Why UK Customers Dislike Customer Portals
The landscape of customer service is constantly changing, especially in the 21st century. In the last couple of decades, the world has seen an explosion in e-commerce, mobile phones, multiple new communication channels, and AI. For many, this offers a wealth of convenience and new opportunities — but not everyone is on board with these changes.
Although online shopping has exploded — with over 20% of all retail sales worldwide being made online — that leaves a majority of customers who prefer to shop in person. Similarly, when it comes to things like tech support, AI chatbots and customer portals aren’t as popular with British consumers as they might be elsewhere. Many British customers prefer human interaction by phone or even email to interacting with a customer portal. But why is this, specifically?
What Is a Customer Portal?
Basically, a client portal or customer portal is a means for your customers to help themselves when it comes to technical issues, queries, or requests. Rather than contacting a human support agent directly, a customer can use a portal to get product information, request a return or refund, issue a complaint, or chat with an AI chatbot about their needs. While it hardly replaces the need for human support agents, it does go a long way toward reducing their workload.
Why UK Customers Dislike Customer Portals
As it turns out, there are a number of perfectly valid reasons why UK customers don’t prefer to use customer portals. Here is a short list of examples:
Poor User Experience
It doesn’t matter how quality the application itself might be: if the user interface is bad, customers will leave in a hurry. This is true of websites, operating systems, and particularly customer portals. If a portal is too basic and clunky — as is the case with many older legacy portals — the user may not find it useful, whereas if it’s overflowing with options, customers may get overwhelmed and struggle to find anything. The average attention span of a user is very short.
Login and Security Hurdles
For many, the thought of having yet another username and password to deal with can be exhausting. The average number of passwords for business-related accounts is already high at 87. If you add in two-factor authentication, security questions, forgotten passwords, or struggling with a password manager, you will find many people would rather just pick up the telephone.
Lack of Personalisation
Customers like personalisation, and often notice it when it’s missing. A customer portal that lacks any personalisation options at all may hold no appeal to some customers.
Trouble Finding Information
This ties into the usability and user friendliness element shown above; if your client portal isn’t updated with the latest and most relevant information, customers may leave and never come back. Some companies leave old, outdated information up when they release a new update or product, and it can be keenly frustrating for a user to come to a portal expecting a solution to their problem and not finding one.
Lack of Trust
Finally, there’s the issue of trust: many customers simply don’t feel comfortable sharing their user data with yet another company. In an age where data breaches are common and data security more hazardous than ever, this is a valid concern — but one that should be addressed if you want your customer portal to be successful.
How to Improve the Customer Experience with Portals
So what can UK businesses do to improve the customer experience and get users to start utilising portals? Here are some strategies for making your customer more appealing.
- Update old client portals and improve the design and user interface. If your client portal is still sporting a look or theme from 2009, it’s time to make a change. Update your portal with a slick new look and a tidy, mobile friendly interface and your user numbers may soon soar.
- Implement the right customer portal software. Not all software is created equal, and your needs will vary! A good client portal should be flexible, scalable, well-supported, and ideally have generative AI and knowledge management tools. There are several out-of-the-box solutions that are fairly easy to implement.
- Give your customers a personalised experience to help keep them engaged and happy.
- Be transparent on how you choose to use customer data, and keep customers informed about your security measures and how you intend to protect their valuable data.
- Provide a seamless transition from the customer portal to a human agent when the customer requires or requests it. Even the most sophisticated self-service portal can’t account for every issue, and sometimes a human touch is necessary.
Getting customers to adapt to a client portal can be a bit of an uphill battle, but with some basic strategies and thoughtful improvements, you can increase their appeal significantly.
