A customer portal for a service company: what customers look for in it, and what never belongs there

The questions the office answers every day

Whoever answers the phone at the office knows them:

• “When is the technician coming, and at roughly what time?”
• “Could you send the report again? I need to forward it to the owners.”
• “Where is the invoice for the maintenance, and has it been paid yet?”
• “Which unit is in the plant room, and until when does the warranty run?”
• “I have a new mobile number.”
• “There is water leaking under the water softener.”

Each question takes a few minutes: open the file, find the PDF, send an email. With a customer who has several buildings, the same question sometimes comes in twice, from two people.

What is a customer portal?

If you search for “customer portal”, you mostly find the portals of energy suppliers, software makers and manufacturers. This article is about the portal that a service company offers its own customers.

A customer portal is a secure web page where a customer logs in and consults their own file with you: the scheduled and completed interventions, the reports, the invoices and the installations. Often they can also report a problem there. The portal mainly handles the questions whose answer already exists.

Most of the use comes from business customers:

• Property managers (syndics) and real estate managers, who forward reports to owners or tenants.
• Facility managers, who have to show the certificates and the maintenance for an audit or to an insurer.
• Customers with several branches, such as a chain of shops or a group of schools, who want to see per site what has been scheduled and done.
• The customer’s accounts department, which looks for invoices and wants to know what is still outstanding.

A private customer with one boiler and one maintenance visit a year rarely logs in. For them, the report and the invoice by email are usually enough.

What a customer portal should show

What belongs in the report itself is explained in the intervention report to the customer. Why documents and history belong with the unit is covered in the service history per installation.

What never belongs there

• Internal notes. “Customer pays slowly”, “caretaker is difficult”, a technician’s remark for a colleague.
• Your costs. Purchase prices, margins and the internal cost of an intervention.
• Other customers. Not even when they are in the same building or managed by the same property manager.
• Documents nobody has checked, such as a photo showing the door code of the plant room.

So before the first invitation, check how your internal notes and your documents are kept apart from the rest. And count on it that anyone you invite sees everything about their company, including the invoices.

Who do you invite?

1. Start with the customers who call most often. These are usually the property managers, the facility managers and the customers with many sites.
2. For each customer, invite the people who ask the questions, for example whoever arranges the interventions and whoever pays the invoices.
3. Only invite people who may see everything. If a caretaker should not see the invoices, let them report a breakdown through the QR code on the unit (see a QR code on installations).
4. Use a personal email address. If someone leaves the customer, you revoke their access without their colleagues noticing anything.

How do you introduce the portal to your customers?

1. Call first. Explain in two sentences what the customer will find there, and say that an email with a link is on its way.
2. Send the invitation straight afterwards, while the customer is expecting it. A link that sits in a mailbox for days expires.
3. At the next question, point to the portal. Send the report this time anyway, and say where the customer will find it themselves from now on.
4. Mention the portal below the email with the report or the invoice, and with every new maintenance contract.
5. After a month, check who has logged in. Call again anyone who left the invitation unused.

An example of the announcement, to adapt:

Good morning [name], as agreed, you will receive an email today with a link to your customer portal. There you will find the scheduled visits for [your buildings], the reports and the invoices, and you can report a problem with an installation. The link is valid for [number] days. For an urgent problem, call us as always on [phone number]. Kind regards, [name]

What stays on the phone

• A dangerous situation or an urgent breakdown. A smell of gas or water in a boiler room is something the customer reports by phone.
• A discussion about an invoice or a piece of work. You have that conversation yourself.
• A new request for work or a quote. You follow that up as a lead, as in following up leads.
• Rescheduling an appointment. You agree the new date together; see also customer not at home.
• Customers who prefer to call. For them, nothing changes.

An example: a water treatment company and a real estate manager

A water treatment company maintains softeners and filters in eight buildings of the same real estate manager. Every week, the manager’s assistant called for a report or a date, and the accounts department emailed about invoices.

The company invites two people: the assistant and the manager’s accountant. Beforehand, the office checks the documents attached to the installations. The maintenance certificates are made visible to the customer; the photos with the access codes of the plant rooms stay internal. The managing director calls the assistant, and the invitations go out the same day.

Two weeks later, the assistant asks for the report on a building. The office employee sends it again and says where it is in the portal. The following month, the assistant reports a leak at a softener through the portal, with two photos. At the office it becomes an intervention, and in the portal the assistant sees that an intervention has been created for it. A question about an invoiced travel charge still goes by phone.

How it works in Digitalnatie Service Suite

The customer portal is a separate web page for the contacts you have invited. Its address ends in /klant and is in the invitation. An office account or a technician account cannot log in there.

• Only their own company: the contact sees their company’s file with you. Other customers, your internal notes and your costs are not shown. All invited contacts of the same company see the same file.
• Overview: the open interventions, what is to be paid, the open reports and the installations, the upcoming interventions with date, time, site and status, and a button to report a problem.
• Interventions: for each visit, the progress, the technician’s report (problem found, work carried out, solution) and the report as a PDF.
• Invoices and credit notes: with their payment status, filters for what is to be paid, overdue or paid, and a PDF per document.
• Installations, sites and documents: product, serial number, maintenance and warranty per unit. An installation document only appears if you have made it visible to the customer in the documents of the installation.
• Reporting a problem: the customer chooses the installation, the type of problem and the urgency, describes the problem and can add up to 4 photos, a contact person on site and a preferred date, which is a preference and not an appointment. The report arrives at the office together with the QR reports, and Service Suite turns it into an intervention, which the customer can follow. The form reminds the customer that in a dangerous situation it is better to call straight away.
• Their details: the contact changes their phone number, email and address, and the change goes straight into your file. You manage the name, company name and VAT number yourself.
• Inviting: in the customer file, a block shows for each contact whether they have no access, have been invited, are active or have had their access revoked. When you give access and send the invitation, the contact receives a link to choose their own password. The link works once and is valid for 6 days by default. Once access has been revoked, they can no longer log in.

Good to know:

• Only your organisation’s administrator gives or revokes access, and inviting is only possible once your organisation’s email account is connected.
• There are no permissions per contact, and the customer cannot invite a colleague themselves.
• A contact without an email address, or with an address already used by another account, cannot be invited.
• Online payment is not possible in the portal. The customer cannot reset a forgotten password themselves: you send them a new link from their file.
• A report always concerns an installation that is invoiced to the customer’s company. A free-form request or a message thread is not possible, and the customer can only attach photos. The number of reports per company within a short time is limited.

Frequently asked questions

What is a customer portal?

A customer portal is a secure web page where a customer logs in and consults their own file with a supplier. At a service company, that means the scheduled and completed interventions, the reports, the invoices and the installations. Often the customer can also report a problem there.

Does every contact of a customer see the same thing in Service Suite?

Yes. All invited contacts of a company see the same file, including the invoices. There are no permissions per contact, so only invite people who may see everything about their company.

Can a customer pay online in the Service Suite customer portal?

No. The customer sees their invoices and credit notes with the payment status, the due date and the payment details, and downloads them as PDFs. Online payment is not possible in the portal.

What if a customer has forgotten their password?

The customer cannot reset their password themselves. Your organisation’s administrator sends them a link for a new password from the customer file, which works once and is valid for 4 hours by default.