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. 

Types of Salesforce Portals

Difference between Customer and Partner Portal

What is Salesforce Customer Portal?

How to Enable Salesforce Customer Portal?

How to Enable Customer Portal for Contacts

Salesforce Customer Portal Features

Limitations of Salesforce Customer Portal:

About CRMJetty:

This Blog is Originally posted here; https://www.crmjetty.com/blog/salesforce-customer-portal/ 

Website owners use self-service portals widely. With them, you can provide better support services to your customers. It is a critical part for any company as customers might need it anytime when using your services/products. And with portals it becomes easier than ever to assist them on-time.

Let's see how self-service portals can make your customers' life much easier:

Thanks to technology, most of our operations are dependent on technology. Whether it is shopping, whether it is for clothes, furniture, medicines, food, or electronics, customers prefer online stores over going to an actual shop. This has made it all the more necessary to provide the support they need.

For instance, if you are a store owner of any fashion brand, your website has all the information about clothing items, discounts, new trends, available sizes, etc. And this store is global. Hence it might be difficult to provide support across time zones. You have to hire support staff that can work according to all time zones. This can end up being expensive. A portal, on the other hand can be accessible 24/7 365 days without much effort from the support staff.

Your self-service portal helps you to keep up with your customers' needs. They also help you provide them the support they require for any product. Additionally, it provides a knowledge base where you can share information they actually need.

Such type of features help you to serve your customers better, leading to better customer satisfaction and retention:

Secure Sign in:

Security is essential when it comes to your customers' data. Therefore, a twostep verification process limits hackers from getting access to accounts. If you use CMS based portals, they should not store any information.

Personalized Dashboard:

Users can get personalized dashboard and can know about their order summary, track orders, see their wish lists, etc.

Knowledge Bank:

This feature helps you to publish articles and FAQs. FAQs can mention the details of your product, which will help your customer understand your product in a better way. The purpose of this feature is to provide your customers with knowledge and clear their doubts regarding your product. While developing this feature you also need to make sure that your users can easily navigate your website and get exactly what they're looking for.

Communication management:

With such a portal, your support staff doesn't have to spend all of their time on calls and answering emails repeatedly. Knowledge base and the ticketing system of a portal can easily help customers effectively, and reduce the redundancy of their work, significantly.

Overall, this helps customer support team work more efficiently. Customers will be approaching your support team less because you will be providing them with the knowledge of your products. This, in-turn assures that they attend to lesser customers who cannot resolve their issues with the provided tools, and solve their issues patiently.

If you are looking for such a solution for your business, there are portals based on CRMs such as Salesforce self-service portal, Dynamics 365 portal, SugarCRM portal, etc. You can choose the portal on the basis of the CRM your company uses.

Self-service portals are truly the necessity for the current ecommerce market, and if you are looking for an enterprise solution, look no further than salesforce client portal to fulfil this need.

Source: https://www.sooperarticles.com/business-articles/business-ideas-articles/4-features-self-service-portals-better-customer-service-1746083.html