I recently contributed to a LinkedIn Advice article called “Which self-service support portals offer the best integration with popular CRM systems?”. This is by no means a comprehensive guide, but there are some valuable tips in here if you are starting your CRM-Portal journey!
CRM is a journey, and it can take your business to incredible places.
To start this journey, identify the minimum viable product for your CRM to be functional, including customer relevant data. Then, customize the data model to your process. For insurance agencies, it often looks like:
📞 Leads
👥 Accounts & Contacts
🤝 Opportunities
📂 Policies
Then, build a self-serve portal for your customers to interact with live CRM data. For insurance agencies, customers can:
🆘 File Claims
📝 Sign Documents
🎖️ Download Certificates of Insurance
💳 Update Billing Info
This is a massive time saver for service teams!
Here are several ways for Insurance Agencies to design Insurance Policy data:
✅ Good: sales team data needs
✅✅ Better: sales/service teams data needs
✅✅✅ Best: sales/service teams & customer data needs
With a data model in place, your Insurance Agency claims submission process could start like this:
- A customer has water damage at home, so they login to the portal to file a claim.
- When the customer hits submit, the claim is assigned to the priority claims agents queue.
- 30 seconds later, the claim has been assigned to an agent, who called the customer.
From images to design aesthetics, your customers aren’t logging into a portal to bask in the glory of your online castle.
They need data stored on your CRM, and the quicker, the better.
😱 The last thing they want is an Indiana Jones race through a dark maze with the floor falling underneath them!
☕ They want a coffee shop online order pick up. Mmm thanks.
2 UX Tips (there are countless more!)
👍 Make it simple for users to find what they need, in as few clicks, taps, or scrolls as possible.
👍 Use analytics and heatmaps to see where users are going, stopping, stuck, and leaving.
What's makes your portal awesome for your users? Share in the comments!
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