Client Portal ❤️

Today you will learn...

Reading time: 15 minutes

• The value of a Stakeholder Portal in terms of brand awareness & having a unified self-serve information source

• How to brand your Company’s Portal

• Who, when, & how to invite Stakeholders to the Portal

• Overview of the Portal’s key features & value

Why do I need a Portal?

Most companies in the solar industry adopt a high-touch & low-tech approach to stakeholder communication. This leads to high general & administrative project costs and oftentimes leaves stakeholders, mainly Clients, feeling left in the dark. Communication is often reactive (vs proactive) and conducted over siloed media, such as the project manager’s personal email inbox, SMS threads with crew members, phone calls directly to the HQ with questions like “it’s been months, why hasn’t my project been surveyed/engineered/installed/inspected/PTOd yet?”

Having a branded Stakeholder Portal will have three-fold value.

1. It can be used as a powerful brand asset to wow your Clients & set your Company apart from your competition

2. It can be a cost-cutting center in your project management & customer support functions

3. It can be used to drive client Lifetime Value (LTV) providing a medium for cross-selling & up-selling your clients value-adding products and services across the 25 year relationship

By this point you should be thinking “my team & I needed this yesterday, where do we start?” Let’s dive in!

Configuring your Portal

Ask your customer success manager or email [e-mail] to see if your Company’s plan includes access to the Portal. Once you confirm that it does you'll have two areas you want to configure the Portal.

First, upload your Company’s logo in Workspace Settings> General. This will be used on the login page of your Portal as well as in the upper left corner of every page inside the Portal.

Then go to Workspace Settings>Advanced Settings>Portal to configure the Portal settings and get the Portal link. Send it to your website admin to embed on your website.

You will notice a list of settings here for the Customer Portal. These include:

Communication-New messages in Portal received-Who gets notified when chat messages come from the Portal (and delivery method)

Requests-Appointment reminder-Automatically notifies a client about an upcoming appointment for a request (and delivery method)

Work Orders-Booking confirmation-Notifies a client that a work order has been scheduled when sent (and delivery method)

Work Orders-Visit reminder-Automatically notifies a client about an upcoming visit. (and delivery method)

Work Orders-On the way-Notifies a client that a technician is on the way (and delivery method)

Work Orders-Arrived-Notifies a client that a technician is arrived (and delivery method)

Action Items-Action Item Due-Automatically notifies a client about an upcoming Action Item deadline (and delivery method)

Action Items-Action Assigned to Client-Notifies a client that an Action Item is assigned to him (and delivery method)

Referral Settings-Client can submit Referrals-Display Referral prompts in the Client Portal. Clients receive a custom link to share via email or social media. This link directs to a request form in the Portal. Each new client is tagged with the name of the referrer.

Review Settings-Client can leave a review-Display “Leave us a review” widget in Client Portal (and how to configure this:

In the Workspace Settings>Templates area you create Action Items for your client to complete in the Portal:

These action items can be assigned to a Client in a Project under Work Orders:

The client will see these in the Portal here:

Pro tip: The best brands in the solar industry add a “Log in” or “Sunny Solar Portal” button to their website to drive high-tech/low-touch customer conversations & minimize inbound call/email/SMS volume. This button usually leads to a subdomain or page like portal.sunnysolar.com or sunnysolar.com/portal. This allows you to white label the Coperniq Portal & sets your brand apart from the competition.

Which Stakeholders do I invite to the Portal?

The highest-impact Stakeholder to invite to your Portal is the Client themselves. This could be the homeowner in a residential setting, or a property owner or representative in a commercial setting.

Pro tip: Industry-leading project management teams don’t stop with inviting Clients, they also invite points of contact from lending institutions, vendors, AHJs, & so on. The rule of thumb is to ask yourself: “Do I frequently exchange calls/emails/SMS with this Stakeholder and would both our lives be easier & the odds of project success improve if I had a beautiful & direct communication medium?”. If the answer is “yes”, they most likely should be invited to your Company’s Portal.

When to invite Stakeholders to the Portal?

In most cases you should invite the Client to the Portal once the Proposal has been presented. It can be used strategically to help close the deal & sets the tone for an efficient & technology-driven relationship.

Pro tip: High-performance solar sales teams drive conversion rates & command a premium price over competition by inviting Clients to the Portal at the time of the Appointment or in the Proposal stage of the sales cycle. This establishes them as a technology-driven company early in the sales process, while the Client is “shopping around for other quotes”. This competitive advantage is especially powerful in 2024, with highly commodified hardware, services, & financial products.

Other Stakeholders such as lenders or vendors should be invited as soon as the project gets underway so that as much project communication is streamlined and centralized. For example, lenders should be invited once the contract is signed to enable transparent tracking of M1, through M2, to M3.

How to invite Stakeholders to the Portal?

Navigate to the page of the Client you have in mind. The scroll down to the “Contacts” section and ensure that the Contact you’d like to invite to the Portal is already listed. If not, you can create a new Contact by clicking on “+ CONTACT” (1).

Then click on “INVITE TO PORTAL” (2) and you’ll be prompted to select the Contact you’d like to invite. Once you’re ready to invite the Contact, click “INVITE”.

This will send the following invite message to the Contact’s primary email & primary phone.

They’ll be able to follow the link in the invite, as well as navigate directly to your Portal. They will need to enter their email or phone where they’ll be sent a 6-digit One-Time Passcode (OTP). They will need to use the OTP to log into the Portal.

You can also preview any one of your client's portals here (upper right-hand in a client record):

Overview of the Portal’s key features & value

Once the invited Stakeholder logs into the Portal, they’ll be greeted by name & see your Company logo in the upper left corner. From here they’ll be able to get an at-a-glance overview of their energy journey with you.

Areas of the Customer Portal on the main screen:

Lifetime energy savings in terms of both kWh and $$$. Non-energy-savvy Stakeholders often get confused by kWh and want to see the dollar value of their savings

Any upcoming Appointments for site surveys, service work orders, installations, or any other scheduled activities happening at any one of their Sites

Chat-An instant chat to streamline communication about project milestones, billing, scheduling, & any other questions

“Refer & Earn”- page where Stakeholders will be able to refer other potential Clients to your Company

Submit Request-Clients can submit requests for repairs or additional services

Leave us a review-the ability (if permission is given) to allow the Client to leave a review

Estimates and Invoices-Coming soon!

Requests Page (requests the client has made for services and upgrades)

Project and Services with the Client:

Documents tab (shared documents):

Note on how to share a doc with Client in Customer Portal:

Go into the Docs area of a Project and there you can share the docs by clicking on the three dots to the right of the doc and click on "Share with Portal"

Back in the Coperniq Platform, you’ll be able to see which Clients have been invited to the Portal. They’ll have a sunny icon over their avatar (1).

You’ll find all the Portal communication under the “PORTAL” tab of the Feed. Any messages that you send here will be visible in the Portal.

That’s it for today. Thank you for investing your time & resources into an excellent stakeholder experience. Now go wow some Stakeholders!

If you have any questions or would like more best practices on leveraging the Coperniq Portal in your business, contact your customer success manager or [e-mail].