carl
The tech sector in the UK, much like the rest of the world, is rapidly evolving. Between the growing reliance on automation, the rise of AI, and ever more demanding and discerning customers, there’s a lot of expectations for businesses to live up to. Today’s customers want results, and they want them fast. They expect instant answers, 24/7 availability, and intuitive, seamless customer experiences.
That’s a lot to expect! But that’s where client portals come in. Although they were once a niche IT asset for logging support tickets, they’ve now become a major part of modern customer experience. Having a central hub where users can access information, get support, and manage their accounts — all without waiting in a queue or even speaking to a person — is a major boon to companies and customers alike.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at how UK tech companies are using portals to boost efficiency and improve their customer satisfaction rates.
The Self-Service Era
Customer service has changed from what it once was. There was a time when customers waited on the phone to speak to an agent, or even went into a branch office or store to get help. Now, it’s far more common for customers to solve their own problems independently over the internet, before they even reach out to an agent (if they ever do at all).
Research has shown that self-service is now the first step customers take when they have a problem. UK SaaS providers, MSPs, and digital platforms have met this need by integrating scalable self-help solutions. This not only frees up human agents to focus on more strategic or complicated issues, but ensures that customers always have access to information and tools, even when the phone bank isn’t open. In short, self-service isn’t optional anymore — it’s expected.
What Makes a Good Client Portal?
We’ve established what a client portal is — but what does it do? A modern customer portal is more than just a page with a login prompt or a chatbot. A good portal will include features like:
- A ticketing system to categorize and track every customer interaction from opening to completion
- A knowledge base, to let users search guides, tutorials and documentation and resolve their issues independently
- Community forums, so customers can speak with other customers and solve issues collaboratively
- Custom branding, to give users a more personalised touch with tailored user views and controls
- AI-powered automation, using chatbots to shunt repetitive or simple queries to bots that can solve them without the need for human agents
These features not only help the customer experience, but they ease the burden on human support staff by reducing ticket volume, facilitating faster workflows through automation, and improving collaboration across teams (IT, product, customer support). Reporting and analytics tools also make troubleshooting, resource planning, and forecasting much easier, and lets you isolate and resolve issues to help keep your customers coming back.
The benefits of a customer portal are tangible and measurable. There are fewer duplicate tickets and fewer emails to support, unlike a more disorganized system where work can be needlessly duplicated. Faster response and resolution times means happier customers, and higher CSAT and NPS scores likewise.
When deciding on the right customer portal for your needs, be sure to compare and contrast features and pricing plans to make sure you get the best fit for your organization.
Implementing a Portal: A Quick Guide
Rolling out a client portal isn’t trivial, but it also doesn’t mean a full-scale overhaul of your operations on day one. A phased roadmap can help UK startups integrate a portal relatively quickly.
First, define your purpose: purely support, or also billing, account settings, onboarding, more?
Next, choose a platform that integrates with your CRM and chat tools — preferably one that also lets you customize your branding and access so you can create customer roles.
When the time does come to launch, do so with some promotion, both internally and externally, to get your employees up to speed and let customers know about the new features you have available.
Finally, don’t forget to test, refine, reiterate, and expand slowly, so you minimize risk and downtime while slowly scaling up and providing early value to your customers. This is where having metrics and analytics is vital, so you can track adoption rate, resolution time, and more — so look for good metrics features in your customer portal software as well.
Modern customer portals are no longer just a “nice-to-have” feature for companies — they’re a growing necessity for even medium-sized businesses and organizations, and have become a pivotal part of IT service delivery and customer relationships. If your customer experience is suffering, consider making a client portal a part of your arsenal.
