By Allan Alveyra 
According to Capterra, 75 percent of customers want to solve product or service concerns by themselves. This means that many customers now choose self-service support options instead of reaching out to customer support operators. Online portals, which are often provided by businesses or organizations, make this process much easier.
With that in mind, you might want to learn more about online portals is and its benefits. So, here’s a quick overview of online portals and reasons why you should have one.
What is an online portal?
An online or web portal is a webpage that gives users an entryway to information, tools, and links. In other words, it’s a platform that provides users with a single access point to data. Also, imagine a centralized digital hub that engages with your community members. That is what an online community portal is — an all-in-one solution that gathers people in a digital ecosystem.
Online Portal for Business Use
An online community portal isn’t just meant for growing customer engagement. It can do much more. Organizations are now increasingly interested in building their own online portal, because it’s an effective way to map out customer journey and increase profitability. Online portals help companies understand their audiences’ behavior by using methods like calculating customer lifetime value.
CLTV is an indicator of the net profit companies can generate from customers over the course of a business relationship. The longer a customer continues to purchase from a company, the greater their lifetime value becomes.
Community Portal for Schools and Universities
Schools and universities around the globe have introduced student portals to optimize communication among their community. Since there are multiple aspects related to students’ academic life, using a smart solution like a school portal can be a game changer. Most student portals contain information about courses, school programs, schedules, and teachers’ profiles.
In fact, student portals are a “millennial preference.” Students nowadays are fast consumers of online resources. Thus, procedures related to their academics must meet the demands of changing student behaviors. For example, administering online enrollment using a school portal delights students, who prefer to stay inside their homes.
Moreover, a survey made by educations.com says that international higher education marketing and recruitment professionals ranked educational portals as the most valuable marketing investment.
Online Portals for Healthcare Communities
Online community portals are a breakthrough in the medical industry. With the growing complexities concerning healthcare-related information, a dynamic tool such as a web portal is a major advantage. Whether it’s a medical discovery, or a life-saving drug, the most essential information is always readily available on these portals.
An online portal also allows patients and healthcare professionals to interact with each other regardless of their location or time zone.
Online Portals for the Banking and Financial Service Sectors
The banking and financial services sectors have their own share of intricacies when it comes to business operations. With these intricacies follow a need for strong IT solutions that are impervious to cybersecurity threats.
In addition, pressures from the macro-economic environment push financial sectors to digitize services. Not just to reduce risks, but also to design business processes around customers’ needs.
Extending functionality through digital solutions like customers portals has been the most impactful response, thus far. Not only did online portals fulfill customer needs, but it also helped banking and financial sectors design a more robust process. For example, digital banking has become a go-to process for every customer because of its practicality and convenience. By logging into one’s mobile app, banking transactions take only three to five minutes to accomplish now.
Online Portals for Community Engagement
Consumption of large organizational information is a reality to any business or company. But while organizations offer a central place for employees to distribute essential information, the case may be quite challenging for people outside the company. Communication barriers will always be present. Organizing and engaging a community can be a herculean task.
Good thing online community portals make it easier. Offering customers a web portal account gives them greater freedom to utilize content. This in return presents your members with a sense of belonginess and familiarity.
As members of your online community share useful insights, your online portal turns into a seedbed of essential data. And collecting such information is crucial to improving your company’s products and services.
From gathering users’ feedback, to communicating essential data to customers, online portals prove to have absolute value. In that regard, here are some concrete benefits an online community portal can give you.
Building Processes Using Online Portals – Why is it Important?
An essential part of today’s business operations is the digital customer experience. Digital customer experience is the total sum of all online interactions between a customer and a company. It may begin with your company website portal, social media, or other virtual touchpoints. What matters when dealing with digital customer experiences is the perception or impression customers take away after an interaction.
Anyone who wishes to build their business operations using online portals must keep the digital customer experience in mind. Why? It’s because the basic uniting concept of every digital touchpoint is user experience.
When it comes to online portals and the digital customer experience you must keep the following three essential components in mind:
Integration
This allows organizations to unite systems and customer data on the back end. This process significantly reduces the amount of time spent on entering data into reports, applications, and websites. Integration capabilities also provide a single point data entry and storage, which eliminates errors and inconsistencies.
Personalization
Personalization contextualizes experiences using biographical and behavioral data. In other words, an online portal reflects the identity and behavior of users. It should identify and reflect what business unit the user is in, their level, location, and other related attributes.
Consistency
Consistency across different digital touchpoints provides unified systems a shared look and feel on the front end. This also means confusion when it comes to your portal’s functions and features.
Nowadays, the average user must no longer worry about content discovery. Search engines are becoming more adept at providing relevant search results. Plus, the same information sharing capabilities are now offered by different social media platforms. However, one can’t deny that online portals have the same value in terms of applicability and versatility.
So, if you’re looking for a tool that creates a satisfying support experience for customers, considering an online portal would be a great decision.
Why Not Build Your Own Online Portal With Us?
At the end of the day, the use of online portals is simply a representation of changing business models. We are living in an age where customers’ digital experiences and engagements are paramount not only to adding value to one’s brand, but also to establishing a strong online presence.
Combining these values gives your business a clear competitive advantage. Building your operations with an online portal can help your company perform different roles. Some of these roles may include managing data publication and providing self-service options for your customers. Who knows? As digital solutions get smarter and more immersive, an online portal might evolve into something more.
If you’re ready to form your own digital ecosystem, contact Cursum. We’re rendering our services to various international companies to provide them powerful and smart digital solutions. Our solutions help our customers grow their business and communities by transforming knowledge into a great brand. For us, your ideas matter! So, to create a topnotch solution that is tailored to your specific needs, we’d love to involve you in the process – from start to finish.
