Client self service is the same idea as customer self service with a smaller, closer audience: an agency, a consultancy, an accountant or a studio with a few dozen clients who each want their documents, their project's status, their invoices and a way to ask for something without an email thread. The questions repeat less than a software company's but the requests repeat more, and most of them are for something the firm already holds. This page is about what a client portal has to hold for that kind of firm and how to judge whether it pays; the free deflection savings worksheet on this site works the case from your own request count, cost and portal price, with no account and no vendor named.
What the client wants to do alone
See the documents the firm has produced for them, the status of the work, the invoices and what has been paid, and raise a request with the context already attached. Each of those is an email today, and each email is a request an agent handles: at $8 of handling and 30% of them self-served, 360 of 1,200 a month is $2,841 saved on the worked example, which is the same arithmetic whether the sender is a client or a customer.
What the portal has to hold
The client's account, every document with its version, every case and request with its status, the invoices and the articles that answer the firm's repeating questions. It has to hold them securely, because a client portal is a login to someone else's paperwork; NIST's digital identity guidelines are the reference for how that login is done, and a portal that is not accessible to the client's staff is not self-service for them.
Whether it pays, for a smaller client list
A firm with forty clients deflects fewer tickets than a company with four thousand customers, and the case rests more on the hours the account manager gets back than on the ticket count. Enter your own request count and handling cost into the savings worksheet; the paid plan keeps every client's documents, requests and figures against the client so the case is measured after launch.
Questions people ask about client self service
What is a client self-service portal?
A login where an agency's or consultancy's clients see their documents, project status and invoices and raise requests with the context attached, so the account manager's inbox holds only the requests that need a person.
Is a client portal worth it for a small agency?
Count the requests a month that are for something you already hold, cost the handling and enter both into the deflection savings worksheet on this site; the worked example is a customer company's figures, and yours will be smaller in count and larger per request.
How should a client portal handle logins?
As a login to someone else's paperwork: an authenticated account per client contact, following the NIST guidelines cited below, never a shared link. Deflectvo Pro gives every client contact its own login.