A large share of the email a venue handles isn't booking work at all. It's people asking what they already agreed to: what time does the room open, what did we settle on for the menu, can you resend the invoice, has our deposit gone through.
Every one of those is a question your system can already answer. The customer portal lets the customer ask it directly.
What customers can do
Customers sign in and see their own booking — the date, the space, what's been agreed and where the payments stand. They can download their invoices whenever they need them, which removes the single most common resend request, and they can keep their own contact details current.
That last one quietly matters. Contact details in most venue systems decay because nobody has a reason to correct them. When the customer maintains their own record, your customer list stays accurate without anyone doing data entry.
What it doesn't do
The portal is read-and-update, not self-service booking. Customers can't move a date, change a package or alter a price. Those decisions stay with your team, because they interact with availability and money in ways that need a person.
This is deliberate. A portal that lets customers change the booking creates more work than it removes; one that answers their questions removes work without giving anything up.
Turning it on
The portal is enabled per account, and access is scoped to the customer's own bookings — a customer never sees anyone else's event, invoice or details.
It pairs well with the reminder automations: a confirmation that links to the portal answers the next three questions before they're asked.
Customer portal is available on Pro and Enterprise. See pricing, or the features page for how it sits alongside bookings and invoicing.