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The conference will feature presentations and panel discussions from over 15 business leaders and experts on cloud computing. Cloud Consulting will be participating in the panel on “The Future of Commerce in the Cloud”

National Cloud Week is a series of events taking place from April 23rd to 28th designed to raise further awareness of the role that cloud computing can play in helping to drive economic growth, support job creation and to deliver savings and efficiencies in the public and private sector in Ireland.

The Irish Centre for Cloud Computing and Commerce comprising researchers from Dublin City University, University College Cork and Athlone Institute of Technology. It was recently awarded €1.2m in funding from Enterprise Ireland and the IDA to deliver the initial research phase of the EI/IDA Cloud Technology Centre. Cloud Consulting has been awarded the role to manage this initial research programme in the Centre.

The Irish Centre for Cloud Computing and Commerce is an important step towards enhancing Ireland’s reputation in the Cloud Computing space. For further details on the National Conference on Cloud Computing and Commerce, visit http://www.nc4.ie.

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Here are some design principles to incorporate when preparing your portal service.

ID your portal users

Using appropriate sales related metrics, you should decide on whether access to your portal is available to all customers or those who have purchased over a particular revenue threshold or a particular product line or your own chosen set of metrics.

Before notifying the contact(s) in each chosen customer account, you should ensure that a valid and up to date email address is available for each contact’s profile. An accurate email address is important for enabling the customer to set an initial password and to renew passwords on an ongoing basis.

Sharing of information

With your portal users identified for each Customer Account, you can then decide on how much information will be available to each user. Typically, information relating to their account and related transactions are made available for viewing and updating.

The related transactions can include;

• Support cases for products or services purchased by the user
• Contact details for the Customer Account
• Contract details
• In the context of a user being a partner to your business, the related transactions can include shared leads and opportunities that are being worked on jointly by the partner and your business

Looking at the variety of information that can be shared with each portal user, it is important to remember that the sharing rules do not necessarily have to be consistent. For example, a portal user may have the capability to read and change contact details for an Account, but only have the capability to view the contract details for the products/services purchased from you. Also with certain categories of opportunities or leads, a partner may have the capability to update the latest progress. However with other opportunity categories, they may be able only to read, but make any changes.

As with any online content sharing / social media application, it is important that the most accurate and up-to-date content is available for sharing. On a continuous basis, the quality and accuracy of shared content should be kept under review. One example of this discipline is in the area of customer portals and the availability of FAQs and Guides.

Building and maintaining your shared content

Portals are extremely useful as we know, for customers to log comments and raise support cases. However, let’s not forget the self-service principle – whereby with the appropriate content, people can search the portal’s knowledge base for a resolution to their problem.

A few pointers to help build a useful knowledge base;

• Use a consistent structure and format, so that the answers in the knowledge base are easily searchable and/or browsing friendly by subject matter and related topic tags. The format is important because it facilitates customer service representatives writing up new solution content in a consistent manner
• Using the most frequently answered questions as a guide, ensure that the most commonly asked questions are catered for as a priority in terms of providing solutions
• Where appropriate, ensure that the knowledge base is available in all relevant languages used by your customers
• Implement an editorial process for the solutions material to ensure that it is accurate , understandable and easy to read – which ties in with the previous point on the importance of continuous review
• Facilitate the sharing of information from the portal by enabling social media links for all the well known channels such as Twitter, Google+, Facebook etc

Following these guidelines helps to ensure that a customer-friendly portal is not only rolled-out successfully, but used on an ongoing basis and receiving high marks in customer feedback.

Look forward to hearing your comments on the use of portals as part of a customer service programme.