Customer portal
The only way most homeowners or business owners get a sense of the progress on their construction project is to show up on site and poke around. The problem is that they have no idea what they are looking at, and no way to really understand where things stand on a project. Invariably, they end up calling the contractor they’ve hired and ask lots of questions. Even if you do a great job on these calls, the lack of transparency and the initial concern that drove the call in the first place are always going to taint the customer’s perception of your work. Wouldn’t it be great if there were a way for customers to actually see (if you want them to!) project information, contract and change orders, jobsite photos you want to share, and any relevant documents, all in one place?
Knowify gives you the ability to provide a customer portal for each of your jobs, finally providing your clients with the views they need to understand where things stand. Wow your customers with your transparency and professionalism using resources that are already at your fingertips—no need to pull things together and waste time preparing end of day or end of week update emails.
#1
Offer an easy-to-access portal to your clients
#2
Share project information and important documents
#3
Select photos, job updates to provide
Your view
For you, setting up a Knowify customer portal is as easy as clicking which general items you wish to make available to the client—things like contracts/change order, invoices, certain job logs, photos, etc.—, then sending them the unique link Knowify generates for the job. You can always update the permissions later if you feel you are over- or under-sharing.
Once the job is running and your crews are sending up their normal jobsite photos from the field and your foreman is sending up her/his logs, choosing which photos or which commends from the field you wish to share is as easy as finding the photo or comment in question and clicking the “share with customer” icon on the right. No more gathering photos or other items from multiple apps or emails and compiling them into a weekly update for the client—they are already there in Knowify, at your fingertips, ready to be shared.
Customer portal view
The Knowify customer portal is based on a unique link generated for the job in question. Your customer does not need an account or password to access the link; they only need to click it in an email or paste it into their browser and they are immediately taken into a unique page branded with your corporate logo. It looks and feels like it’s coming from you. More importantly, it gives them access to things that you choose to share with them that help them stay abreast of project progress, including project plans, important documents, and jobsite photos. It’s also a great way to help them pay you faster: you can share outstanding invoices and provide an option to pay you online.
What Knowify users are saying about our customer portal
“[Knowify] supports my goals and expectation to provide a superb customer experience for my clients.”
Owner, Polson Painting
“We’ve been able to take most of our business electronically, which helps us improve our business and helps our client communicate with us.”
Verified review on Capterra
Superior professionalism
As noted above, even if you do a great job, clients may not appreciate your performance if it didn’t fit their own expectations for how things would go. And, of course, since most clients have very little knowledge of construction, those expectations can be unrealistic.
For you the contractor, it can be very important to ensure that the client have their expectations set with respect to project timelines and the actual work being done at each point in time so that their expectations ultimately match the reality of the project. Client expectations also have to be managed and revised when issues arise, whether those issues are caused by weather, change orders, other trades, etc.
You may think that transparency can get you in trouble—and perhaps oversharing can—but being reasonably transparent with your customer is more likely to impress them than make them bother you more. Investing in customer satisfaction with tools like the Knowify customer portal can be very valuable when those satisfied customers start referring jobs to you!
Would you like to see it in action?
Sign up to test-drive Knowify for 14 days. Once the trial expires, you will have the power to decide what plan fits your business requirements better. No card required.