Customer portal: finger signing, PDF, notifications and a second language, or buyers walk away

In October several pieces came out about what a customer portal should include: self-service, signing a document from a phone, viewing encrypted PDFs and a second interface language. I have run the systems of a PDR company in the US since 2021; in 2026 a customer portal appeared next to the super app, and with the car rental in South Africa we built a similar document chain. For a business owner there is one question: what the customer will do on their own, and what your employee still spends time on.

What came out in October

HubSpot, in its Service blog, on October 23 described what a customer portal should be: the customer checks the order status, downloads invoices and documents, updates their own details and writes to support. There is a number in it: 78% of CRM leaders say their customers prefer to resolve questions on their own. The portal is connected to the CRM, the help desk, billing and document storage, and that connection keeps the data the same for every team. Without it the portal shows one thing and the manager on the phone says another.

Unisender on October 16 went through signing documents from a phone; the piece is about the Russian types of signature. A simple signature confirms that the action was performed by the person who logged into the account or received a code. A qualified signature is, as a general rule, equivalent to a paper document with a handwritten signature, and its key lives on the smartphone, on an NFC token or on a computer from which the phone only starts the signing. The mobile signatures from Saby and Kontur work inside their own services, and Goskey is not supported by every platform.

Google Workspace Updates on October 15 announced general availability of previewing client-side encrypted PDFs and images directly in Drive. Before, such a file had to be downloaded. The feature is on by default, but only in Enterprise Plus, Education Standard and Plus, Frontline Plus and Assured Controls. The rollout started on October 15 and may take more than 15 days.

CustomerThink on October 16 published a Liferay study: in September 2026, 800 adults in the US who had used a website or app in a language other than English during the year were surveyed through Pollfish. 56% had walked away from a purchase at least once because the site or app was poorly adapted to their language. 82% are confident they can tell machine translation from text written or proofread by a native speaker, and 48% had chosen a company over a competitor because of better language adaptation.

Why a rental or a service company needs this

Take a car rental. The customer lands in the evening and the car is handed over in the parking lot: a contract several pages long, an inspection, photos. If the signature goes on paper, the employee later scans it and attaches it to the deal, and the customer gets a copy the next day at best. If the customer signs with a finger on the screen, a PDF with the photos and the signature goes out by email the same minute, and the employee is free for the next handover. The portal pays for itself in the steps the customer takes alone, the ones the employee no longer has to think about.

The second language follows the same logic. A service company in the US has customers who read Spanish. If the “Sign” button is in English and the repair terms are in machine translation, the person either calls the office or puts off signing. The Liferay study is about exactly these people.

Which level of signature your documents need is for a lawyer to decide: by the Russian classification a finger signature is closer to a simple one, and it won't be enough for tax reporting. I design the portal around the lawyer's answer.

How we did it

At the PDR company in the US I am responsible for the server and the network, the company's own API, telephony and document parsers. We build the React Native super app together with the company's developers. Next to it is the customer portal: an online timeline for the order, signing a document with a finger, which produces a PDF, photos, push and SMS notifications, in English and Spanish. I have handled PDF generation since 2021, now on Puppeteer: completion certificates, estimates, reports, invoices and agreements are assembled from the system's data.

For a car rental company from Cape Town I started in October 2024 with an integration of AmoCRM and Google Sheets, and over 2025 a system grew out of it: a website with a full booking cycle, an internal app for managers, documents and signatures, vehicle inspection. The document chain includes remote signatures and the employee's signature, a consent and an email. Payment is checked against a screenshot attached during the process: that is a check by image, with no reconciliation against the bank. Cars are now handed over 3 times faster, and the average order value grew by 30%. The app was mostly built by another developer; the website, integrations and business logic were mine.

Client-side encryption from the Google news I haven't tested myself.

What I would do

Start with one scenario: the customer opens the order, sees the stage and signs one document. Add the timeline and notifications later.

Ask a lawyer which documents get signed and what signature they need. Based on that answer choose: a finger signature with a record of who signed, when and from which device, or a signature through an external service.

Build PDFs from the same data the employee sees in their own app. If the portal and the CRM show different numbers, the customer will call.

Translate the second language with a native speaker and start with the screens the customer reads before signing and with the notification texts.

I described how to limit the first version in the article how to plan the first release of a customer portal. Directions: a customer product connected to the business and B2B portals for orders and service. Full projects: technical partner to a PDR company in the US and car rental in South Africa. Neighboring reviews: signing in to the customer portal: passkeys, SSO and a passwordless link and where to store 70-page scans and car photos. Earlier I wrote about a B2B portal people use. If your customer still signs paper and waits for a copy by email, tell me how the handover works now. Discuss your task.