The customer portal and feedback

The customer portal is where your customers' contacts sign in to raise and follow their tickets, ask for things from your catalogue, answer the questions you send them and approve requests. They sign in with an emailed link or code, and you can also offer Sign in with Microsoft, passkeys and passwords. Alongside it, feedback asks the requester to rate each resolved ticket, and asks decision-makers the Net Promoter Score question on a schedule.

This page covers the service desk side. The Customer portal section covers everything contacts see, from Home to the company dashboard.

Set up the portal#

Settings > Customer portal controls it, in seven tabs. On General:

1. Make sure Portal is On. Turning it off stops everyone signing in.
2. Note the Address. Share it with customers, for example in your email signature or on your website; invitations and sign-in emails link to it too. It comes from your server's address; change PORTAL_URL in the server's settings to use another.
3. Enter the Portal name: what contacts see at the top of the portal and in its emails, usually your company name. Check the Preview and press Save name.

On Access and sign-in, choose whether to Give new contacts portal access. With it off, new contacts cannot sign in until someone turns portal access on for them. The tab also shows how many contacts have access and how many signed in during the last 30 days, with Manage contacts. See Setting up the portal for every tab.

Portal sections#

The Sections tab chooses what the portal offers: Tickets, Billing, Payments, Quotes, Projects, Help articles, Service status and Reports. Turn a section off and it leaves the portal's menus and pages, and the portal refuses it with a page that says so. Use Change it for to give one customer its own choice, for example a customer who pays by bank transfer and has no use for Payments. With Tickets off, contacts reach you by email or phone only.

Self-registration#

Self-registration, on the Access and sign-in tab, lets people create their own portal account. It is off by default. Choose After a member of staff approves them or Straight away, once they confirm their address, for every customer or per customer on the customer's Settings tab.

The portal's sign-in page then offers registration with a work email address. Someone enters their name and work email address; when its domain is one of exactly one customer's email domains and that customer allows it, they get an email to confirm the address. Confirming makes them a contact with portal access or, with approval on, waits for your team under Account requests on the same tab and in your Approvals inbox, where whoever manages contacts can approve or turn it down.

Give a contact access#

Who can sign in is set on each contact:

1. Open the contact.
2. In the Customer portal card, press Turn on portal access.
3. Press Change permissions and tick what else they can do, such as Every ticket for their company or Billing. Just their own tickets clears the list.
4. Press Invite to portal. They get an email with a link to sign in.

Contact roles add permissions too: the billing role gives Billing, and approvers and decision-makers get Quotes. Turning portal access off signs the contact out. Marking a contact inactive when they leave stops them using it too. See Portal permissions and people.

What contacts can do in the portal#

• Raise a ticket from How can we help?, New ticket or a catalogue item, with files, screenshots or a phone photo, and see when to expect a reply.
• Follow their tickets, or every ticket for their company or site if their permissions allow it, as a conversation that updates live, with "Priya is writing a reply" while a technician types a public reply.
• Reply, copy in colleagues, mark a ticket as sorted, ask Any news? once your reply time has passed, or say This is now urgent once per ticket. Both notify the technician; neither changes the priority.
• Confirm whether a resolved ticket is fixed, when you ask them to, and rate it.
• Ask for things from the service catalogue and follow their requests on the My requests tab of Tickets (see The service catalogue).
• Approve service requests, changes and other requests in Approvals, when they are an approver (see Approvals).
• Fill in what you have sent them from the To do list on the portal's Home: information requests, forms and sign-offs (see Information requests).
• Look things up in the Help centre.

They only ever see public replies, never internal notes. Statuses are shown in plain terms: With us, Waiting for you, Visit booked, On hold, Resolved: please confirm and Closed, with tickets waiting for them first. Tickets raised by your monitoring show to managers only by default, worded "We are looking at: ...", or to everyone or nobody, per Tickets raised by monitoring on the What customers see tab.

A reply from the portal moves a waiting, resolved or closed ticket on just like an email reply, by its queue's status rules (it reopens, unless the queue keeps a supplier wait where it is). A ticket you resolved that asks the customer to confirm the fix stays under Open in the portal, and Home's Needs you asks them to confirm it.

Feedback on resolved tickets#

Settings > Feedback asks customers how you did, follows up poor answers, runs the Net Promoter Score and puts your best comments on your website. It has five tabs: Who is asked, Rating wording, Poor ratings, Net Promoter Score and Your website. Satisfaction report at the top opens Reports > Satisfaction.

Who is asked#

With Asking for a rating on, the first time a ticket reaches one of the chosen statuses its requester is asked, once per ticket: in the reply that resolved it (or a short resolution email) and in the portal. Choose:

• When a ticket is: which statuses ask (by default any resolved status),
• Customers never asked, for example a customer who has asked not to get surveys,
• which Ticket types and Queues ask,
• Ask about tickets raised by alerts and Ask about tickets raised by automation (off by default, as usually nobody at the customer reported these),
• Send a resolution email when nobody replied, so tickets resolved without a reply still ask,
• Ask the same person at most every so many days,
• how many days The link takes a rating for, and for how long A rating can be changed.

The email has three one-click answers: good, okay and bad. The customer can then add a comment. Merged tickets and follow-up tickets of a rating are never asked.

The same question is asked in the portal after a catalogue request completes and after a visit, using these settings, so nobody is asked twice about the same work. Contacts can also use Give feedback in the portal's account menu for praise, a complaint or an idea, which goes to the team leads.

Rating wording#

Edit the question, the three answers, the prompt for a comment, the thank you and the resolution email. Placeholders such as {{contact.first_name}}, {{ticket.reference}} and {{technician}} are filled in, and a live preview shows the result on your latest ticket.

Poor ratings#

The technician who had the ticket always hears about their rating. Choose which ratings are followed up (Bad, and optionally Okay) and What happens:

• Note and notify: an internal note on the ticket with the rating and comment, and a notification to the team leads,
• New ticket: a follow-up ticket for the customer, assigned to the first team lead,
• Nothing.

Choose the Team leads (left empty, the administrators are used). They also see the team's score on Home. A comment that arrives later is added to the follow-up.

Net Promoter Score#

Contacts flagged as Decision-maker are emailed "How likely are you to recommend us?" with a 0 to 10 scale and room for a comment. Choose How often (Quarterly, Twice a year, Once a year or Off), the starting month, the day and time, how long answers are taken for, and any Customers never asked. Send a round now sends one straight away. While a round is open, the survey also shows as a card on the contact's portal Home, answered in place.

Scores of 9 and 10 are promoters, 7 and 8 passives, and 0 to 6 detractors. For a detractor, choose to Tell the team leads, Open a ticket or do Nothing. The email wording is editable with a preview.

Testimonials on your website#

The Your website tab of Settings > Feedback puts your satisfaction score and the comments customers agreed to have quoted on your own website. Nothing shows until you turn it on and publish comments.

1. Turn on Your score and testimonials on your website.
2. Leave Ask whether a comment may be quoted on. After a customer comments on a rating, they are asked "May we quote your comment on our website?" and choose how they are named. Name them as sets the starting choice. They can change their mind at any time, and saying no takes a published comment down at once. A comment is never shown without a yes.
3. Under What shows, choose which ratings' comments may show (Good, and optionally Okay), the Shortest comment, how many Comments shown, the score period, and whether to show the satisfaction score, how many ratings it is from and the Net Promoter Score.
4. Under Look, set the Title, the Layout (Carousel, Grid or Badge) and the Theme. It uses your brand colour and logo.
5. Optionally turn on A testimonials page: every published comment on a page of its own on your portal's address.
6. Press Save, then copy the script (or the iframe, for website builders that only take one) from Put it on your website. The Preview shows exactly what your website shows now.

Publish comments#

Sales and billing > Testimonials lists comments Ready to publish, Published, Hidden and Not agreed. Press Publish on a comment to put it on your website. You can trim it or fix a typo first (never add to the customer's words), feature it so it shows first, take it down, or hide it so it is never suggested again. Turn on Publish comments by themselves to put comments with consent up straight away.

Where ratings show#

• On the ticket, the Rating section of the details panel shows the answer, the comment and how it came in. From there you can ask again.
• The customer page has a Feedback card with twelve months of ratings, their Net Promoter Score and the latest comments.
• Reports > Satisfaction counts ticket and chat ratings per technician, customer, queue or month, with the response rate and comments. Reports > Net Promoter Score shows the score and answers by round.
• Home shows this month's score, the Net Promoter Score and poor ratings to team leads and administrators.