Another request from head office
A client with a dozen shops has an audit coming. Their facilities manager emails: please send the current EICR for each store, the dates of the next inspections, and an update on the C2 items from last year. The office spends the afternoon digging through folders, building a spreadsheet, and sending attachments one by one.
Next month a different person at the same client asks for the same thing.
Each request is reasonable on its own. Together they add up to a steady stream of admin that has nothing to do with electrical work, and it lands on whoever in your office knows the certification software best.
Why clients keep asking
Your records exist, but only you can see them. Certificates are in your certification software, jobs and quotes in your job software, remedials in a mix of both. The client has no view, so every question needs a person to answer it.
Multi-site clients, with people changing roles, ask most often. They're also some of the most valuable clients you have.
| What the client asks | Where you have to look |
|---|---|
| Latest certificate per site | Certification software, by address |
| Next inspection due | Inside each certificate |
| Open observations | Last report, then job notes |
| Quotes awaiting approval | Job software or email |
| Work done this year | Invoices |
Clients also have their own audits and insurers to satisfy. Their fire risk assessor, their insurer or their head office compliance team asks them for evidence, and they pass the question straight to you. Each request comes in a slightly different format, often with a short deadline, and the office has to rebuild the answer from scratch each time.
What the requests cost
Office time goes on assembling the same information repeatedly. Delays in answering make you look disorganised to a client who is being audited. Quotes for remedial work sit unapproved because the right person at the client never saw them. And a competitor who offers a tidy portal has a strong argument at renewal time.
It is also a risk at audit time. When a client's audit shows a site with an out-of-date certificate or an open C2, their first question is whether you told them. Without a clear record of what was sent and when, the conversation is uncomfortable even when you did everything right.
The client portal we build
- Site list: each client logs in and sees their sites, with the latest certificate, its date and the next due date for each.
- Observations: open items from the latest reports are listed per site, with their status: quoted, approved, booked or done.
- Quote approval: quotes for remedial work can be viewed and approved in the portal, which creates the job in your software.
- Documents: certificates, reports and completion records are available to download, always the current version.
- Users: the client can add colleagues, with access to all sites or only some.
- Summary export: a client can download a spreadsheet of all their sites for their own audit.
The portal reads from your existing systems rather than replacing them, so nobody on your side keeps two records.
The portal is branded as yours, so clients see your firm's name every time they check their compliance, which is useful when a competitor comes calling with a lower price.
Clients who help themselves
Facilities managers find what they need at any hour. Remedial quotes reach the person who can approve them. The office stops building one-off spreadsheets. And when the contract comes up for renewal, the client already relies on your records.
It also helps you. Your own team can use the same portal view to see a client's whole estate before a meeting, instead of opening each site in the certification software one at a time.
Is this you?
- Commercial clients regularly ask for certificates and due dates.
- Remedial quotes sit unapproved at multi-site clients.
- The office builds spreadsheets of site records by hand.
- People at your client change, and each new one asks again.
- You'd like a stronger argument at contract renewal.