Self-Service Portal & eStore

With the info@hand Self-Service Portal (included free with info@hand) installed, your business moves to the next level - as your customers and partners are now able to collaborate directly with you. With 24/7 self-service customer access to sales and service, your customer support load is reduced, expenses are reduced, yet your customers are happier than ever.

The info@hand Self-Service Portal enables your customers to collaborate with you on a wide range of topics. Additionally, your sales partners have extended capabilities to view and register leads, and see their related accounts, sales generated and current opportunities.

Customers using the Self-Service Portal may perform many functions, some of which require that the customer be logged in, using username/password credentials you provide to them.

A customer can perform these functions without login information:

• Request a login to the Portal, or request other sales information
• Lookup contact information for the business
  
• Link to the business’s public web site
• Register to use the info@hand eStore
• Register for Marketing Events, Newsletters and Seminars

A customer must typically be logged in to the Self-Service Portal to perform these additional functions:

• Update their own contact information at any time, directly within their supplier’s master records kept by the info@hand CRBM
• Update their own password for access to the Self-Service Portal
• Access Invoice and Payment history to check their account balance and status with your business
  
• Access Quotes you prepare for them, and review and comment on them
  
• Access Knowledge Base articles (only those designated for customer exposure) by searching with content tags. Articles may also have file attachments.
  
• File service Cases directly within their supplier’s info@hand CRBM, and return at any time 24/7 to review updated information
  
• File Software Bugs directly within their supplier’s info@hand CRBM, and return at any time 24/7 to review updated information
• Collaborate on a Project:
• Participate in Customer Forums – a full forum system is included within the self-service portal
• Review Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and their answers

The Self-Service Portal communicates with the core info@hand CRBM using web services, and therefore does not have to be installed on the same server as the core info@hand CRBM.

The Self-Service Portal is built using the Joomla Content Management System (currently version 1.5.15), and it may be integrated within an existing Joomla-based website.

The info@hand eStore is an integral part of the info@hand Self-Service Portal. When sales are made via the eStore, details of Account information, Invoices and Payments are automatically posted in info@hand. And if you have the optional info@hand Finance for QuickBooks installed, that same information will be synchronized from info@hand to your QuickBooks database as well.

Additional key features of the eStore include:

• Products in the catalog of the info@hand CRBM may be individually selected as being for sale, or not for sale, in the linked eStore.
• Images plus full and brief HTML descriptions of those products are also managed within info@hand for use in the eStore screen displays.
• The info@hand product catalog may be synchronized with the eStore catalog, complete with additional details such as product attributes, multi-level product catagories, etc..
• When new portal users are created their registration information is automatically added into the eStore records as well, creating a single sign-on common environment for the Self-Service Portal & eStore combined.

See the Self-Service Portal & eStore documentation here, or try out the portal using the online demo here (username and password are both demo). This links to the database of our regular demo site, so you can check what is happening in the CRBM by accessing that site.