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The Customer Portal is a personalized, private site that provides your customers with a single point of access to your company. It allows your customers to access and manage their accounts, make payments, and book appointments anywhere, at any time, and enhances your customers' overall experience with your business.
Each customer can be given a link and password to access their information in Smart Service Cloud. The Customer Portal can be accessed on any device.
We will start by configuring your Customer Portal settings. Go to the Administration Center at the top of your screen and click on System Settings. At the bottom of the window, click on Edit.
In the Customer Portal Settings section, make sure "Allow Access" is on. There is a list of options that will allow you to choose what customers will be able to see and do in their portal. These will be the default settings, however you can change each customers settings individually. More on that later.
The "Book a Job" option that we just covered allows the customer to schedule their own services based on a list of portal bookings that you will need to create. To do this, go to the Administration Center and scroll down to Portal Bookings. This is where you will create and manage your Portal Bookings. To create a new Portal Booking, click on the plus symbol on the bottom-right of your screen.
You will be presented with a New Portal Booking window. You will see some tabs near the top. We will cover each one individually. The booking setup tab allows you to add a name for your service, as well as choose what information will be shown to the customer when they try to book the appointment. We’ll go over each detail in the section below, but here’s an example:
Under the questions tab, you can create a question such as, “What brand of hot water heater do you have?” That question will automatically be asked when the customer books the appointment. The customer’s response will show up in the work order. This is optional.
This section applies to customers who visit your portal booking link but are not logged into their own customer portal. In this case, they’ll be asked to enter their name and contact information. If you remember the last time you created a customer, you also have these other options you can fill out.
The only fields that are required are the company (which one of your companies this customer should be assigned to) and the sales tax, which can be changed later if needed.
The appointment section needs to be filled out for the portal bookings to work. You can also append a quote or work order to this appointment in the next sections. The appointment is the visit itself, and has settings for how customers can interact with the service.
This tab will only work if you have the “Allow Scheduling” option turned on in the previous “Appointments” tab. From here, we can set some ground rules for how and when customers can schedule this service.
All of the fields on this screen are the same fields you fill out when creating a quote for the customer. Remember, a quote is not needed for every service, so adding this quote is an optional step that depends on what type of service we’re setting up.
All of the fields on this screen are the same fields you fill out when creating a work order for the customer. Remember, a work order is not needed for every service, so adding this work order is an optional step that depends on what type of service we’re setting up.
Under the Confirmation tab, you can choose whether or not to add these customers to your Marketing Contact List. Also, you can add this booking to a task list that you can manage in the Task Boards Center. You can decide how the customer will receive confirmation of their scheduling. We prefer to do this via email as not all customers will enter a cell phone number when scheduling. You can create a message to be sent to the customer’s email address on file and also choose to have someone cc’d or bcc’d on the email to the customer.
As always, be sure to click save on the bottom of the window when you are done.
After a Portal Booking has been created, you will be returned to the Portal Bookings screen. From here, you can create more Portal Bookings, and manage your existing ones. You can check on different boxes to make quick edits, or click on an individual one to review and make changes.
Near the top of the screen, you will see options for BOOK A NEW JOB, TEXT BOOK A NEW JOB LINK, and SHOW iFRAME LINK. Learn about each one below.
If you’d like to experience the Customer Portal as the customer would see it, you can click the “Book a New Job” button near the top of the screen.
Also, the URL can also be added to your website and social media as a button that would allow the customers to access this feature.
You can also send the URL out as part of your email signature if you’d like!
This process is the same for Pay Type, Department, Location, Vehicle and so on. Click on the corresponding arrows, select from the list or create a new one, and manage them by going to The Administration Center.
You can also use this section to manage “Employee Skills”. This skill list can also be edited in Administration > Employee Skills, and new options can be created here. This is particularly helpful when you are using the “Suggestions” feature when scheduling appointments from the Dispatch Board.
By clicking on Text Book A New Job Link, this link will be sent via text to the mobile phone number that is associated with your employee profile. From there you can review your Portal Bookings, and then send the link to anybody you would like.
If you click on Show iFrame Link you will be presented with some code that you can embed into your website, allowing you to place your portal bookings directly on a webpage.
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Each Customer Portal is unique, so sending them to your existing customers has to be done individually. You can take advantage of the filtering options to send the portals to certain customers. It is suggested that you make a habit of sending Customer Portals to new customers as they are created as well. When you are attempting to send a Customer Portal to a customer, make sure that you have their mobile phone and/or email address in their profile.
At the bottom of each customer profile, you will see a Portal button at the bottom of the window. Click on it to open the Customer Portal Configuration window.
Make sure that the "Allow Access" switch is on.
Below that is the customer's unique pin number.
Below that is a QR code for the portal.
You can also review the available views for this particular customer.
At the bottom of the window, you can create a new PIN number for the customer.
By clicking on View Portal, you can preview the customer's portal.
You can choose to send the portal via text or email.