Support portals are where a customer goes instead of writing to you. A good one answers the recurring question before a ticket exists, shows the customer their own account, cases and documents, and offers a request form only when self-service has not worked. A bad one is a knowledge base nobody can search bolted to a login nobody remembers. The difference is decided before anything is built, by working out which questions the portal should answer first, and that is what the free deflection worksheet on this site does from your own ticket mix.
The three jobs of a support portal
The first job is deflection: the recurring question answered in an article the customer finds before they write in. The second is the account: what the customer bought, what is open, what was said last time, and the documents that go with it, so 'where is my order' and 'can I have that invoice again' never become tickets. The third is the request form, which raises a ticket only when the first two have not worked and collects the details the agent would otherwise have to ask for. A portal that does the first two well shrinks the third.
Decide what to build first from the ticket mix
List the questions you get, how often each arrives and how many minutes each takes to answer by hand. The deflection worksheet takes those three inputs and shows, per question, the tickets an article would deflect and the handling hours that represents. The build order falls out of it: the most-deflected question first, then the next, and the account pages where the questions are about the customer's own data rather than about the product. Nothing about the order is a matter of taste once the mix is counted.
Size the support team to what the portal leaves
The tickets the portal will not deflect are the ones a person answers, and that number is a staffing input. On Orgplanly the deflection plan's remainder goes back to the org plan as the support headcount the plan should carry, so the portal decision and the staffing decision are made together rather than by different people in different meetings. Public guidance on accessibility applies to the portal itself: an article a customer cannot read on a phone deflects nothing.
Questions people ask about support portals
What is the difference between a support portal and a help centre?
A help centre is the public articles; a support portal adds the signed-in account, cases and documents, and the request form. The deflection worksheet plans the articles for either.
How many articles does a portal need to start?
As many as the deflection plan justifies in its first pass, which is usually the handful of questions that account for most of the tickets. The worksheet shows the count.
Does Orgplanly host support portals?
No. It works the deflection plan and keeps the portal content plan as a record; the portal runs on your help desk or site.