B2B Customer Portal: A Growth Driver for Sales

To grow a business, it’s essential to keep customer acquisition moving. But companies often overlook relationships with existing customers in the rush to win new ones quickly.

The result?

• Lower customer loyalty
• Customer churn
• A drop in customer lifetime value (CLV) and sales
• Higher acquisition costs

In today’s article, we explain how a customer portal built specifically for your B2B customers can help drive sales.

Short on time? Here’s the key takeaway: 

• Most B2B buyers prefer self-service before reaching out through other support channels, which makes a B2B customer portal essential.
• They help increase sales by strengthening existing relationships with greater convenience, which boosts upselling, cross-selling, and word of mouth.
• Some key features to look for in your B2B customer portal include customizable product catalogs, self-service accounts, real-time inventory updates, collaborative documents, integrations with existing tools, reporting, and data compliance.

What is a B2B customer portal?

A B2B customer portal is a self-service online platform that lets businesses interact and transact with their industrial customers. While B2C customer portals are designed for individual consumers, B2B portals are built around the needs of your business customers, simplifying every interaction.

The main goal of implementing a B2B customer portal is to strengthen customer relationships by enabling seamless transactions, upgrades, and purchases from a centralized platform. It also gives your busy B2B customers quick access to customer service features such as live ticket management, incident management, resolution tracking, and FAQs.

In addition, B2B customer portals make direct communication between businesses and customers easier with built-in chat systems, notifications, and updates.

7 benefits of a B2B customer portal

A customer portal matters for every growth-focused B2B business because it:

1. Improves the customer experience by giving them easy access to product and purchasing information, order placement, and account management.
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2. Reduces the need for manual intervention, cuts errors, and saves time. You no longer have to worry about data loss.
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3. Lowers operational costs tied to direct customer service and paperwork. You won’t need to hire a large in-house team; the portal will handle all your customer requests.
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4. Automates processes like order management, invoice generation, invoice delivery, and support to improve efficiency. For example, if someone places an order, the invoice is generated instantly without manual intervention.
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5. Keeps your operations scalable while delivering a consistent, on-brand experience for every customer.
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6. Gives customers direct access to your B2B e-commerce catalog and pricing, reducing request time and speeding up the sales cycle.
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7. Increases satisfaction and loyalty with the efficiency of a unified commerce platform, allowing customers to choose the products and services they need. For example, they can buy 50 baskets, get one-day delivery, and pay via PayPal through a B2B commerce platform.

Key features of an innovative B2B customer portal

Implementing a B2B customer portal offers many benefits. However, you need an innovative platform tailored to your unique business needs.

How? Look for the following features in your B2B e-commerce portal:

• Detailed product catalog: You should be able to configure your B2B store with detailed product listings that include high-quality images, specifications, and pricing breakdowns. Offer product recommendations to support upselling and cross-selling. Advanced search and filters are also necessary to simplify the user journey.
• Self-service account management: 60% of software users prefer self-service. Make sure your customers can manage their accounts and B2B carts independently, with access to purchase history, billing, real-time stock status, shipping details, order status, stock update notifications, a B2B cart, and more.
• Integration: You should be able to integrate it with your CRM, ERP, sales automation platform, and all your current legacy systems, including workflow validation, so all your data lives in one place and your workflow is simplified.
• Collaboration tools: Features such as shared document viewing, collaborative carts, and communication channels are essential to keep stakeholders at the customer company aligned.
• Mobile accessibility: Choose a platform with a mobile version of the portal so your customers have all the details they need at their fingertips.
• Reporting: Make sure the portal includes analytics and reporting capabilities that track key metrics such as quarterly order volume, order fulfillment patterns, product usage, and more.

For example, DJUST offers B2B commerce solutions with customer portals that can be easily integrated into any back-end system. You can configure custom catalogs and pricing to meet your customers’ unique needs. Your B2B customers can control roles and permissions and track quotes and orders.

What to include in your B2B customer portal

Beyond the features mentioned above, here are a few must-haves that a successful B2B customer portal should include:

• Order management: Let customers place, track, and manage orders with ease. For example, in manufacturing, a customer should be able to log in to the portal, view their custom catalog, place a large order for various components, and then easily track the status of each item, from picking to shipping.
• Real-time delivery tracking: Provide up-to-date information on shipment status and estimated arrival times. This feature should also integrate with your logistics partners to deliver accurate location data, potential delays, and delivery confirmations.
• Incident management: Set up a system to report and resolve issues quickly. For example, if a pharmaceutical distributor receives damaged goods, they should be able to report the issue immediately in the portal, upload photos, and track the resolution process.

Best B2B customer portal platforms

Not sure which B2B commerce platform to choose from the many available options?

Here are 4 of the best B2B customer portal examples to consider:

1. DJUST

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At the top of the list is our own headless e-commerce platform, DJUST. From easy account management to an omnichannel customer experience, our platform gives you everything you need to launch a B2B store with self-service features.

We let you customize your catalogs and set up product recommendations for each customer. Your customers can manage their day-to-day tasks anytime, anywhere. Plus, you can show how much you value your customers’ time with fast ordering and payment features.

Key features:

• Custom catalogs and pricing: For example, different colors of the same wall paint can have different prices. You can also apply discounts to slow-moving colors to clear inventory.
• Automated workflows: From order initiation to invoice generation and order approval, you can automate everything with DJUST. Let’s say one of your customers places an order. They’ll first receive an initiation request, then approve the order, and finally receive an invoice. All of this happens without manual intervention.
• Omnichannel customer experience: With DJUST, customers can start their journey in-store, continue browsing on their tablet at home, and complete the purchase on a desktop, while keeping their data and order information synced across every channel.
• Live order tracking: From packing to delivery, your customers can check exactly where their orders stand, even from their phone.
• API integrations: More than 100 API integrations with your PIM (Product Information Management), CRM (Customer Relationship Management), ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), and other sales and back-end tools. Customize your platform as much as you want; DJUST makes it easy to integrate.

Benefits:

• Simplifies the complexity of B2B transactions with end-to-end user automation.
• Makes incident management easier by letting customers independently report an issue with an order or item from a dedicated space.
• Centralizes customer accounts, improving order visibility and supporting sales growth.
• Features like live tracking and order changes make life easier for your customers, increasing satisfaction and loyalty.

‍Pricing: Contact our team to book a demo and get a custom quote based on your needs.

2. Copilot

Second on our list of the best B2B customer portal software is Copilot. It offers advanced permission controls, invoice generation, file sharing, contract and form management, and more.

Key features:

• Built-in messaging app and invoicing app
• Dedicated collaborative sections for files and contracts
• Integration with Zapier and Make

Benefits:

• User-friendly interface
• Zapier and Make automation improves workflow efficiency
• Affordable for small B2B businesses

Drawbacks:

• Separate apps for each feature can become confusing
• The features aren’t as advanced as some alternatives

Pricing:

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3. Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Another impressive customer management platform with a B2B customer portal is Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

Suitable for both SMBs and enterprises, this Salesforce customer portal tool lets you launch your digital storefront in just a few steps and automate sales across the customer lifecycle.

Key features:

• Ready-to-use site design
• Merchandising tools
• Einstein Product Recommendations
• Customizable network of more than 8,000 partner apps

Benefits:

• Progressive web app technology supports faster load times and a smoother browsing experience.
• Extensive API integrations make it easy to manage large-scale events such as flash sales and Cyber Week.

Drawbacks:

• Not user-friendly for beginners
• Enterprise-level pricing

Pricing: You can contact their sales team for a custom quote.
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4. Moxo

Finally, we have Moxo, which gives you a clear view of every project, contract, and order with its full-featured B2B customer portal.

Key features:

• Automated onboarding
• Content personalization
• Playbook templates
• Integration with tools like HubSpot, Slack, and Zoom

Benefits:

• User-friendly for beginners
• Extensive integrations make collaboration easier

Drawbacks:

• Limited customization

Pricing: Moxo offers one subscription plan for workflows and another for customer portals. Contact their sales team for a custom quote.

In conclusion

Your B2B customers are here to do business, and self-service is their first choice. They don’t want to go through sales calls and emails to get what they need.

Implementing a B2B customer portal solves that problem with greater flexibility, transparency, and convenience.

Make sure the customer portal software you choose is scalable and compliant with data security requirements. It should include the automation you need, integrations with key sales tools, and enough customization to fit your business needs perfectly.

Finally, define the budget you can dedicate to setting up a customer portal, compare pricing and features, and choose the one that checks every box, like our enterprise headless commerce platform, DJUST. Request a demo and see for yourself.

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