When customer requests are spread across email and individual exchanges with staff members, it becomes difficult to understand who is handling what. Tracking past communication history also takes time, and there is a risk that high-priority cases may be overlooked or that important information may be missing during handoffs.

Another common challenge in inquiry handling is that customers often have difficulty understanding the current response status. If they cannot tell whether their inquiry has been received, is under review, or has been completed, it can lead to lower customer satisfaction and duplicate inquiries. Internally, if ownership, status, and SLA-based management remain unclear, it becomes difficult to build stable support operations.

The purpose of this initiative was to centralize the entry point for inquiries and progress management, creating a foundation for support operations that are easy for both customers and internal teams to understand. The goal is to enable customers to check inquiry details and response status through a portal, while allowing internal teams to manage each ticket with assignees, priorities, history, and attachments.

The system architecture was also designed with future operational expansion in mind, including integration with email and CRM. Rather than creating a one-off intake screen, SMILE designed it as a business platform that can support ongoing use.

After organizing the inquiry response workflow, SMILE handled the design and prototyping of the customer portal, Web Admin interface, ticket workflow, comments, file attachments, notifications, permission management, and email/CRM integration.

A key focus of this project was not simply creating screens, but organizing what information should be shown, when, and to whom, as well as what actions occur at each status, and turning that into a ticket workflow that is easy to operate.

In this project, we first redesigned the inquiry response process around tickets, enabling the entire flow from intake and response to confirmation and completion to be tracked in a single system. By showing customers only the information they need while allowing administrators to manage assignees, priorities, histories, comments, and file attachments in one place, the system reduces information fragmentation.

By designing the system around access control from the outset, we created a structure in which customers, support staff, and administrators can each handle information within the scope they need. The notification feature is positioned not merely as an alert mechanism, but as an operational aid that helps reduce missed responses and pending confirmations.

In addition, SMILE adopted a design approach that makes it easy to incorporate email and CRM integration as the system expands in the future. This structure is intended to make it easier to consolidate history at the ticket level, even as the number of inquiry intake channels increases.

One of the main challenges was translating the concept into ticket-based operations that are easy for both customers and internal teams to use, rather than simply creating an inquiry form. Workflows that are too complex are unlikely to be adopted in day-to-day operations, while workflows that are too simple can lead to gaps in management. SMILE organized and prototyped the process into four support workflows, balancing intake, assignment, progress tracking, history, and notifications.

Another key consideration was how to handle permissions and history. We needed to separate customer-facing information from internal management information while still making it possible to track the full flow of communication for each ticket. To achieve this, comments, attachments, notifications, assignee changes, and related data are organized around each ticket, with future email and CRM integration also taken into account.

In this project, we defined a concrete operating model that consolidates inquiries and history into a single system, enabling clear management of assignees and statuses. At this stage, the key features have been designed and prototyped as a Solution Example, making it easy to demonstrate value such as preventing missed responses, visualizing progress, and simplifying SLA management.

For this prototype, we clarified the screen requirements, workflows, and permission rules so that the Vietnam-based development team could move forward with design and implementation while accounting for business operations in Japan. The BrSE organized the business intent and specifications, aligning understanding between Japan and Vietnam to ensure that even at the prototype stage, the design reflected real-world operational needs.

Because inquiry management systems are highly influenced by business rules, we place strong emphasis on documentation, reviews, and phased validation. This helps create a foundation that can be extended more easily if customer-specific operational differences arise in the future.

This case is a Solution Example for using a customer portal and ticket management system to visualize and centralize inquiry handling, which often becomes scattered across multiple channels. Its major value lies not only in improving the customer experience, but also in organizing internal progress tracking, assignee management, and history management, making it an effective approach for B2B companies considering standardizing their support operations.