Understanding the Customer Portal

Your customers will have a delightful experience as you use all of the available features offered to give context, insight and status related to the service you're providing. We've covered some of the core components that will help give you an idea in how our customer-facing portal showcases your company, appointments and real-time updates.

In order for customers to access the customer portal, notifications must be turned on and a job will need to be created for a customer. You can always allow multiple recipients to receive notifications for any given job you wish by using 'Multiple Job Contacts'.

The notifications that the customer receives via email and SMS will typically include a link that provides access to the job that has been created. As the job progresses, the customer portal will automatically update to show statuses such as when an Appointment has been scheduled, the Technician is on the way, or asking for survey feedback.

Check out the sections below for more information on specific notifications and how the customer portal will typically appear.

Assigned & Created Jobs

There are three ways for jobs to appear in Dispatch. 

1. Receiving a job from a third party.
2. Manual Job creation within the application.
3. Jobs automatically created through an alternative integration.

When a job is created, the customer is sent a notification that confirms their request for service has been acknowledged. This is the first notification that a customer receives and may include a customer portal link showing a screen such as the following.

Scheduling an Appointment

When you schedule an appointment on the job the customer will typically receive another notification which includes details on your scheduled appointment as well as your company details in case the customer needs to get in touch. Clicking the "Check Status" button from the email notification brings them to their customer portal.

Prior to your visit the customer can add a note or photo for reference which will be shown on the job for your team to review. Once the customer clicks on the 'Add a Note or Photo' button, the below screen will appear to enter necessary details.

When a customer adds a Note or a Photo, any user with the role of Dispatcher will be notified.

Technician On the Way

When the Technician is ready for their next appointment, they can notify the customer to include an estimated time of arrival along with the ability to see live updates from the Technician's approaching location.

Customers typically can see:

1. Photo of Technician
2. Name of Technician
3. Company Name & Logo
4. Phone Number to Call
5. Location of Appointment
6. Technician Location

The ETA will automatically update as the technician gets closer to the location. In order for accurately representing arrival estimates, Location Services need to be enabled for the Dispatch mobile app on the Technician's device.

In addition Technician Bios may be displayed. Don't worry, Technician's Bio will only be displayed if a Dispatcher has approved it first. Some of our Job Source partners may choose not to display Bios for their customers.

Started

Once your technician arrives at the location, they can mark the appointment as 'Started'. The customer portal will display the appointment details with a status of 'In Progress'. At this point the customer can no longer track the Technicians' location.

Paused

Many times Jobs are not completed on the first visit. In cases where a follow-up appointment is necessary or perhaps equipment parts must be ordered, you may choose to pause the Job. When a Technician chooses to Pause the job, they may enter a customer-facing message to offer further details on the appointment they completed. The context enables communication where a customer may otherwise be left in the dark.

Activity

In the portal, the customer is able to track all updates to the job by viewing the activity section. If the job is then rescheduled, the portal will update to the scheduled page shown a few sections above. This will show the customer the date/time that all of the previous actions were completed.

Survey & Complete Confirmation

Capturing customer feedback is essential to understand the experience left with a customer. When completing a job, customers will typically be asked to provide feedback at the end of the appointment. Sometimes customers may be asked to leave reviews for the original job source (such as a home warranty) and the company who provided the end service.

Surveys will be offered to customers in one of two forms:

1. 5-star rating
2. 10-point NPS rating

Each option allows the customer to select categories and submit written comments.

Once the customer submits a review, they will see the complete confirmation! The desktop portal will also show that the job is complete by having a check mark over the job location. 

Customer Billing Documents

Customers have the ability to view Estimates and Invoices right from the customer portal. They are even be able to approve Estimates and submit payment on an open Invoice (if your organization has credit card processing enabled).

When creating an Estimate or Invoice in our web platform (work.dispatch.me) you have to ability toggle on whether you would like that billing document to be shared in the customer portal. Be sure to do this during document creation or prior to approving.

When you send the document to the customer, there will be a link in the email that they receive that will take them right to the customer portal.

Once in the portal, customers can view any billing document that you elected to share and perform a couple of different options including "Approving" estimates and even submitting a payment on an open invoice (so long as you have credit card processing enabled). You will be notified via email whenever an Estimate is approved or an Invoice is paid.