What Belongs in a Customer Portal?

The Core

1. Login – secure, with reset function and without hurdles
2. View – the current status of your own process
3. Act – report something, make inquiries, upload

With these three things, a portal is already useful. Everything else builds on that.

What Makes Sense Afterwards

• Exchange files instead of via email
• Notification on status change
• View invoices and documents
• Multiple people per customer with different rights
• Reports for the customer themselves

Why Portals Really Fail

Not due to missing functions, but due to outdated data. A portal where the status has remained unchanged for three weeks will not be accessed anymore. After that, the customer will call again – and you have one more system to maintain without relief.

This leads to the most important requirement: The portal must automatically pull its data from the system where actual work is done. A portal that someone has to maintain manually is dead from the start.

Legal Aspects

• Secure access data and sessions properly
• Roles: Who sees which processes? Not trivial for corporate clients with multiple contacts
• Deletion concept also for portal accounts
• Accessibility: For many providers, the requirements of the Accessibility Strengthening Act will apply from June 28, 2025 – this needs to be clarified before the draft, not after

The Honest Benefit

A portal saves calls and emails – but only if it is more current than the information provided over the phone. This benchmark is the actual expectation.