As an MSP, providing a seamless and cohesive digital experience for your clients is no longer just an added advantage—it's a necessity.
In fact, 60% of customers have higher expectations for customer service than even a year ago.
Imagine a world where you can deploy an Amazon-like experience to your customers. Where they can:
- Open support tickets
- Pay bills
- Communicate with their MSP
- View SLAs
- Track new quotes in real-time
- Manage and renew services across different sites
...all in one place, without having to log in to different portals. That's the power of an integrated client portal that's connected to your tech stack.
Let’s take a closer look at MSP client portals to figure out why you need one and what you should consider before getting started.
What is a client portal?
A client portal is a secure digital platform where clients of a business can log in to access files, collaborate on projects, track progress, and communicate with the company.
It serves as a centralized hub for client-business interactions, offering features like file storage, messaging, and project management tools. The portal is typically password-protected and permissions-based, ensuring that users only have access to relevant information based on their roles or privileges.
The Growing Demand for Customer Portals.svg)
What's driving the need for MSPs to provide a customer portal? According to Jay McBain, Chief Analyst at Canalys, "The new, younger (millennial-aged), majority buyer of tech and telco products ($5 trillion this year) has different psychology, buying behaviors, and journey..."
These younger buyers are digital-first or digital-only, with 75% preferring not to interact with a human. They also:
- prefer subscription and flexible consumption models
- seek integration in their tech stacks
- view partnering as a collaborative effort
- Find marketplaces highly appealing
If millennial-aged buyers are the biggest telco purchasers and prefer digital interactions, shouldn't MSPs prioritize client portals to cater to their needs?
Who Should Build the Client Portal?
Who should provide the portal—MSP or vendor? Let's break it down:
Manufacturer-Provided Portals
Manufacturers have an in-depth understanding of their products, allowing them to offer specialized features and support directly through their portals.
This ensures that clients receive highly targeted assistance and can leverage advanced functionalities specific to the product.
However, this approach can lead to a fragmented experience.
Clients might need to navigate multiple portals from different manufacturers to manage their various services and products, resulting in inefficiency and frustration.
MSP-Provided Portals
On the other hand, a portal provided by the MSP consolidates various tools and services into one unified interface, enhancing the client's user experience.
This centralized approach offers several advantages:
- Unified Experience: Clients can manage all their services and support needs through a single portal, eliminating the need to juggle multiple platforms.
- Streamlined Communication: A single portal ensures that all communication, billing, and support tickets are handled efficiently.
- Comprehensive Performance Tracking: Clients can monitor the performance of all managed services in one place.
- Simplified Renewals and Orders: Renewing services and ordering new ones become straightforward processes, as clients can do everything within the same portal.
However, providing a successful customer experience hinges on the MSP's capability to integrate these diverse elements correctly.
The Case for MSP-Provided Portals
While manufacturer-provided portals offer specialized features, they only focus on their products and services. Customers deploy many types of solutions and in this scenario require them to login to several different portals.
Not to mention the fact they most likely don’t have all the features your customers will need.
This is the type of fragmented experience you want to avoid and why the MSP should provide the client portal.
What should be in a client portal?
When we look at client portals, we need to consider the total customer experience across different consumer apps like Amazon, or cloud services from Azure and AWS. Think about what they offer in terms of messaging, support tickets, and online interactions.
You need a framework first and then apps to handle specific tasks.
According to Forrester, investing in a customer-first operation can yield up to a 700% ROI over 12 years.
Here’s a detailed shopping list of the essential features your client portal should offer:
Open Support Tickets
Your clients should be able to easily open support tickets. This feature enables them to report issues and request assistance, ensuring that any problems are addressed promptly.
Some MSPs use separate portals for support tickets and billing, which can be confusing. A unified portal that interacts with your PSA system ensures that clients can open support tickets and manage their billing from one place.
Pay Bills
Clients should have the ability to view and pay their bills directly through the client portal. This convenience is paramount for smooth and seamless transactions.
Communicate with Your Provider
Effective communication is vital. Your client portal should facilitate easy and efficient communication options, such as messaging or chat features, to allow clients to reach out with any questions or concerns in real-time.
Subscription Management
In platforms like TechGrid, subscription management is a paramount feature. This allows clients to manage their ongoing subscriptions, making it easy to upgrade, downgrade, or cancel services.
Track the Status of Quotes
62% of customers think experiences should flow naturally between both physical and digital spaces.
Your clients should be able to track the status of their quotes, giving them transparency into the approval process and expected timelines for service delivery.
Renew Services
Enable clients to renew their services directly through the portal. This ensures there are no interruptions in service and makes the renewal process effortless.
Order New Services
Clients should be able to place orders for new services with ease. This feature should reflect the experience of placing an order on Amazon, where the process is intuitive and user-friendly.
Track Performance
Clients need to measure how well you're providing your services. A performance tracking feature can show how their network is performing under your management, illustrating the value they are receiving.
Track Order Status and Shipment
Borrowing from consumer apps, like Amazon, clients should be able to track the status of their orders and shipments. This transparency goes a long way in providing a holistic and satisfying customer experience.
Example: Amazon allows you to place orders, pay bills, open support tickets, and communicate with customer service—all within a single interface. That’s the experience you want to emulate.
Improve Customer Experience with an MSP Platform 
Improve customer experience with an MSP platform that offers a unified foundation connecting all your data, tools, and people through specific sales and fulfillment workflows.
TechGrid stands out as a comprehensive platform that consolidates all these functionalities into a single system. Rather than merely adding a client portal to an already fragmented process, TechGrid provides the necessary infrastructure to tie everything together seamlessly.
With TechGrid, you avoid exacerbating those broken processes and adding more portals. Instead, you get a suite of sales tools designed specifically for MSPs, including a robust client portal that covers all aspects of customer interaction. Your customers can open support tickets, track quotes, manage services, and collaborate.
See TechGrid in Action: Request a quick 15 min product demo with expert Q&A.
