Service 05 · Customer portals
Surfaces your customers actually trust.
Client-facing portals built around your operational reality. Where buyers configure, track, approve, re-order, or self-serve — and the team behind the curtain sees everything they need to without re-keying or rebuilding the report by hand.
01 — Who this is for
When email isn’t the right channel.
And generic platforms can’t hold your model.
Businesses with repeat or B2B customers whose interactions deserve a surface, not just an inbox. Where ordering, tracking, approvals, or account self-service is a real product, not a feature bolted onto a generic platform. The portal replaces the back-and-forth and frees the team to do the work, not chase its status.
02 — Common symptomsIf one or more sound familiar
01Customers email the same status questions every week.
02Your B2B accounts re-order via PDF, phone, or spreadsheet.
03Approvals get lost in inbox threads, then chased by phone.
04Each customer needs slightly different pricing, terms, or fields.
05The team manually generates and emails every report or quote.
06You’ve outgrown Shopify’s customer area, but no portal SaaS fits.
03 — What we build
Concrete deliverables.
No retainers in disguise.
- 01Customer-facing ordering and tracking portalsWhere customers see what they ordered, where it is, what is coming next. Cuts the inbox load by an order of magnitude.
- 02B2B account areas with custom rulesTiered pricing, account-specific catalogues, minimum orders, credit terms. Whatever your commercial model actually does.
- 03Self-service reporting and document downloadCustomers pull their own invoices, shipment manifests, usage reports. The team stops emailing PDFs.
- 04Approval and review surfacesSingle-side or multi-side approvals. Audit trail, notifications, the lot. Replaces the forwarded-email cycle.
- 05Real-time sync with your operational stackThe portal is a surface, not a separate database. Wired into your data hub via workflow automation so what the customer sees matches what the team sees.
- 06Documented handover; portal in your tenancyYour team owns, updates, and extends the portal. Content, account rules, and pricing tweaks land without an engineer.
04 — How an engagement runs
Map, build, hand over.
Your team owns the portal from there.
Your team owns the portal from there.
Four phases. Customer journeys mapped before any screen is designed. The portal ships incrementally, real customers using it as it grows. Handover is a runbook plus admin access your team genuinely uses.
Phase
00
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13+
01
Map
02
Build
03
Handover
04
Filed
◆ Your team runs it. We step out.
After handover →
Retainer
optional · continuous
Run
→
Iterate
→
Design
→
Build
01 · Map
You
Show us the customer journeys today — orders, support, approvals, the lot.
Us
Map what belongs on the portal, what stays in the back-office, what the API surface looks like.
Filed
Mapped journeys · scope · phased options
Designed around real customers.
02 · Build
You
Use it with one or two real accounts as we ship. Feedback loops weekly.
Us
Build the portal, wire it to your stack, harden it with real traffic.
Filed
Portal live · accounts onboarded · sync in place
Real customers, real workflow.
03 · Handover
You
Name the owner. Walk it with us. Run a customer onboarding yourself.
Us
Document the admin layer, the account rules, the integrations. Train the owner.
Filed
Admin runbook · owner · review cadence
Yours to grow from here.
04 · Filed
◆ MILESTONE
You
Onboard new accounts. Tweak the rules as you go.
Us
Grace period covered. Anything after is booked.
Filed
File closed · no ongoing dependency
The point.
↻ Retainer · optional
Iterate on what’s
live, by the month.
live, by the month.
One cycle · run, iterate, design, build
01 · Run
Keep it operating.
02 · Iterate
Act on what usage shows.
03 · Design
Scope the next thing worth building.
04 · Build
Ship it. Measure it. Back to run.
Typical follow-on
Usage optimisation, workflow tweaks, feature additions. Shape varies by what was built and what the team needs once it’s in their hands.
Cancel any month · 30 days' notice
Engagement is always the foundation · retainer never required
06 — Smallest useful first move
A one-week portal scope engagement.
Standalone. No follow-on required.
We map the customer journeys, audit what the portal should and shouldn’t cover, and write up the scope. One week, on-site or remote. You get a journey map, costed scope, and phased build plan before any commitment to build. If you stop there, you stop there.
07 — Start a conversation
If this is the kind of work you’re after, here’s how to begin.
Thirty minutes. What’s in the way, what you’ve already tried, whether there’s a useful first move. No deck, no proposal.