What is a customer portal? It is the signed-in part of your website where a customer sees their own account, their open cases and their documents, finds the answer to the question they were about to ask, and raises a request only when self-service has not worked. It is not the public help centre, though it usually contains one, and it is not a ticketing system, though it feeds one. For a small company the question is less what it is than whether it is worth building yet, and that is answered from the ticket mix rather than from a vendor's demo.
What the customer sees
A customer portal shows the customer what they bought, what is open, what was said the last time they wrote in, and the documents that belong to them: invoices, contracts, reports. Beside that sits the help centre, searchable, with the recurring questions answered, and a request form that collects the details an agent would otherwise ask for. The portal earns its place when a customer can answer 'where is it' and 'can I have that again' without writing to anyone, because those two questions are the bulk of most small companies' tickets.
When one is worth building
A portal is worth building when the recurring questions cost more to answer by hand than the portal would cost to build and keep current. The deflection worksheet works that from your own inputs: the questions, how often they arrive, and the minutes each takes. If the top handful of questions account for most of the handling hours, the portal pays quickly; if the tickets are all different, a portal deflects little and the money is better spent on the people answering them. The worksheet shows which case you are in before anything is built.
What goes in first
The portal content plan lists the articles and account pages in the order the deflection plan justifies, most-deflected first, with an owner and a date for each. Accessibility is part of the first article, not a later phase: a customer on a phone who cannot read the answer raises the ticket anyway. On Orgplanly the plan is kept as a record and the tickets it will not deflect go back to the org plan as the support headcount to carry.
Questions people ask about what is a customer portal
Is a customer portal the same as a help centre?
No. The help centre is the public articles; the portal adds the customer's own account, cases, documents and request form behind a login.
Does a small company need a customer portal?
Only when the recurring questions cost more by hand than the portal would. The free deflection worksheet answers that from your ticket mix.
Does Orgplanly provide the portal?
It works the deflection plan and keeps the content plan; the portal itself runs on your help desk or website.