Few things are worse than an unsatisfied customer. No matter what could possibly leave them unhappy, you want to avoid a potential mishap at all costs. Nowadays, word spreads fast, and customer reviews hold a ton of power when it comes to growing your business and expanding your client base.
Organizations using NetSuite have an advantage when keeping the customer experience smooth and transparent with NetSuite’s Customer Center.
When enabled, the Customer Center role allows your customers to receive answers to their questions, complete transactions, submit support issues and query your knowledge base. With an open line of communication, and a range of self-service options, you'll boost customer satisfaction and retention.
Below, we’ll cover the benefits of the Customer Center and how to put it into action for your organization.
Capabilities Within NetSuite’s Customer Center
As an essential part of NetSuite’s Customer Service Management offerings, the Customer Center role operates as a customer portal that enables online self-service with support case submissions, order status tracking and interactive communications. You can view past support cases, quotes and order history to save your customers’ time and provide a better brand experience.
You can also give customers the ability to view and pay invoices or submit return authorizations without needing to contact support—making processes smoother and more efficient for them.
Giving Customers Access
Access to the Customer Portal can be granted to any of your active customers in NetSuite in their customer record.
Off the bat, NetSuite provides a standard role for customers. The Customer Center role lets customers view their estimates, orders, invoices and payments. You can customize this role to adjust the level of permission for certain tasks in the center. For example, if you do not want customers to make payments from the Customer Center, you can set the level for “Customer Payments” to “None” instead of “Edit.”
Enabling the Customer Access Feature
To allow customer access to NetSuite, a user with the “Administrator” role must first enable the “Customer Access” feature.
To enable the Customer Center:
- Go to Setup > Company > Setup Tasks > Enable Features.
- On the Enable Features page, click the Web Presence subtab.
- Check the Customer Access box.
- Click Save.
You can give customers access by checking the “Give Access” box on the “Access” subtab of the Customer record. You can assign one role per customer, usually the Customer Center role, or your customized version of it.
When customer access has been enabled, roles can be assigned to customer users individually or by a CSV import to give access to multiple customers. You also can grant access to individual customer contacts based on their email addresses.
Key Benefits
Once access is setup for your customers, they can begin experiencing a streamlined set of processes when doing business with you and take advantage of the following features:
- Ability to update their own profiles, view their order histories, check their order status and place new orders whenever they please
- Submit support tickets by logging onto your site and accessing personalized content and relevant support documentation
- Receive password-protected access to key customer support tools
- Get automatic receipt confirmations for service requests with case numbers for each submission
These added resources and capabilities empower your customers to easily find answers and make their own headway on business transactions without having to constantly reach out and be left in the dark on the status of their orders and support requests.
This also helps alleviate additional requests and workloads that could bog down your customer service staff as your customers have improved communication, access to information and better transparency in their transactions.
Not to mention, customers’ ability to go in and pay invoices on their own makes the process simple and can help avoid late or missing payments.
There’s a mutual benefit for you and your customers when they have more control within NetSuite’s Customer Center’s self-service portal.
Need Help?
Our Technology Solutions Group includes a team of experienced solution experts who will work with you to understand and address the specific needs of your business. If you’d like to enhance your customers’ experience, contact us online or give us a call at 410.685.5512.
