Will customers actually use it?

They will if it's faster than phoning. That's why we start with the questions they ask most rather than building a full portal and hoping.

Is this the same as e-commerce?

Not necessarily. Plenty of B2B self-service has no checkout — status, documents, history and reordering against agreed terms. Transactions can follow.

How does contract pricing work?

Read live from wherever it's maintained, never copied. Copied pricing drifts, and a customer seeing a price that doesn't match their invoice is worse than no portal.

Do chatbots actually help?

When the documentation behind them is structured, yes. When it isn't, they confidently make things up. The knowledge work usually has to come first.

AliveCommerce / What we do / Applications

Customer portals and self-service

The phones ring all day for order status, stock, delivery dates and invoice copies. Every one of those answers already exists in a system. It just isn't reachable by anyone outside the building.

EngagementDefined project, FBSC

First phase6 to 12 weeks

Usually bought bySales, not IT

Talk to us about this What drives the cost

Fixed budgetAgreed before work starts. Scope flexes, the number doesn’t.

No vendor pays usNo commissions, referral fees or markup. Ever.

You own everythingCode, documentation, credentials — throughout, not at the end.

Nearly 20 years2,000+ projects for 500+ organizations, from SOHO to Fortune 1000.

What's included.

Scoped and priced up front. Exclusions written as explicitly as inclusions.

Customer portals

Order status, history, documents and reordering, read live from your systems of record rather than a synced copy.

Self-service and deflection

The three questions that generate most of your call volume, answered without a phone call.

Chatbots and AI assistants

Answering from your own documentation and data. Only works when the underlying knowledge is structured, which is often the real project.

Companion apps for field and sales

Outside sales and technicians usually need the same information customers do, plus a little more. The same build often serves both.

Partner and dealer portals

Pricing, availability, collateral and training for the channel, with access control by relationship.

Parts and service lookups

Serial-number-driven access to manuals, parts and service history — a standing request in equipment and industrial businesses.

How we approach it.

In this order, because doing them out of order is how these go wrong.

Measure what people actually ask

Two weeks of logging beats any assumption. Typically three question types account for most of the volume.

Build those three first

Ship in weeks rather than building a complete portal in months. Prove the deflection, then extend.

Read live, never duplicate

A portal showing yesterday's data creates more calls than it prevents. Integration is the real work.

Instrument the result

Call volume measured before and after, so the business case is evidence rather than a feeling.

First phase

6 to 12 weeks

Top questions, live data, one customer group

Business case

Call volume

Measured before and after, not estimated

Most common buyer

VP Sales

More often than IT, in our experience

Not sure this is what you need?

Tell us what's actually happening and we'll say which part of this applies — or that a different approach fits better, or that you don't need us yet. That last answer is more common than you'd expect.

Get a straight answer Or call 416-639-5876, weekdays 8:30–5:30 ET

What we work with.

Chosen on fit. We take no commission or referral fee from any of them.

ReactAstroNode.jsERP APIsNetSuiteBusiness CentralProphet 21SSO and SAMLRole-based accessOpenAI and Claude APIsVector search

If this shouldn't be a project.

Some of this work never really ends. When that's true, we'll say so rather than selling you a project that restarts in three years.

Continuous ownership

Champion1

The portal and the systems behind it managed together, so the customer-facing layer never drifts from the back office.

See Champion1

Knowledge behind it

LiquidIQ

When the self-service depends on documentation that doesn't exist yet, which is more often than people expect.

See LiquidIQ

Straight answers.

Start the Conversation.

No qualification questionnaire. No nurture sequence. A person reads it and replies within a business day — and tells you plainly if we're not the right fit.

01A person reads itNot a scoring model. It goes to whoever would actually do the work.

02A reply within a business dayUsually a question or two rather than a calendar link.

03A conversation, not a pitchTwenty to ninety minutes. No deck, no slides.

04Then, only if it's warrantedA scope or assessment with a price attached before any work starts.

Prefer to talk first? 416-639-5876 · [email protected]

About customer portals and self-service

Three fields. We'll ask the rest on the call.

Related.

Articles are matched by tag; services, capabilities and programs are curated.

Tell us what's breaking.

We'll tell you roughly what this costs, how long it takes, and whether it's worth doing at all — including when the honest answer is that you don't need us.

Start the Conversation

Knowledge and process

Applications and data

Customer and web

Browse by symptom instead

The structure

Continuous ownership

Before you commit

Start with one problem

Priority sectors

Also

Or by situation

Not sure you fit?

Reading

Most read

Proof

Nobody owns the application layer