Not all customer portals are created equal. Therefore, it's crucial to know which key features of customer portal software work best for your business.
Client data is key to business growth and superior service delivery. Unfortunately, your company could lose important client information or expose it to vulnerabilities when collecting or storing it.
For example, a cyberattack occurs every 39 seconds, and 91% of cybercrimes start with emails. Storing, sending, and receiving company and client documents in a safe, secure, and independent portal may improve the collection and analysis of business data.
With client portal software, you can create a new portal for each client, automate data collection, simplify document access, and boost document and data security. Choosing the best client portal software for your organization requires careful consideration.
There are several advantages to finding the right client portal software to meet your operational needs. Invest in a solution that offers the following benefits:
The company's primary goal is to ensure that the customers it serves receive world-class service. That is what keeps customers coming back. It instills trust in them towards your brand, making them more likely to refer more customers to your company.
Using a customer portal is an excellent way to achieve this goal. Customer portals benefit customers and businesses alike as they facilitate workflow while improving customer relationships.
A good customer portal makes your business look more professional while creating a central online space that acts as a global database for interacting with your customers. Centralized access to critical information eliminates the need for additional steps and increases team productivity.
But not all customer portals are created equal. Therefore, it's crucial to know which key features of customer portal software work best for your business.
Cloud-based software includes data, servers, networks, and virtualization accessible via a web-based portal. When you choose a cloud-based client portal software solution, you can create, edit, access, and send a new client portal to your clients at any time and from anywhere.
The software should scale to meet your needs in terms of storage, users, and the number of client portals you create for your customers. In addition, the cloud-based software providers will upgrade and maintain the software for free. That eliminates the need for an internal IT team or costly onsite servers. It also ensures that the platform you have is constantly improving, is continually enriching the client experience, and keeps security up to date.
Also, you can easily integrate the documents and data captured and shared via the client portals with cloud-based document storage platforms, such as Box, Dropbox, and OneDrive.
Incorporating digital or eSignature capabilities into your client portals reduces the need for signing and printing hard copies of documents. At the same time, you can easily verify the signatures on forms and other documents by using the public key. Moreover, multiple parties in different locations can simultaneously sign the same document.
A digital signature solution uses a mathematical algorithm to generate a private and public key. The private key is secret and only accessible by the user. On the other hand, anybody can access the public key and use it to authenticate the signature. When a user signs a document, the digital signature will record the time and document content. If the content changes after signing, the signature will become invalid.
Digital forms reduce expenses since you don't have to print and store paper forms. It's also faster and easier to verify the accuracy of digital forms. With the client keying in values, your client portal eliminates the margin for error in interpreting handwritten forms.
Digital forms have additional advantages, such as location tagging, time tracking, and digital signature insertion. Once you have collected the data digitally, calculations and data manipulation are far more straightforward to understand. Similarly, live data synchronization enables subsequent steps in your process workflows to be updated with client data automatically via integrations or an API.
Using a different template for every client or project is time-consuming and costly. That is why you need master templates with standard procedures and consistent branding. Great client portal software will enable you to create and set master templates for regular client engagements.
Your clients will effortlessly work on documents with a uniform structure and appearance, making it easier for them each time. Templates can also ensure that the entire team meets any compliance or regulatory frameworks to which your business must adhere.
Not only do templates speed up portal creation, but they also aid in reducing processing time. For instance, team members can quickly locate certain aspects and pinpoint any data changes. Moreover, if you get the right customer portal software, you will be able to save forms, messages, and documents for later use as well.
In today’s world, we all suffer from clogged email inboxes. It’s hard to reach your client and harder still to make interacting with their portal a priority. The document submission process will be faster if clients receive timely SMS and email notifications.
When you use effective client portal software, you will be able to set submission timelines and due date reminders. An algorithm will automatically send a reminder notification to the client when the deadline approaches, reminding them of outstanding items.
You should also choose a system that has chat features. With chat, you will quickly communicate with clients and respond to their queries. In addition, integrated chat enables all records regarding the process to be stored for future reference on a single platform.
According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), there was a significant spike in reports of scams during 2020 and climbing over the last two years. May 2020 saw the largest increase, peaking at 1,479 reports in just one day. In 2013, the largest data breach to ever take place occurred at Yahoo, where the user accounts of over 3 billion people became compromised during a cyberattack.
Your company's data is one of its most valuable assets. The client portal software you choose should not only guarantee superior data security but also ensure that you remain in compliance with all state, federal, and international (if applicable) data security laws and regulations. The right client portal software will have these data security features built into its tech stack.
Not only do you need client portal software that will integrate seamlessly with your existing IT infrastructure. You need a solution that offers complete scalability, whether you need to ramp up or down based on seasonal traffic or you need client portal software that will grow alongside your business as your user-base increases.
Along with scalable, the right client portal software will allow you to convey brand trust with custom URLs, logos, and other branding messages.
Many client portals offer industry-specific data provider integrations to request information, such as bank statements, to optimize your document collection processes and workflows, saving you and your clients hours.
For client portals that do the file collection work for you, seamless integration and scalability will make your team more productive.
Make the first steps of the administrative process of client onboarding as simple as possible. No matter what device your clients are using, they will be able to easily upload, view, and communicate with you. The right client portal will enable customers to download files using the camera of their smartphone and even fill out and e-sign digital documents from their mobile devices.
With the right client portal software, developing a cure and individual document portal for each new client will take a matter of only a few seconds. Your teams won't have to submit requests or log IT tickets to send new requests to have a new portal developed.
Granting user permissions is all within your control without the wait. Add or remove user access in only a few steps to ensure that only those who should have access do. The right platform will allow you to choose between an open or password-protected portal quickly.
Every organization is subject to ongoing regulatory updates. Authorities are constantly reviewing privacy legislation and industry standards. Gain peace of mind with an audit history and log with the following information:
To keep the entire process of document collection secure in a separate environment means that you and your teams do not have to dig through emails to obtain records and deliver them to the auditors.
FileInvite's cloud-based document collection software is the only cloud-based solution that offers master templates, complete scalability, and top-notch security features developed by the FileInvite engineer team and managed by our trusted support team. Safeguard your company's big data with FileInvite's client portal software.
Gather and share information while streamlining document collection with your clients.
To learn more and request a demo, visit FileInvite today.
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