As customer behavior has changed, digital experience tools have evolved according to the need to become powerful digital platforms. Back then, content management systems alone were enough to attract customers and provide them with all the company-related updates via newsletters, articles, videos, etc.
But that’s not enough to retain customers. A CMS focuses on one topic and a narrow audience group. Such as it helps manage content and everything related to it. Portal is a huge concept. Along with content, it helps provide a customized user experience based on the login identity. If it’s a customer portal, they can manage their orders, invoices and even interact with others from the portal. From content to collaboration and communication, customers can do everything with a portal.
The same applies to different types of web portal development available in the market.
Let’s see how these two differ:
Difference Between a CMS and a Portal
As customer experience has become a competitive factor, technologies have transformed drastically. As a result, businesses are looking for digital ways to enhance customer service. Some invest in mobile apps, while others opt for self-service portal development services or CMS.
With CMS, you can manage digital content such as blogs, videos, and documentation. But, each content management system is not the same. There are different genres like enterprise content management (ECM) and web content management (WCM).
ECM supports users in a collaborative environment by delivering relevant content. It combines tools with strategies to incorporate business processes. It’s more of document management, where you preserve and archive all the company records. ECM feels like visiting a record room to find a file. WCM is a subset of ECM. It handles only the website-specific content while ECM handles both – in-house documents and web content.
However, the rise of mobile apps has transformed the way users access content. Everyone wants to access it quickly and conveniently, which sometimes CMS fails to do.
What sets a portal apart is its ability to nurture a long-term relationship. It delivers the right content, leverages functionalities, and improves the digital experience across many touchpoints. A portal is not a repackaged CMS or a management solution. Though the reasons you look for web portal development are similar to what leads you to find one in the first place.
Portals have a few capabilities like that of a management system and a CMS. But, they are far more than these solutions. Their sole purpose is to enhance customer experience and optimize business processes. To get the most out of it, businesses look for portal development services that combine CMS and management functionalities. Together they can meet modern customer needs and create a unified digital experience.
Why is Web Portal Development the Right Choice?
Serving your customers is a primary goal of any business. Fulfilling their demands, offering hassle-free service, and keeping them happy are great ways to run a successful business. If they like your service, they are likely to come back. If they don’t, well, who knows when you might find another one?
A web portal ensures that they would turn towards you.
Let’s see how:
Unified Channel
Customers are impatient when it comes to accessing products, services, or processes. They want immediate access with multiple features all in one place. A web portal makes sure that all the features are available round the clock and under one roof. From engaging customers to buying products and services and nurturing them, a portal makes it simpler.
Increase Customer Retention
A portal helps you create support tickets, live chat, and schedule appointments with customers. It streamlines your support staff’s operations and helps retain customers. In short, you and your team can work productively, provide better service, and fulfill customer needs.
Diverse Knowledge
With portal development services, you can integrate a knowledge base feature like a CMS. You can provide customers information about your products, services, and ways to solve queries. Train your employees with the help of videos and online training sessions.
Payments and Invoices
One of the advantages of a portal is a payment module. A CMS is all about managing content and providing knowledge. But here, customers can pay their bills from the portal. They don’t have to contact the support team for their order history or invoices.
Custom Features
CMS is limited to content, but a portal isn’t. You can talk to your web portal development company and discuss all the features you would like to integrate. It can be ticket generation, online training, integrated calendar, dashboard, or real-time reminders.
Portals help manage the data and build a brand by enhancing customer engagement and implementing ways to retain them.
You can also integrate different processes such as sales CRM with an ecommerce database or Mailchimp to create automated marketing campaigns. And further, you can use that data to personalize your emails.
Brand Visibility
With the help of valuable tools and information, you can provide customers with unique value that boosts brand visibility. For example, you can incorporate live chat that only 9% of companies are currently using – to enhance customer experience. In addition, portals offer more to customers and show that businesses bring in tools and features to make their interactions smooth.
Real-Time Data Access
Real-time data helps customers and other portal users to make sound decisions and allows them to personalize the services themselves. For example, as smart meters in the UK show the energy and water consumption along with cost, it helps users control their consumption. In addition, portals with real-time data can enable customers to take control of the services. For example, stakeholders can view the real-time performance metrics such as profits v/s operational costs. They can then adjust their decisions based on the results.
With real-time data, your customers, suppliers, vendors, stakeholders can see what’s benefiting them. This would increase their chances of staying with you for long.
Security
Not everything is for the public. Sometimes, the news or data is for a few people or a specific category of audience. In that case, a CMS solution may or may not have a custom permission feature. But with a portal, you can set role-based access. It guarantees that only authorized users can access the data. The knowledge base consists of articles and video training, which you may not want the public to access. In that case, you can restrict it by providing access to the staff only.
Self-Service
Customer service is a hot topic, and 67% of customers prefer solving their issues themselves. With a web portal, you can allow them to take control of their operations themselves. If you’re in the healthcare industry, you can set a series of automated questions for regular problems. This will help diagnose clients, find solutions, or redirect them to specific services.
Modern Workspace
Employees are essential for business functioning. Hence, you need to ensure that they are doing their jobs well and are satisfied. This is when web portal development comes into the picture. With it, you can make your team work effectively and engage with customers. For example, they won’t have to check their emails constantly. They can save their time by sharing resources, auto-reminders, and encouraging collaboration. Instead of solving basic queries manually, they can redirect them to the FAQs or how-to guides.
Portals also increase productivity. With reports and a smart dashboard, they can know how much time they worked on a particular project and plan their time.
Other advantages of portal development services include:
- Ease in Collaboration: Everyone involved in the process can contact remotely, removing the need to communicate face-to-face. It can further cut down travel time.
- Transparency: Portals allow sharing data, documents, information within the team and with clients. If you’re in the real-estate business, customers can share the documents directly via the portal. The same applies to agents and other staff. This sharing builds credibility and allows collaboration with everyone from within the portal.
- Automated activities: All the activities are automated so that everyone can focus on priority tasks. Like customers can solve their queries. The support team won’t have to update ticket status on calls.
Summary
By creating a web portal, you can optimize your customer experience, build brand value, and provide a self-service solution that they are looking for. You can meet their demands with an online solution that allows reviewing services, tracking data, and engaging with one another. By handing over the control to your customers and other stakeholders, you can work better, faster, and more effectively.
With a portal, you can increase profits and improve your brand image. You can show your stakeholders that you’re thinking about them and want to improve their experience. The benefits of a web portal are limitless. But as technology advances, you need to make sure that you choose the right web portal development company.
You can start small and add advanced features as you grow. Ensure that their portal development services meet the market standards.
We can help you with custom web portal development.
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