Why a client portal is great tool for small businesses

Staying organized as a small business can become increasingly difficult, especially as your company grows. Managing day-to-day tasks that take up valuable time can become repetitive and tedious. Not to mention that without a good management system in place, important communications can easily go astray, and critical tasks can get overlooked.

Emails, invoices, communications, important messages, and documents quickly become impossible to track when spread out across multiple locations, and project management becomes complicated. Software tools and integrations may help to some extent, but all too frequently small business users end up with a messy, disjointed system that is patched together in an ineffective and slow solution.

What does a client portal do?

A client portal such as Service Provider Pro has been designed with the small business user in mind. It can track clients, payments, messages, and help manage projects all in one place.

SPP’s dashboard and features have been created to help agency owners easily manage their client’s needs whether they have 5, 50, or 500 customers. The main management features include:

With a branded client portal that allows easy access and full visibility to orders and payments, the client management system will allow you to monitor orders and deliver work on predefined timelines without missing a beat. Public order forms create a seamless checkout experience, and integrations with popular payment providers such as Stripe ensures secure and safe payment processing.

The main benefit of using an all-in-one solution is that all customer interactions can be managed from one location, and past communications can be easily viewed. Notifications and alerts keep your team and clients informed of the order process, creating a fully transparent project management system.

Automate your sales and onboarding process

Using SPP’s features to manage new and repeat sales of products and services helps small businesses generate revenue in a ‘hands-off’ environment. Thanks to order forms, clients and leads can put together the services they’d like to purchase, and easily check out. The intuitive drag and drop interface allows agency owners to easily build order forms. However, those who wish to make changes to them can make use of Bootstrap components and custom HTML/CSS.

Companies that sell services online know that abandoned sales are an underlying cause of lost revenue. A modern client portal software enables you to retarget and capture these sales through automated abandoned checkout emails. This allows your company to retrieve and retain more income without having to monitor reminders manually.

For complex projects, service-specific intake forms collect detailed information from clients that can be provided after the time of purchase. Intake forms create a smooth client onboarding process, and are built via a simple form drag and drop interface.

One important part of the onboarding process is to give clients access to their portal. Modern software generates a login on the fly during checkout. New clients can either define their own password, or the system generates it for them. After successfully purchasing a service, the client will be redirected, and automatically logged into the portal. This allows them to check up on their order, verify their details, and make new purchases.

Better Communications Management

Good communications management is necessary for any company. Tracking activity such as email reminders, notifications, and alerts can be tricky though if everything has to be done manually. That being said, it’s important to keep clients fully informed of their project. Automating this task helps build trust and confidence in your services while reducing your workload.

To stay on top of your communication, modern client portals use a thread-based communication system. Messages can be written via a simple editor that often allows to insert links, and upload files. Ideally, clients should also be able to reply to the same thread via email so they don’t have to log into the portal.

Thanks to Zapier, the communication between the service provider and client can be extended. For instance, some clients might require you to update them every time the order status changes. This can be automated via Zapier instead of you having to manually send a message.

Team management capabilities

Managing a team can be tough for companies of all sizes. Keeping up with task assignments, resources, and ensuring work is performed on time quickly turns into an administrative nightmare for business owners and managers. Projects, communications, payments, and much more will need to be managed efficiently to generate repeat, scalable business.

With modern client portal software, you can quickly get an idea of your team’s performance. Improve the customer experience by ensuring that all communications are up to date and track your team’s interactions with customers. To do that, automatically set up tasks your team has to go through, define service deadlines, and make sure no email or question goes unanswered.

Final Words

Business owners heavily profit from the features a client portal provides. Being able to reply to helpdesk tickets, track orders, and manage projects all from one location gives them a holistic client management solution that is efficient and scalable.

Start simplifying your management process and save hours of time with a seamless and centralized system that keeps your payments and communications clean and organized. Automate routine tasks with tools and integrations designed to maximize your time. You’ll quickly notice how fast your business is able to scale without you making major investments.