How to Build a Customer Engagement Portal to Enhance CX

You already know how important customer experience (CX) is to your business. Good CX can lead to better customer loyalty and retention rates and can also improve brand awareness and how people perceive your company. And when you consider that around 86% of customers are prepared to pay more for a great CX, it can be good for your bottom line too. 

There are many different aspects to good CX. From an easy-to-navigate website to excellent customer service, you need to be sure that every step of a customer’s journey is keeping them happy. However, at the heart of your CX, there should be a foundation consisting of efficient and reliable communications. That’s why a customer engagement portal can be crucial to your CX efforts

What is a customer engagement portal?

A customer engagement portal (CEP) is a communications hub that can store every single interaction your business has with customers and potential customers. You may already be using some form of CRM (customer/candidate relationship management) system, such as a recruitment CRM system, and this works in a similar fashion. 

A CEP goes beyond the capabilities of a CRM system, however. It doesn’t just store the information on all previous interactions, it also offers a way to communicate directly with the customer so that you can use the stored information to personalize the messages you exchange with the customer. 

There are a number of ways your customer service staff could utilize a customer engagement portal to improve the CX: 

• Ask customers for feedback on their recent experiences, such as buying a product or contacting your customer support team 
• Send customers a link to resources - such as an FAQ section or a ‘how to’ video that can help solve any issues they are facing 
• Suggest new products or give them information on any special offers they might be interested in 

You could think of a CEP as combining three services you already use; a communication platform, a customer help desk, and a CRM system that contains all pertinent information about the customer. It can act as a one-stop shop for your customers and can make their customer journey and their CX better than it was. 

How do you build a customer engagement portal?

So, you can see that a CEP has the potential to improve CX while also making things potentially easier for your staff. But how do you go about actually building one? Well, the good news is that most of the components of an effective CEP are things you may already be using. That means that in many cases, it’s just a case of finding a solution that brings those components together in one unified system.

1.   Live Chat 

We are living in an omnichannel era where businesses need to communicate with their customers in the way they prefer. However, Live Chat is growing in popularity as a solution and has the highest satisfaction levels of any customer service channel used by organizations. In fact, those satisfaction levels can range from 73% to 81%. 

You will find that most CEP solutions include a live chat or an eCommerce chatbot option. People want quick answers to their queries, and live chat can fulfill that. It’s easy to embed live chat on your website, and they can be customized to pop up if the system senses hesitancy, or even when a user chooses to exit the site. 

One great advantage of live chat is that a well-trained agent can handle up to five conversations at once rather than a single conversation they could handle via a call. If you operate a call center or a virtual call center, then you will know that long queues can be problematic. 

A good live chat, as part of an AI-powered CEP solution, can offer better queue management and can also suggest prompts to your agents. This can significantly enhance customer loyalty by providing quick and efficient support.

2.   Self service 

It doesn’t matter how well-trained and knowledgeable your agents are, there are many customers who would prefer to find answers themselves. Around 59% of customers prefer self-service options to deal with simple issues and will only use a phone option for more complex questions or when they can’t find the answer they are looking for. 

By ensuring you have an efficient self-service option as part of your CEP, you are catering directly to what customers want. This can help in improving their CX, but it also can improve a customer’s perception of your business, as you are providing the options they want. There are several things that can be dealt with via a self-service option and, as well as keeping your customers happy, it also frees up human agents to deal with more complex issues. 

When deciding on a good CEP, look for one that offers you a wide range of self-service tools that you can customize to your needs or that offers enterprise application integration. The options should also be intuitive and user-friendly so that customers do not face any problems when using them.  With efficient self-service options, you can see dramatic increases in customer satisfaction and can also streamline your customer support processes. 

3.   FAQ section

These are perhaps the best-known (and most used) forms of knowledge provision and should be an integral part of any CEP solution you choose. As the name suggests (frequently asked questions), the information contained in these sections is representative of the questions most commonly asked by customers. 

You can think of your FAQ section as being a very focused knowledge base that people can access to find basic information about your products or various aspects of your operations. For example, customers may want to know about your refunds/returns policies, and this can be easily covered in the FAQs. 

A customer engagement platform allows you to link incoming customer queries with the FAQ section. It should be noted that an FAQ section should not be static. Over time, some new questions might appear while older ones will be asked less. Having the ability to edit and update FAQs according to the needs of your customers can help boost your CX. 

4.   Webforms 

This is something else you will probably already be using for a number of tasks. The use of web forms can range from a basic ’contact us’ form to requesting a free trial of a software product or subscribing to your newsletter or email marketing list. Having them integrated into a CEP means that you can be more proactive in dealing with them and thus improve the customer journey. 

A good CEP will notify you when a webform has been completed (or even if it has been left incomplete) so that things can be dealt with quicker than if you were manually checking the forms. You can even automate some aspects of web forms, such as an acknowledgment if someone has filled out a form linked to your high volume hiring software. 

The other advantage of linking your web forms to your CEP is that information will automatically be updated in the customer history section. This can allow your agents to see whether there have been any recent changes to the customer information, but it also means that they can personalize communications with the customers based on the most recent form they have completed. 

5.   Knowledge base

We’ve already mentioned that customers like to be able to help themselves, and a knowledge base can play a major role in that provision. What’s contained in your knowledge base will very much depend on the type of business you operate. For example, a tech company will likely have a very technical-minded knowledge base that contains information relevant to its products and/or services. 

The format of what’s in your knowledge base can also vary greatly but should cover a wider range of questions, issues, and topics than your FAQ section. Some of the things you may want to consider including in your knowledge base include: 

• How to guide. These could be in the form of written instructions or videos
• Technical guides. This content can help guide customers through setting up any technical products and commonly encountered issues 
• Blogs. Blogs written by your staff or guest bloggers can often be very informative when it comes to your products or services  

Of course, it’s likely impossible to include everything in a knowledge base, but it can provide a solid foundation of relevant information. Your CEP should be able to track what parts of your knowledge base have been accessed and what the outcomes have been.

The takeaway

Businesses are constantly looking for ways to improve the customer journey and the customer experience. After all, better CX means a customer is more likely to be loyal to that brand, and a high customer retention rate can mean lower CACs (customer acquisition costs) and higher CLVs (customer lifetime values). 

A customer engagement portal can bring together your various customer service tools in one system. It can help to provide both a more personalized experience as well as a better customer experience. Ensuring that the CEP solution you choose meets not only your needs but also those of your customers means that your CX should be enhanced across the board.