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A custom customer portal instead of a CRM add-on
Short answer
Your own customer portal makes sense when a CRM add-on does not support the case flow or the roles on the customer's side you need, for example approval of a document by an authorised person. First check the add-on's configuration and plans, and build the portal narrowly: statuses, documents and approvals. At Syntalith the application costs from €3,000 net. At 400 customer cases a month of 12 minutes each, it pays back in 1.3 months.
How we workDetails ↓
- 01Call30 minutes with an engineer, free
- 02PrototypeA working system on your process and data, free
- 03ImplementationTarget and fixed price in the contract; 50% at signing
- 04Acceptance50% once the agreed target is met
- net per application, fixed price before contract
- from €3,000
- from signing the contract to acceptance
- 4–10 weeks
- free prototype on your documents
- €0
We belong to the OpenAI and Anthropic partner programmes and learn through their official courses. What this means ↓
Author: Syntalith · 3 min read
Statistics
CRM and customer service: statistics 2026
1.3 mo.
payback of a €3,000 application at 400 customer cases a month: €2,792 of work today, €422 with checking and the model. Scenario.
47%
According to the European Commission (2026), customer service is the most common use of AI among EU SMEs and mid-caps that already use it, at 47%.
Source: European Commission, Flash Eurobarometer 578 (2026) ↗
34.7%
According to Eurostat (2025), 34.7% of EU enterprises that used AI used it for marketing or sales.
50%
According to the European Commission (2026), half of EU SMEs and mid-caps name high investment costs as a barrier to AI.
Source: European Commission, Flash Eurobarometer 578 (2026) ↗
20.0%
According to Eurostat (2025), 20.0% of EU enterprises with at least 10 employees used AI.
Figures checked: 22 October 2026
One customer case, several permissions
A company fulfils B2B orders to an agreed specification. An employee at the customer opens a case, downloads a document and requests a change, and an authorised person in their company approves the final version. Today the customer asks for the current version of the document, then sends a correction, and their manager approves an older attachment. The account manager sorts out the correspondence and moves the agreements into the CRM.
The portal's first scope covers this one flow, and sales, invoicing and planning stay in the existing tools. The customer's employee sees their own cases, their manager sees the cases of the whole company, and the right to approve is set separately, because access to a document does not mean the right to approve it on the organisation's behalf. When an employee at the customer leaves, their access ends, and the history of requests and approvals stays with the case.
- 01Caseopened by the customer's employee
- 02Documentthe current version to download
- 03Changea request beside the same version
- 04Approvalonly an authorised person at the customer
- 05Statusfrom the CRM, with a notice when synchronisation fails
- The customer sees the stage and whether the next move is theirs
- Approving an older version is impossible once a new one exists
- An employee at the customer leaving does not lose the history
- The status in the portal matches the status in the CRM
What it costs and when it pays back
- Today
- 400 customer cases × 12 min = 80 h (€2,792)
- With the system, a person checks the output in 15% of the time
- €419
- Model, 1 call per case, Claude Sonnet 5.5
- €3
- Cost of one case
- €6.98 today, €1.05 with the system
- Saving
- €2,370 a month
Payback of €3,000
1.3 months
The volume, the time and the checking share are the scenario's assumptions. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat. Model: 2,000 input tokens and 300 output tokens per call at Anthropic's rates, at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro on 22 October 2026.
The count covers the work around a case: searching, reading, writing and handing over. What remains is the time to check the result, 15% of today's work in the scenario. Before the quote, we measure both times on 20 to 100 cases the team has already handled, in a free test that takes 5 working days.
The migration does not have to cover the whole history: we move open cases, and older material stays in an accessible archive, with the links between documents, versions and decisions.
What the add-on can do on your account
„Customer portal” covers different scopes. The HubSpot portal documentation describes signed-in access to tickets, and conversations not linked to a ticket do not appear there. If customers mainly need to follow their tickets, a ready module is enough. When they have to approve a specific document version, walk through such an approval during the demo. Ask the vendor for the plan, the settings and the modules, and tell a missing feature apart from a feature the company has not switched on yet. Questions about migration and owning the solution are covered in the article on a supplier portal instead of SaaS.
Customers follow their tickets
the portal in your current CRM
configuration
One step is missing, for example approval
an add-on extension or a higher plan
licence
Specific customer roles and data from several systems
a narrow portal built to order
€3,000–€7,000
Where to start
We agree where the binding status is created and who may change it. If the CRM stays the main source, the portal shows its data at an agreed frequency. Linking a message to a record is described in AI in the CRM. We build this kind of rollout as part of AI applications. For the free analysis, a description of one case from recent weeks and of the tools it passed through is enough. You do not need to send confidential documents, and you get a written plan within 2 working days.
Worked example · Scenario
How we count the payback: B2B customer service
We run the same count for your customers in the free analysis.
€931
a month for entering 400 CRM updates by hand
Payback: 3.8 mo.
4 minutes per CRM update and checking in 15% of the old time are our assumptions. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat, for companies with 10 or more employees. Model cost: Claude Sonnet 5.5, about 3,000 + 500 tokens per update, at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro on 22 October 2026. The extra margin is a scenario: we assume that 1 in 400 updates that get lost today ends in an order, with a margin of €459. In the review we count it on your sales process.
See the full calculation →
