On our blog here at SilverBlaze, we discuss many of the benefits of a utility customer portal and how it can transform your customer satisfaction levels by increasing customer engagement, improving personalization and helping build a superior customer experience.
Did you know that a utility customer portal designed specifically for the utility industry can also significantly improve how you internally manage your website?
In this blog today, we’re going to take a look at how the use of a utility customer portal with an easy-to-use content management system (CMS) will ensure your website is competitive with any brand in the world.
Why your utility’s website is important
While utility customers are increasingly navigating to customers’ portals for information – whether on a utility’s website or a smartphone application – your website is still the face of your brand. That means it should feature all of the information that your customers might be looking for.
The design of your website is crucial for customer engagement. According to a study from Adobe, a staggering 38 percent of people will stop engaging with a website if the content or layout is unattractive.
A well designed website will not only improve the customer experience (CX), but also reduce the strain on your customer service team by promoting customer self-service.
What is a content management system?
Managing content on your corporate website does not require an in-depth knowledge of code anymore. Content management systems allow non-developers to create and publish content directly on a live website.
A CMS is a software application that is primarily used to create and manage a company’s digital content. A CMS should make it easy and quick for anyone to change, edit, and manage content without having to work with designers or web developers.
Generally, a CMS provides the following benefits:
- Permits multiple users to input web content.
- Integrated with analytics tools, social media channels and other systems.
- Makes it easy to edit content and change text, photos etc.
- Straightforward and intuitive for non-developers, requiring little training.
Why use a CMS that’s specifically designed by a utility CX expert?
Having a CMS that meets your utility’s website content requirements is important because it will reduce the cost of content management and allow your employees to update information quickly and seamlessly.
The SilverBlaze Customer Portal for Utilities, for example, has an optional content management system module for creating and managing public facing corporate web pages. This is separate from the content functionality within the SilverBlaze customer portal portal itself, which is primarily for customized text messages, images and even video.
How does the SilverBlaze Customer Portal CMS work?
Here are just a few examples of how the SilverBlaze CMS add-on module can save your utility time and money:
#1 – Responsive page templates
Today people surf the web, view webpages, engage in media and much more on a variety of devices, including laptops, desktops, tablets, and mobile phones. Since an increasing number of people are viewing content on mobile phones, it’s important that your website provides the optimum viewing experience for mobile as well as desktop computers.
The SilverBlaze CMS takes care of that requirement for you. With the SilverBlaze add-on CMS modules, your utility employees are able to design and create attractive web pages using pre-built responsive templates – saving your utility money on web developers and IT teams.
Our responsive templates ‘respond’ to the device being used, ensuring that the content looks great on any screen size. Responsive templates assist employees in creating pages that are consistent in design and will provide a better user experience.
Most corporate websites only require 5-10 different templates to create the range of pages a corporate site offers. The SilverBlaze CMS provides utilities the ability to design their own web page templates, otherwise utilities can request SilverBlaze to create the templates for them.
We then train the utility’s non-technical staff how to manage the website content so they can be self-serviceable as well..
#2 – Seamless content creation
For the vast majority of utility providers, the task of content creation is often deployed across an organization, involving several individuals and departments. This can result in time-consuming processes that bog down the web publication process.
The SilverBlaze CMS contains an easy-to-use browser-based console and publishing framework, that includes permissions and approvals. Roles can be assigned to protect sensitive information or to restrict access, and content can be date stamped for automated publication and removal.
Administrators are able to review and approve content in a timely manner, ensuring that the corporate website stays up-to-date with the latest information.
#3 – Customer analytics
Tracking how utility customers engage with content on the website is key to evaluating user experience. The SilverBlaze customer portal provides easy integration with Google Analytics, the standard tracking tool for measuring interactions, including: visits, page views, bounce rates, length of sessions, and more.
The SilverBlaze Customer Portal CMS provides a way for utility’s to efficiently manage the content publication process and improve customer engagement across their website. Want to learn more?
Contact the SilverBlaze team of customer experience specialists today. We would love to answer any questions that you may have, or give you a free demo of how our CMS solution makes web changes more efficient and effective for your organization.
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