If you’re wondering whether your field service management (FSM) software should include a customer portal, consider that 88% of consumers in the United States expect a company to offer a customer portal. People like the convenience of easy access to their accounts and order status. But businesses realize benefits as well. In our experience, we’ve seen at least 7 positive outcomes from deploying field service portals.
- Save customer service costs.
- Reduce mistakes.
- Encourage customer engagement.
- Save customers money.
- Increase the value of your service.
- Become a partner with your customers.
- Grow your company faster.
Save Service Costs by Keeping Customers Up to Date Automatically
Once we place an order, we like to check its status. In fact, status checking was one of the first self-service features that companies offered decades ago when automation was a new thing and you had to get your information by pressing keys on a phone.
Today, a field service portal in your FSM provides 24/7 visibility into customers’ work order status, requests, and history. It’s a “one-stop shop” where they can always find the information they need, day or night. It’s not only convenient; the portal’s transparency builds trust in your company and improves customer experience. Customers never feel ignored or overlooked, even when your team is incredibly busy and doesn’t have time to respond to phone calls or emails immediately.
While users love the portal, it saves you money, too. Employees spend less time handling basic requests. They can focus on more productive work and devote energy to handling complex issues. As a result, customers get extra, personal attention when they need it, and your team can offer white glove service without stressing the budget.
Reduce Mistakes by Keeping Everyone on the Same Field Service Portal
If you don’t have customers using your FSM portal and you’re trading emails and copying information from one system to another, it’s easy to introduce errors that cause misunderstandings, confusion, and dissatisfaction. If customers expect a technician at 8 am, but the technician was accidentally told 9 am, everyone is going to be unhappy. Even after innocent mistakes, customers may come away with a bad impression that costs you time and money to recover from.
Having customers, technicians, salespeople, and office staff communicate through one field service customer management system reduces mistakes. Nothing gets lost in the translation, because everyone is looking at the same details.
Encourage Customer Engagement by Being Easy to Work With
Your customers’ days are packed just as full as yours, and they may not have time to submit work orders until late in the evening. Or they may need to get it done before the sun rises. With the customer portal, your company is there for them when they need you. They can either login to the portal directly or submit requests via an embedded form on your website whenever its most convenient, even if they’re not in the office.
Once the customer has submitted their request, you translate it into a work order in the system with a click of a button and assign a technician at the same time. The service portal also keeps your customers’ data protected because you have control over who can access which documents and each user has a password to help prevent fraud. By offering 24/7 secure, mobile access, the portal makes your company easy and safe to work with, which increases customer satisfaction, loyalty, and engagement.
Save Customers Money by Helping Them Work Smarter
If a customer is on the shop floor and equipment is failing, they can access the field service portal on a mobile phone and quickly see the maintenance and repair history. They instantly have the information they need to make a decision about whether to submit a work order or not. They no longer have to go back to the office, look up their own records, or place a call to you before they can act. The mobile access allows them to get more done faster, which saves time and money in the long run.
Increase Your Value to Customers With Proactive Service
With a field service portal, your team is notified whenever a customer interacts with the system. You’ll see each request right away, and if needed, you can reach out to provide proactive service. You can follow up with a personal phone call for high-value customers, confirm any questions about the work order, suggest additional work that could be done at the same time, or offer other services that complement the request.
Having this data gives you real-time information about how best to serve each customer at any point. As a result, you grow your business by offering more value when customers need it most.
Position Your Company as a Business Partner by Sharing Insightful Data
With the field service portal, you can offer information that helps customers run their businesses more efficiently. They can run reports on their work orders, past equipment repairs, and maintenance schedule so they can identify trends, compare the performance of different machinery or systems, and ensure they’re budgeting properly for ongoing work. By making this information easy to access, your company acts as more than a service provider; you’re helping customers improve operations, and they start to see you as a partner in their success.
Scale Your Business With Fewer Growing Pains
Having a customer portal lowers the amount of work needed to onboard and service new customers. You can manage contracts in the portal and new customers will have the ability to submit orders and check status without adding work for your office staff. You’ll be able to bring on more business and scale faster without stressing your team, which in turn keeps everyone happy.
BlueFolder Helps You Keep Customers Loyal and Satisfied
BlueFolder FSM software was built from the ground up with the user in mind. Our customer portal offers an intuitive interface, simple controls, and minimal clicks. Your customers get set up fast, and they can access all the features and data with ease. They’ll love it from the beginning. And you’ll start seeing cost and time savings right away.
You can also customize the portal for your needs with configurable options, user management controls, and permission settings for security. Even add a custom logo to present a consistent, professional look and feel.
And if your customers love the portal, you’ll love all the features of our FSM because we’ve brought the same attention to detail, usability, and flexibility to our entire offering.
Find out how BlueFolder advances your cash flow, streamlines technician work, and delights your customers with a free trial today.
