B2B portals are sold on the promise that clients will serve themselves. In the session sample, a surprising share of “client” activity is an account manager logged in as the client, or using an internal impersonation feature, to place an order, fetch a statement, or raise a ticket that the client asked for on the phone.
That is not fraud. It is how the firm actually works. It becomes a problem only when a usage report treats those sessions as proof that clients love the portal. A review has to separate the two. We ask, in the naming session, whether impersonation exists and how it is recorded. If it is not recorded, we say the reading cannot tell staff work from client work, and the brief will be weaker.
When impersonation is visible, the picture often flips. Clients do a small set of things — check a balance, download this week’s invoice. Account managers do the rest, including the catalogue, the claims form, and the document library. The portal is then an internal instrument with a client door on it. That can be a perfectly decent arrangement. It is a poor arrangement to keep secret from the people who budget for “self-service”.
We have sat in debriefs where this distinction caused a pause, then relief. The account directors already knew they were doing the clicking. They had been asked, in other meetings, why clients were not “adopting”. Naming the manager’s sessions as manager work let them stop apologising for a job the portal was never going to take away.
If your vendor report shows healthy activity and your phone still rings, ask whether anyone can see who was at the keyboard. That question belongs in scoping, before anyone commissions a three-week review.
Utilitycorner reviews B2B client portal apps from Ipoh. If a similar question is sitting on your desk, write to us.