A customer portal for your company: what it does, which screens it has and when it pays off

What a customer portal is

A customer portal is a website a customer enters with their own login to see their own orders and jobs, documents, invoices and dates. They check what stage a job is at. They download an invoice. They place the next order or log a new job. No call to the office and no waiting for a reply to an email.

On your side the portal shows what you already have in a system, in a version for the customer. If the data lives in a spreadsheet today, the spreadsheet becomes the first part of a system, and the portal shows it to the customer. The customer sees only their own data, and only what you choose to show.

How to tell you need one

• Customers call to ask about status. Someone picks up, looks it up, calls back. A few of those calls a day can take an hour that moves nothing forward.
• You email invoices on request. A customer writes “please send the March invoice”, someone searches, attaches, sends. A month later, the same again.
• You answer the same questions. When is collection, how much is left to pay, what is the lead time. The answer is in your system, but the customer has no access to it.
• Regular customers order by email or phone. The order waits until someone picks it up, and the customer does not know whether it arrived or when it will ship.
• Quotes get accepted in email threads. A week later nobody knows which version of the quote was last and whether the customer accepted it.

If you recognise two of these five, a portal will give you back the time that goes today into handling requests the customer would sort out alone.

Which screens a customer portal has

A portal is made of modules, meaning self-contained parts that can go live one after another. A typical portal has these:

Login and accounts

The customer gets an invitation and sets a password. A customer company can have several people with different rights: the owner sees invoices and the balance, an employee places orders, the bookkeeper sees documents only.

Orders, jobs and statuses

A list of the customer’s orders or jobs with the stage each is at. We define the stages together and name them the way you talk about them in the company. The customer sees the date and what has happened since their last visit.

Documents and invoices

Invoices, confirmations, contracts, reports. The customer downloads them alone, at any hour. An invoice appears in the portal once the accounting package issues it.

New request or order

A form that checks the fields as you go: missing address, product unavailable, wrong number. The order goes straight into your system and gets a number the customer can see.

Notifications

Email or text when an order or job changes stage, when an invoice appears or a quote awaits approval. The customer does not have to enter the portal to know something has changed.

Online payments

The customer pays an invoice or a deposit by card or bank transfer from the portal. The payment links itself to the order or job, so nobody hunts for it on a bank statement.

History

Everything the customer has ordered, requested and paid, in one place. Repeating a previous order takes two clicks.

How these screens look in specific industries is on separate pages: a B2B portal for wholesalers and distributors, order status online for repair shops and service companies and a custom online booking system.

What the portal gives the company and the customer

For the company, the portal takes away repeat requests. Status calls stop, because status is in the portal. Invoice requests stop, because the invoice is in the portal. Orders from regular customers reach the system exactly as the customer placed them, so both sides look at the same list of lines. A quote accepted in the portal has a date and a name, so the argument about what was agreed ends with one click.

Payments arrive sooner, because the customer pays when they see the invoice rather than when someone reminds them.

The customer gets an answer at once, in the evening and at the weekend too. They do not have to remember whom to call. They do not explain the same thing a third time to a new person in the office.

Where the portal gets its data

The portal has no data of its own. It shows the customer what is in your internal system, your accounting program or your job management program. There are two routes:

• The portal as part of a larger system. When I build a company a system around its process, the portal is one of the modules. Staff work on their screens, the customer sees their share of the same data. What such a system looks like is in the guide on orders and jobs.
• The portal on top of what you have. When you already have a system or a program that holds the data, the portal pulls from it and shows the customer. The accounting program issues the invoice, the portal displays it. This needs your current program to be able to share data. I check that on the first call, and there is more about connecting programs in the guide on system integration.

Security

A customer sees only their own orders, jobs and documents. A person from one company cannot see another company’s data. Within the customer’s company, you or the customer decide who has access to what.

Customer data is personal data, so I design the portal to let you meet your GDPR obligations: the customer sees only their own data, and you know what you store and why. The data sits with a provider we choose together, in Poland or in the EU. If you want, I sign a non-disclosure agreement before we discuss details.

How the build and billing work

1. A conversation. You tell me what customers call about and where you get the answers. You do not need a specification.
2. Scope in writing. I write down which requests the customer should handle alone, split the portal into modules and give you the order, the timing and the prices.
3. The first module, usually after a month. What the customer checks most often: in a wholesaler the catalogue and basket, in a repair shop the job page. You invite a few customers, and their feedback shapes the next parts.
4. Further modules. Documents, requests, payments. You accept each one separately.
5. Ownership. The code, the documentation and all logins and access pass to you with each stage you pay for, not only after the last invoice.

You pay for a module after accepting it, usually at month end. Prices come in writing after the scope is agreed. What drives the price is covered in the guide on custom software.

Describe in the form below what your customers call and write about today. I will get back to you with questions or a suggestion which screen to start with.