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.