2018 has been declared: Year of the Customer.
They are demanding, want their questions answered, and problems solved quickly. Expectations are always evolving, and customers are using new methods to connect with companies for which they do business.
Customer portals provide a personalized self-service and allowing customers to interact with businesses when and how they want. Self-service tools are among the most demanded enhancements for firms trying to improve their customer experience.
PayWhirl’s customer portal is included with all plans. It can be embedded into your website quickly (or hosted independently) and lets your customers manage their own account and subscription information.
Self-Service
Customers prefer self-service tools over other forms of support, and 40% prefer it over human contact. This is why 70% of customers expect a company’s website to have a self-service feature. Having a Customer Portal is an essential part of creating a satisfying self-service support experience.
According to a study by Capterra, 75% of customers want to find answers and solutions to their issues online themselves. 73% prefer to use a company’s website instead of social media, SMS, or live chat.
Customer Portals allow consumers to connect and interact with your business outside standard hours when it’s convenient for them. They provide information and help customers resolve issues with payment methods, due dates, or altering subscription items, for example.
This desire for self-service reduces demands on customer service agents. It can reduce customer service costs by as much as $11 per call according to a study by Forrester Research & Oracle. Helping customers help themselves saves time, resources, and money. It also allows customer service agents to focus on more complex service issues.
Experience
Companies are finally understanding the importance of a customer’s experience and starting to redirect resources to innovations that enhance the customer experience. PayWhirl has understood this from the beginning. Not only do we provide a Customer Portal, but we are known for having exceptional customer service.
The future belongs to the experience around your product or service. When people use a service or product, they subconsciously go in with certain expectations in regards to their experience. Which is why the customer experience has become the key differentiator and competitive advantage in a company’s success.
According to a Customer Experience Report by Right Now Technologies: 80% of U.S. adults are willing to pay more for better customer experience, and 78% said a friendly customer service made them fall in love with a brand. Customers are more likely to do business with a company that offers a personalized experience.
There are many ways for a company to personalize their customers’ experience, and offering a customer portal is one of them. A site with a good user experience provides precise information, clear, easy to use navigation and action elements.
Customers who regularly engage with a company feel they are a part of it and can offer helpful ideas and insights. This user feedback provides essential data for companies to understand who their customers are and their needs.
Retention
The journey and experience for a customer who signs’ up for a subscription service are more profound than that of a one-time purchase customer. They’re prepared to make a repeating purchase that could go on for months or years. This is why the experience leading up to and following this decision is hugely significant for customer retention. This is why providing a positive, personalized experience that meets or exceeds customer expectations is vital to the success of a company.
Excellent service and fast solutions make customers happy and more likely to recommend your brand to other people. 82% of Americans look for recommendations from friends and family when considering a purchase or signing up for a subscription. It takes 12 good reviews to undo 1 bad review. This is why providing a good experience for every customer can go a long way. It’s especially important when it comes to subscription-based services. Returning customers are 9 times more likely to place a new order than a new customer, which is why customer retention is so necessary.
The core of a companies success is due to happy customers who stay with you longer and make you profitable. At the end of the day, excellent customer service and experience keeps a company in business. PayWhirl is there to help in every way no matter the type of customer; everyone is treated like a VIP.
PayWhirls’ Customer Portal
With PayWhirl, your customers can manage their own account and subscription information from your online customer portal. You can decide what customers can control and what they can’t. You can also customize the gateway on your website. This way customers don’t get confused and think they’re being transferred to a third party to access account information.
All customer accounts are created after the 1st step of registration before purchase. The check-out flow was designed this way to keep track of the “lost” or “abandoned cart” customers. You can then re-market to these customers using integration like Mail Chimp to help increase sales.
The customer portal can be accessed in several ways. The best-recommended way is embedding a customer portal login widget into a page on your website providing direct access. Customers can also gain access through an email link or clicking on “I already have an account” widget on your site. So no matter what device your customer is using, or where they are, there are a variety of ways for them to log into the customer portal.
PayWhirls’ Customer Portal Benefits
PayWhirls’ Customer Portal includes the following sections to make changes or obtain information in:
Calendar, My Subscriptions, Invoices for Subscriptions, Order Summary, My Payment Methods, My Profile, Billing History, Cart, Browse Menu
Customers can skip installment(s) should they need to from within the customer portal. They can also make changes to the billing cycle to better accommodate their financial situation. These options help reduce churn and increases LTV.
The ‘Browse Menu’ lets customers shop while logged into the customer portal and purchase additional subscriptions using saved information.
They can also cancel and remove payment methods at their convenience. Make changes to a subscription plan before it’s processed. Add promo codes or pay invoices early.
Any changes made will be carried forward to future subscriptions, which make it easy for customers to manage even complex subscriptions.
PayWhirls’ customer portal offers a personalized self-service experience today’s customer looks for in a business. It’s predicted that in just 2 years customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator, and 89% of companies expect the customer experience will be the primary way in which they will compete for wallet share.
Join PayWhirl
Give your customers the kind of experience they want, and put yourself one step ahead of the rest who are still trying to figure it out.
If you have any questions about our customer portal or how it can help your business, please feel free to send us an email or get in contact through our support page at https://docs.paywhirl.com
