal development team. They will guide you in the right direction. 

Also, you can leave a comment here. We will try to help you in every way possible. 

When was the last time you visited a travel agency office to book your travel ticket? Or to understand holiday packages to pick from? Well, I am sure it was a long time back when the online travel business was in its nascent stage. This was a time when it wasn’t widely accepted and popular because people had apprehensions about such transactions being fraudulent.

Well, that time has passed and the online travel business is a thriving industry today. Big players like Airbnb, Expedia, Booking.com, etc., have revolutionized the travel industry. They have made online travel services reliable and secure and therefore gained people’s trust and support. 

After a drop in 2020 due to COVID-19, the online travel agency sector worldwide is forecast to snowball again. According to Statista, it is forecast to touch $820.18 bn by 2023. It is clear that the online travel business is a booming industry and will continue to be so. 

Rising to the occasion, even small travel agency owners are also looking to go online. For them, an online travel portal can be an ideal fit. It is because it lets them manage their agents, partners, and customers centrally and efficiently. 

If you also run a travel company or are looking to start one, this post is for you. In this post, you are going to learn about the importance of an online travel portal in detail. You’ll also know the features you must seek in a travel portal. 

Benefits of an Online Travel Portal

A travel portal based on your CRM can help manage your travel business easily. For example, a SuiteCRM customer portal for your travel business would be suitable if you use SuiteCRM. And Salesforce portal for Salesforce-based organization, and so on. 

• Reduced Running Costs

If you run a travel company, hiring several travel agents to explain tour packages and booking tickets may be costly. Instead, a SuiteCRM customer portal or any other portal for your travel business can save you expenses. 

Moreover, you can also cut down the effort of maintaining records of all costumes in spreadsheets. This is because you can view all your customers’ and agents’ details centrally and manage them better with a travel portal. 

• Real-Time Access

A travel portal provides real-time access to all details like prices of tour packages, hotels, rental services, flights, etc. to your customers. Customers can also vet and compare the prices of hotels and packages during peak season and normal times. It helps them make a more informed choice of a tour package, hotel, etc.

• Customer Care Support

A travel portal helps customers communicate and convey issues easily via a chat or call option. This helps customers get quick solutions to their travel-related issues or answers to queries. 

They can also get help in selecting the right package for their tour plan via customer care support. This way, a travel portal eliminates the need to call or visit a travel agency office for every small issue or query. 

• Enhanced Transparency and Convenience

An online travel portal helps display accurate fares with any hidden costs. This helps build customers’ trust in your company and connect with you more. A complete comprehensive breakdown of applicable charges brings more transparency. 

Besides, booking tickets and packages online is convenient. Customers don’t have to visit any office or branch to book their tickets, hotels, or rental services. They can do it all right from within the portal. Using a portal for this also helps get a much clearer view of comparison metrics like pricing, amenities, etc. This saves both their time and money and enhances their experience. Similarly, customers can also easily cancel or reschedule a booking without calling the company’s office or visiting there. 

All this helps takes customers’ convenience, and booking experience, to the next level. 

• Large Variety of Options

An online travel portal helps gain access to a large list of hotels, rental cars, flight or bus tickets, and tour packages. Customers can get numerous options to choose from unlike in the case of an offline travel agency. 

All this is not feasible with a travel agent due to time constraints and limited knowledge available on the internet. 

Features to Look for in a Travel Portal

The travel portal you pick should be easily accessible to the admin, agents, and customers. 

For Admin

As the business owner and admin, you should have control over the complete management of your customers and agents. For that, there are a few admin features below that you must look for when picking a travel portal:

• As an admin, the travel portal should allow you to view, manage, and update customers’ booking details on the fly. 

• You should also be able to manage hotel bookings easily and efficiently from within the travel portal. The portal should provide a centralized view of all bookings to help you get better visibility and avoid any errors.

• There should be a built-in process for the online identification of customers within the portal. It will help you avoid the hassle of manual identity verification after check-ins. 

• The portal should allow you to manage tour packages and their details like prices in real-time. You should offer the best tour package recommendations based on your customers’ preferences and budget. 

For Agents

If you provide an online travel service that supports individual travel agents and associates; your travel portal should have the following features:

• Individual hospitality agents and associates should be able to manage their commission for every booking. The portal should also let them track total bookings and negotiate the commission to pay to you. 

• The portal should let travel and hospitality associates and agents implement the credit systems for customers. It will help increase repeat bookings and expand the customer base. 

• The portal should also facilitate offering discounts on bookings for agents to attract more online bookings. This way, they can also adjust the commission fee according to the overall profitability of your company. 

For Customers

Last but not least, the travel portal you pick should be user-friendly for your customers.

• The portal should make the booking experience seamless for customers. It should let them check for the availability of travel tickets on specific dates and book them. 

• There should be a choice of multiple payment options to book. The portal should also provide the option to save a payment method for future bookings for fast transactions. 
• There should be an exhaustive list of hotels, ratings, charges, and facilities displayed. Comparison and filter options should be there to allow customers to vet and pick a package carefully.

• Your travel portal should let customers view travel booking history and update booking details. They should get to update, cancel, or reschedule their bookings without hassle. 

 Launch Your Travel Portal with CRMJetty

 If you own a travel company and are looking for a travel portal, we’ve got you covered. Our development team can help you develop a travel portal based on your CRM. 

 We provide ready-to-integrate industry-specific SuiteCRM client portal, Salesforce portal, WordPress portal, etc. If you want to expand your existing portal’s capabilities, we can help you with that also. We can discuss your portal requirements, analyze the feasibility of development or customization, test limitations,  and deliver the final portal. 

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Customer satisfaction is one of the top priorities of all businesses. To enhance customer experience, there should be a way to enable them to serve themselves. Customers and clients should be able to find the required information or solve their problems before seeking help. This is where a customer portal comes into the picture. If you are a business owner, you should pick the best client portal software suitable for your business requirements. 

In this post, we’ll walk you through the advantages of a customer portal. We’ll also explain how we can help you build the best client portal software for your business with our portal development services. 

Benefits of a Customer Portal

• High Levels of Customer Satisfaction 

A customer portal helps personalize the customer experience by letting you address each customer by their name at the time of log-in. By providing easy access to the information they need, you can engage them better. 

You can let customers view their history of product purchases or past service subscriptions. Besides, they can also access the knowledge (articles, posts, FAQs, etc.) they need to solve their problems. You can also analyze the most common problems and curate your content to address them.

This way, the right and best customer portal software contributes to increased customer satisfaction. 

• Enhanced Security

As the admin, you can control the access to various entities in the portal. You can decide on the entities you let your customers access. You can also provide limited role-based access to different users within your organization to upkeep security. 

• Reduce Operational Costs

Resolving every query of your customer or client over calls and emails can be both tedious and costly. Instead, if you pick the best client portal software for your organization, your customers can self-address their common issues. Your support team can focus on resolving major issues of customers rather than minor and common issues. This, in turn, increases efficiency and reduces operational costs. 

Why Choose CRMJetty to Build the Best Client Portal Software?

At CRMJetty, we can help you build the best customer portal software that suits your business requirements. Our customer portal has a number of features that can benefit your organization. 

With Product Catalog and Services Display, you can display your products and services to your customers. You can also enable your clients and customers to reach out to you easily anytime via chat, tickets, etc. You can create different customer groups on different criteria to see particular prices and make them feel valued. 

The integrated payment gateway lets your customers make purchases via payments right from within the portal. You can also analyze the portal data to find out what the customers are looking for in general. The tickets and cases customers generate can help you get insights into customers’ most common issues. 

Last but not the least, we can help you build a customer portal as an extension of your CRM. Or we can also develop a web-based portal independent of the CRM. Both ways, your security stays intact with the database on your server only. 

In short, we provide the best customer portal software development services you need for your organization. 

Get Best Client Portal Software for B2B and B2C 

There are basically two types of portal software - one for B2B and the other for B2C.

We provide portal development services for both types of portals.

If you run a B2C business, you need to provide access to your specific CRM entities to your customers. The requirements change depending on the type of industry. In case your requirements are generic and you don’t require many custom modules in CRM, we can help you out. We provide little customizations in our portal and get you the best customer portal software. 

If you run a B2B business, the audience you need to serve is smaller. However, you would need to allow your business partners to access quotes, purchase orders, invoices, meeting schedules, etc. We can provide customizations as per your business requirements and ready your B2B portal. 

Whether you are looking for a customer portal for your B2B or B2C organization, we’ve for you covered!

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More About CRMJetty: Service Models and Industries We Serve

We aim to provide you with the best client portal software for your business. We provide portals for all major CRMs - Salesforce, Sugar CRM, Suite CRM, and Dynamics CRM. We develop portals for Banking & Insurance, Education, Healthcare, Legal, Manufacturing, Pharma, Services, and several other industries. 

In most cases, we deploy one of the three service models based on clients’ requirements.

• Existing Customer Portals

If you require a customer portal without several special requirements, you can pick from our ready-to-integrate portals. We provide readily integrable portal plugins for SugarCRM, Suite CRM, Salesforce, and Dynamics. They all have cutting-edge customer portal features that you can deploy to enhance your business operations. 

• New Development

If your business logic is very different and requires more customization, we can help you out. Our team notes down your requirements, works out customizations, and develops the best client portal software to fit your business. 

Our developer team has vast hands-on experience in:

• Front-end technologies including HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, etc.

• Backend technologies including CorePHP, CakePHP, etc.

• CMS technologies, including WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc.

• Cross-Platform technologies including Ionic, Xamarin, etc.

Hence, you can stay assured of the best client portal software development services with our team. 

• Updates on Your Existing Portal

In case you want, we can provide update services as well for your existing portal. 

We can provide repair and maintenance services for your old portals. We can test your portal and fix bugs, enhance security, and help protect your data. We can also help you with migration to the latest technologies to facilitate easy maintenance. If you want us to re-develop your current solution and change its architecture, we can do that. 

We run feasibility analysis, define the solution, develop and test the portal, integrate it, and provide training and support throughout. 

All in all, we can upgrade your portal to the latest version with all the features. 

Ready to Deploy a Customer Portal for Your Organization?

A customer portal is a key to enhancing customer experience and increasing their satisfaction. 

If you are also searching for a feature-rich client/customer portal for your organization, you are at the right place. With CRMJetty’s team by your side, you are sure to get the best client portal software for you. Besides, you can avail of integration, training and continuous support throughout.

So far, we have developed portals for clients from over 25 countries. With 14+ years of experience in the portal development industry, we have accomplished over 70 custom portal integrations. With a proven track record of 1200+ completed projects, we assure you of the best-in-class portal development services. 

We can take your business to the next level with an engaging customer portal!

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Websites are the face of your business but maintaining that face requires a customer portal. Simply having customers be interested in your business is not enough. You have to have a way to be able to solve their issues, assist them and retain them in, long term. 

Dynamics 365 customer portal can do that when you a 1000 customers and when you have 100000 customers. For you to run your business, you need tools that can bring you this much versatility and scale.  

A great website, portal, or business needs much more than just good design. It needs a design that is equally functional. Dynamics 365 customer portal can give you that functionality with features like secure sign-in; roles-based access, drag and drop page builder, entity management, ready to use widgets and more.

What is a Dynamics 365 portal?

Dynamics 365 portal that is built on Dynamics CRM has an advanced content management framework. This framework allows you to surface expose and capture customer data. This tightly integrates with your customer data in Dynamics CRM, a robust, scalable, configurable platform that allows you to automate business processes and manage the entire customer life cycle.

It provides functionalities like customer self-service, community forums, partner engagement, employee self-service, etc. A Dynamics 365 portal can make your support tasks much easier. An often-misunderstood concept of a portal is that it is useful mainly at the end customers' end, but it is equally useful for the business that uses it. Support employees get their work in order and can become extremely efficient in handling customer issues. 

Dynamics 365 portal can be configured with powerful features that especially work for your business requirements. Let's look at a few benefits: 

Benefits

• Improves communication between customers, partners, and other relationships.

• Displays information from different sources in one place.

• Helps users to access information when they need it in a secure manner.

• Increases the revenue opportunities.

It helps external customers to view and create data on the company's environment, regarding their details, etc. The Dynamics 365 customer portal can give a customer access to their entire profile that your company has for them. This means they have access to their contact information, and they can easily update it, as well as access to their purchase history, knowledge base, and more.  

Who can use the customer portal?

• The company that wants to communicate order processing information like order status or accounts information from their Supply Chain Management system to enterprise customers.

Online stores that want to scale up and bring a more coherent experience to their customers can opt for a portal. The customer portal is the right complement to a website as it helps address things that a website or webstore cannot accommodate.  

The best part about a customer portal is that the Dynamics CRM customer portal can synchronize right with the CRM, making your management tasks a breeze! 

Role-based access makes the portal simple to use, no matter who is using it. Customers can get their individual profiles; employees can get a neat dashboard to keep up with their tasks and customer queries. The portal aims to simplify and streamline the interaction between employees and customers, and it does so by helping you employees put their best foot forward.  

End Words

Dynamics CRM customer portal can help make your management tasks simple, whether it is customer management or backend functions. You can also get easy to configure portal solutions for your partners and suppliers that can help you streamline all your communication and work with them. Portal solutions give a unique platform where all your business needs can come together to function cohesively so you can focus on things beyond management. 

Summary

This article provides details about the dynamics 365 portals. This also gives information about the customer portal on how it works and which organizations can use it.

Covid-19 started and disrupted everything. It changed our normal, outing habits, shopping habits, and more. 2020 is about to end and here we are trying to adapt to the new post covid era.

It has changed the way we shop and the way business runs. This year in March most retail store owners had to close their shops because of the pandemic. And since then many things have changed for you and your customers.

Many people started to opt for online shopping and this made online businesses huge profits whereas retail owners a huge loss. Let’s see some of the major issues retails shop owners face:

• Closing all shops:

A major issue the pandemic brought was closing all the retail stores. It took away lots of opportunities for the daily earnings of shopkeepers as well as employees. Many companies were not able to even provide basic support to their employees. The sudden lockdown across the globe helped in decreasing the carbon footprints but also affected the revenue of the retail store. 

• Lost touch with customers:

Another issue which businesses face is losing touch with customers. Shops are closed and one needs to stay indoors come what may. This made it very difficult for shop owners to come up with business continuity plans, serve their customers, and be in touch with them. Additionally, this also made customers lose trust in businesses and hardly buy anything from in-store shops.

• Challenges of taking the business online:

This is one of the biggest issues that many businesses faced. Finding the right technology partner, taking the entire inventory online, building websites/apps, etc. all these things are challenging and takes a lot of time to make your presence online. Many retail owners don’t know how to do it and whom to reach out to.

• Bad customer service:

After all the hard work you finally took your business online but still struggled to serve customers. All these struggles result in having bad customer service. And bad customer service results in losing your customers.

• Lack of faith of people in purchasing things in a person:

Now customers are less likely to step into stores and make any purchase. And as a business owner, it becomes difficult to get customers in-store and purchase. They are very likely to prefer online solutions for their safety and convenience.

But, the post covid era has helped a lot in understanding new ways to keep the business going. So, now let’s see how you can open the retail stores in this post covid era:

One of the biggest examples is from Apple:

“We’re also taking some additional steps in most places. Face coverings will be required for all of our teams and customers, and we will provide them to customers who don’t bring their own. Temperature checks will be conducted at the door, and posted health questions will screen for those with symptoms — like cough or fever — or who have had recent exposure to someone infected with COVID‑19. Throughout the day, we're conducting enhanced deep cleanings that place special emphasis on all surfaces, display products, and highly trafficked areas.”

There are some of the basic and first step solutions to restart your business and gain your customers' trust back:

• Curbside pickup:

You can provide your customers with this exclusive feature right inside your retail customer portal. Your customers can select the date, time, and store location. At that specific time, your employees can go to the parking area and provide them with all their products. This requires less contact, saves everyone’s time, and helps your business to work smoothly.

• Scheduled delivery:

Let your users select their preferred date and time for the delivery. This again will be a win-win situation for you, the customers, and the delivery person. The delivery person doesn't need to do anymore back and forth to the customer's place nor do customers need to wait the whole day to receive their delivery. Hence, it saves time, fuel, and helps you provide over the top customer service.

• Provide multiple delivery options:

Provide your customers with multiple delivery options like curbside, in-store pickup, or home delivery. Customers can select which delivery option is comfortable for them. You can provide them this feature either on every product page or during checkout. Provide more ease while shopping without thinking much about delivery options. This will help you to retain customers and also attract new ones.

• Online payments:

In the post covid era, it is better and also recommended to avoid cash on delivery to avoid transmitting the virus. Keeping the safety of your delivery person, customers, and provide your customers with online payment. Now, using the Dynamics CRM customer portal for retail you can integrate an online payment gateway for your customers. Let them link it with their bank accounts and allow them to make an online payment.

• Maintain customer directory:

Maintain a directory of your regular customers so you can send them exclusive offers and promotions. You can send them special offers and promotional offers directly from the Dynamics CRM customer portal for your retail business.

Cater to them, make them feel special with your services, and keep them coming back to your store.

• Manage invoices:

Your Dynamics 365 customer portal can handle invoice generation. Rather than printing bills and sending them to each customer, you can show them invoices of their purchased products directly in the portal or send them via email. This helps you to provide all the detailed information to your customers and also do your bit for the environment.

• Limit people in store:

Limit the number of people allowed in the store. This will help you to maintain social distance and gain customer’s trust. Many retail companies have started doing this and it has helped them to get their customers back in the shop.

Conclusion:

This year has been tough on all of us in some way or another. But, how to find a way from it, move ahead, and grow your business is the key to success. Implement these steps and use the Dynamics CRM customer portal to its full potential to move ahead in your business, gain your customer’s trust, and try to adapt to the new normal.