A client portal is a private place where clients can see updates, send documents and read messages. Many case management tools include one.
Whether it helps depends on the clients, the matters and the team. This article gives a way to decide.
The problem
Email and attachments are easy, but they scatter documents and invite mistakes such as the wrong recipient. A portal moves that traffic to one place.
A portal that clients do not use only adds a second inbox for the team to check.
What is known
Our article on client communication and calls looks at what the available studies say about communication, and we do not repeat it here. We found no independent figure on how many clients use portals or on their effect on results, so we give none.
What is certain is that a portal is one more system to set up, explain and maintain, and that some clients prefer a phone call or an email.
What to do
- Start from the problem: documents sent by email, repeated questions about status or messages that get lost
- Look at who the clients are: whether they have the time, the devices and the comfort to log in, and whether they prefer another language or another channel
- Decide what goes in the portal: document exchange, status updates, secure messages, forms or invoices
- Keep another way open for clients who do not use it, and say so
- Explain the portal at the start of the matter, in plain language, with a short guide in the client's language
- Decide who answers portal messages and how soon
- Start with one kind of matter and review the result before extending it
When a portal is not the answer
- There are few clients and few documents, and email and phone already work
- The matter record is not kept up to date, so the portal would show wrong information
- Nobody has time to answer another channel
- Clients would need yet another password for a one-time exchange
- The tool cannot limit each client to their own matter
What to look for when you implement it
- Whether each client sees only their own information
- How clients log in and recover access, and whether extra verification is offered
- Whether notifications avoid putting sensitive details in an email
- What clients can do from a phone
- Whether messages and documents in the portal reach the matter file
- Whether the firm can export what is in the portal if it changes tools