A help portal, typically described as a help center, customer service portal, or self-serve portal, surfaces information for customers and enables them to find answers to their questions and resolve their issues with your products, services, and company. Help portals can be simple online FAQs or more sophisticated digital domains that enable various forms of customer communication, including email, webchat, and messaging options.
Depending on the company and the product or service, a help portal might also allow the customer to self-serve to confidential and customized personal information such as account information, payment information, etc. Typically, the customer would log in with a secure user name and password to access confidential information.
Why Do Help Portals Matter to Customer Service?
Some fun and possibly surprising statistics:
- 90% of consumers expect a company to offer self-service in the form of a help portal
- A third of customers say they’d rather “clean a toilet” than speak with customer service directly on the phone
- 60% of consumers view a brand with a mobile-friendly help portal more favorably than one without
Today, most people prefer to self-serve and contact customer service via a help portal versus over the phone or even email. An online help portal can serve as a single resource for all of a customer’s questions, concerns, and issues. By connecting your help portal to your knowledge base and integrating your automated customer service options with your live agent offerings, you can ensure that your help portal is as useful as possible for your customers.
How Helpshift Supports Help Portals
The Helpshift-supported help portal is called the web support portal. It’s a mobile-responsive portal for connecting to your customers on the web, on mobile devices, and in-app. If you’re a Helpshift customer, you can find your help portal at <company name>.helpshift.com.
Your Helpshift help portal displays your FAQs and has a contact form that feeds issues straight into your Helpshift dashboard. Issues that have been filed via the contact button on your help portal are marked with a globe and mail icon in your issues feed so they’re easily distinguishable from others.
You can embed your Helpshift help portal in a full-page format using the Helpshift support template. (Directions here.) You can also set up your help portal in different languages; Helpshift supports over 180 languages. (Directions here.) The Helpshift help portal is customizable, allowing you to create a custom and unique “contact us” form.
