6 benefits of a self-service customer portal in the installation industry

Now that new technologies provide more opportunities for customer service in installation technology, your customers’ expectations are also increasing significantly. Research shows that customers rate installation companies poorly, with only telephone customer service. A self-service customer portal is no longer a nice-to-have today, but a must-have. Such a customer portal truly has benefits not only for your customers. We would be happy to explain it to you.

Why is self-service in customer service becoming increasingly important?

Over the years, customers have become more demanding, and it is not easy to keep customers satisfied nowadays. Customers want an answer to their questions, not tomorrow. The longer it takes for your customer to receive an answer to their question, the greater the chance that the customer will seek out another party. With the development of modern technologies, a negative online review can be posted quickly, and a bad story about your installation company can be shared with friends and acquaintances just as easily. Research shows that at least 40% of the Dutch prefer self-service over personal contact. Such a self-service customer portal has several advantages for you and your customers. And if you are already using, for example, HVAC software or service and maintenance software, such a customer portal is often easy to add to your environment.

1. Frequently asked questions on a clear FAQ page

A self-service customer service portal can create a page where all frequently asked questions and answers are displayed. Customers with a relatively simple question that occurs regularly can find the answer immediately without calling, emailing, or chatting. This makes your customer pleased with the speed of resolution, and it has not cost your customer service department any time or effort. However, ensuring that this FAQ page is organized clearly and logically is important. If there is a lot of information on it, but it is not organized well, and customers cannot find the question and answer, then it is useless to you.

2. Better accessibility of your customer service through the customer portal

A self-service customer portal also improves the assessment of your customer service accessibility. Telephone customer service is bound to particular opening hours and involves direct human contact. This can lead to frustrations, especially since your customers may be working. Most people will indeed call during their lunch break or at the end of the day once the workday is over, causing waiting times to increase at that moment. However, as discussed above, a self-service portal and an FAQ page have no opening hours and are always accessible. Customers do not have to wait and can look up the information they need at any time, whether early in the morning or late at night. Ensure that all these self-service portals also work well on a smartphone or tablet; otherwise, irritation can quickly arise among your customers.

3. Customers schedule their appointments

As an installation company, you deal daily with the installation and maintenance of objects. In this case, we take a heat pump as an example of such an object. You have customers for whom you need to install a new heat pump, customers whose heat pump requires maintenance, and urgent assignments for heat pumps with malfunctions. You can let customers schedule their appointments through a self-service portal for installation and regular maintenance. Customers do this at a time that suits them and entirely at their own pace, without making phone calls or exchanging emails back and forth. If your customer service calls the customer for this, it never really seems to work out, or they do not have their schedule handy, which increases the chance of cancellation. And by putting this in a self-service customer portal, your customer service can fully focus on planning urgent assignments.

4. Contacting customers at the right moment

As soon as you start using a customer service portal, you can also ensure you are in contact with your customers immediately. For example, automate an email to the customer when a new appointment is scheduled. Include an option to reschedule the appointment if the customer is unavailable. Additionally, send a reminder a week or a few days before the appointment, reducing the chance that your technician will arrive at a closed door. Furthermore, automated emails are used to send a summary of the work performed and the invoice to the customer, as well as feedback and a review after the entire process is completed to optimize further.

5. Add instructional videos to the self-service customer portal

We already briefly mentioned the advantages of an FAQ page above, but this can go further. Adding instructional videos for your customers can be very helpful for specific topics. For example, demonstrate how customers can change their password or how they can (re)schedule an appointment. Not everyone is equally adept with these kinds of portals, and instructional videos can make all the difference and prevent the customer from reaching for the phone and calling your customer service. Do you install and maintain objects where, sometimes, a malfunction occurs that the customer can quite easily solve themselves? Add those kinds of instructional videos as well to avoid having a technician come out for such simple issues.

6. Use the available customer portal data to optimize further

The last but certainly not the least important advantage is that a self-service customer portal comes with data about your customers that you can use to get to know your customers better and further optimize where necessary. All information about the service with your customers is readily available in clear and concise reports, making it very insightful, where profit can be made. For example, you can also utilize search behavior and add extra questions or topics to the FAQ page if necessary. Use all available data to improve your customer service further and satisfy customers.