8 Features to Include in Your B2B Customer Portal

Building strong relationships with customers is crucial in today’s fast-paced and competitive business environment. An effective strategy for enhancing the customer experience and maintaining strong connections is through the implementation of a B2B customer portal.

A well-designed B2B customer portal provides a centralized platform for businesses to engage with customers, offer personalized services, and streamline operations. Below we look at eight key features to include in your B2B customer portal for an exceptional customer experience.

What is a B2B customer portal?

A B2B customer portal is an online self-service platform available on the web or via mobile. It enables businesses to interact and collaborate with clients in a personalized and private environment. Through a B2B website and customer portal, clients can manage their accounts and find out important information easily, without having to contact the business directly and wait for an answer.

The ability to find information about shipments and orders quickly is vital in the B2B sector. Waiting for an answer can hold things up on the client's end, causing frustration and negatively impacting customer relations.

As well as utilizing a B2B customer portal, businesses can also benefit from using IVR. The IVR acronym stands for interactive voice response, which is a telephone system that allows clients to get to the right department quickly.

Benefits of a B2B customer portal

Before getting into the key features needed for an impressive customer portal, it’s important to understand the benefits of creating one in the first place. Here are some key advantages of using a B2B customer portal:

1. Increased efficiency: By providing self-service capabilities, a B2B customer portal makes many processes more efficient. This enables the business to allocate resources more effectively, allowing employees to focus on higher-value tasks and improving productivity.
2. Enhanced user experience: A customer portal is a convenient platform that can be accessed 24/7. This means no more waiting around for business hours to make a change to an account or track a shipment. Information is available at the user's convenience, improving customer satisfaction and the overall user experience.
3. Targeted marketing: A B2B customer portal can collect valuable data and insights into customer patterns, order history, and preferences. By using this information, businesses can personalize and target marketing efforts and maximize upselling opportunities.
4. Improved communication: B2B customer portals improve communication, as customers can send messages and receive updates through the portal. This is an easier way for them to keep track of important information and answers. With easy communication between businesses, stronger relationships can be formed.

Essential features to include in your B2B customer portal

If you already have a B2B portal and want to improve it, or you’re currently creating a tailored B2B portal for your clients, you don’t want to miss out on these features. Once you’ve created your B2B portal, don’t forget to promote it on your website and social media channels.

1. User-friendly interface

Your clients don’t want to mess around trying to understand a complicated B2B customer portal for hours; they simply don’t have the time. Successful customer portals have a user-friendly interface that allows clients to easily navigate and make changes to their orders and profile.

When designing a B2B customer portal, focus on creating a visually appealing and intuitive design. Make sure the portal is responsive and free of any bugs, so clients can access the portal seamlessly across devices.

Incorporate concise and clear menus and add a search function for quick access to pages. For example, if a manufacturer requires a faxed invoice, your customer could search how to fax from cell phone. This would then bring up your resource hub (see below) for information on faxing invoices to manufacturers.

2. Customer profiles and groups

B2B companies need to be able to classify their customers. A good B2B customer portal should therefore allow clients to create in-depth customer profiles, which can be used to create tailored groups. Make sure to include as much variety as possible in this, as it can be beneficial to create groups based on:

• order volume
• reorder frequency
• location
• catalog selection
• product order quantity

Once classified into specific groups, businesses can set minimum order requirements and pricing based on things like location. Furthermore, classifying clients allows for a customized shopping experience according to profile selections. This is beneficial for businesses, as they can filter delivery options, pricing, and payment options to suit their needs.

3. Customization options

Customization plays a key role in B2B interactions, as clients can tailor their experience based on their preferences. A B2B customer portal should incorporate features that enable personalization for users, such as widgets and drag-and-drop functionality. Every client is different, so what they need to see on their customer portal is unique to their business.

You should also consider the importance of personalizing product suggestions. This will allow users to easily view the products most useful to them and a better user experience as well as help you to promote your best offers.

4. Resource hub

One of the primary features that should be included in a B2B customer portal is a resource hub. This enables users to gain access to relevant information and support. This should be kept up to date by your team, so clients have accurate information about prices, products, and services.

This centralized resource hub will allow clients to find product documentation, frequently asked questions, troubleshooting guides, and other support resources. By providing this in one place, customers can save time, minimizing frustration.

Even with a resource hub, clients may still have a question that only a member of your team can answer. An ACD phone system is a beneficial feature to include in your phone systems, so clients can quickly be connected to an available operator. If a customer calls in to ask something you think should be covered in your resource hub, you can then add it to the FAQ section.

5. Inventory and order management

Efficient inventory and order management features are essential for your B2B customer portal. This should allow clients to track shipments, place orders, view invoices, and manage their accounts seamlessly. For the best experience, clients should have real-time visibility into current inventory levels.

Order management features should also include order status updates, so clients can be sure their shipments are arriving on time. Delivery notifications are another key feature so clients can stay informed.

For ease of use, integrate your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) inventory management system with the customer portal. Cloud-based ERP systems are more affordable for small businesses as they are paid as a subscription, rather than bought upfront.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions that allow you to set up your B2B customer portal are usually built on top of Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) services. Also cloud-based, these tools give you greater flexibility and control, so a B2B SaaS can provide a safe platform for your B2B clients to place and track orders. PaaS examples include Heroku, Google App Engine, and AWS Elastic Beanstalk.

6. Multiple user access

Providing access for multiple users under the same business account is typically a necessary requirement. However, it’s important to offer different permission levels for users, based on their roles and responsibilities. By implementing limited permissions, you can enhance security for users and optimize workflow.

This allows employees who aren’t directly involved with certain business choices to view only what they need to, which minimizes distractions too.

7. Integrations

For a seamless user experience for all parties, integrating your B2B customer portal with IT systems and third-party applications is a must. Effective integration adds long-term value to the portal, with the primary objective of improved collaboration with partners, which aligns with their procedures and workflow.

Through the use of integration, many of the features listed above will be effortless. Best of all, integrations improve automation, providing more accurate information for clients without your employees needing to lift a finger. This frees up more employees for chasing up leads with a virtual phone number from Vonage.  

Some popular software to integrate with your B2B customer portal may include:

• Payment gateways: if clients frequently place an order, the portal can automatically charge their account, without just a few clicks.
• accounting software: integration with bookkeeping software can benefit B2B clients by simplifying their accounting. For example, invoices can be sent through the customer portal, and partners will receive these directly into their current bookkeeping system.
• logistics: through automation, information around logistics can automatically be reflected in the system. Clients can then easily track the status and location of their goods.

8. Simplified ordering

Hopefully, many of your customers will have recurring orders. To show that you value their repeat business, it’s worth personalizing and simplifying the order process for them via the portal.

Clients can login into their account on your B2B portal and access their order history with an itemized list of products. From here, they can quickly and easily place a full or partial reorder in one simple click. This saves clients significant time as they don’t have to start a new order every time, but it also means they can seamlessly view and manage their orders in one place.

On top of this, consider additional features that personalize the process further. For example, you might incorporate a “Save Order” option that allows customers to complete their cart at a later date, a “Quick Order” feature that helps customers skip several steps in the order process, or a “Customer Import Order” to make ordering even faster.

Whatever features you add, a simplified ordering system should be easily navigated and structured in a way that gives complete personalization for each client. Streamlining processes such as this will improve customer relations and make for a successful B2B customer portal.

B2B customer portals for improved customer experience

A B2B portal serves as a centralized portal for accessing and changing account information, placing orders, requesting support, tracking shipments, and more. This saves time for both businesses and reduces administrative costs.

Essential features such as a user-friendly interface, customer profiles and groups, customization, a resource hub, inventory and order management, multiple-user access, integrations, and personalized ordering are essential for a great B2B customer portal.

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