5.
Customers
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The
Customers tab is used for all your customer maintenance duties.
You can do such things as maintain a list of active customers,
keep an archived or “Inactive” customer list, create
new customers, and initiate customizable customer mailings based
on predetermined lists. In the Interchange Demo the Customers area
of the Interchange Users Interface (UI) contains 4 primary
screens. Active
Customers
is the default (the one that comes up when you click on the
Customers tab or link from some where else within the UI),
Inactive
Customers,
Create
New Customer,
and Customer
Mailing.
Each screen is accessible by clicking on its respective tab.
If
you look at the first screen below, the Active Customers
screen, you will see the standard UI layout... that is the upper
and lower common areas which we discussed in a previous chapter,
then starting from the top and working down there is a ROW
OF TABS, starting with Orders, Customers, Items and so
on. Think of these tabs as your
navigation menu within the UI. Each of these tabs
when clicked on will take you to the respective area. Once
again it is important to remember that because Interchange is
configurable, the tabs you see below may not be the ones you are
looking at on your screen. But more than likely they will be
similar.
Next
as we continue downward on the demo screen is a Search Window.
We also discussed these in an earlier chapter, but search windows
will be used a little differently in each screen so lets take a
minute to describe the use of this one.
"Search
for Customer" - Use this window to find a
particular Customer. You can enter multiple criteria into this
window to help narrow the search. For example, if the
customers name is Mike Smith, and you process a lot of orders,
there may be many Mike Smiths in your database. But if
this Mike Smith lives in Duluth, MN, then enter in
"Mike Smith Duluth" and it should focus your
search.
Below
the Search Window in the Demo you see 4 tabs, Active
Customers, Inactive
Customers, Create
New Customer, and Customer
Mailing. In some cases, as in the IC Demo you
may see a 5th tab, edit. As I mentioned in earlier chapters,
the edit button is not to be taken lightly, and unless you have
had some training with it leave it alone. In many cases your
Interchange
developer will have removed these edit links.
Each of the 4 tabs that I just mentioned will take you to a
different Customer Screen. So lets discuss each one in turn.
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5.1
Active Customers
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The
Active Customer screen displays a list of Customers. This is also
the default customer screen, and the default list of customers.
That simply means that when you click on the Customer tab from
anywhere in the User Interface (UI), you will come initially to
the Active Customer screen. The “default list” part
of that statement means that when the customers themselves create
a Customer, either when an account is created or order placed, or
when an employee creates them using the Create
New Customer
screen, they are placed on the Active Customer list by default.
Once
Interchange has placed a record of a Customer into the Active
Customer location, it will stay there until you do something with
it. Normally you will leave it in Active Customers while the
customer is … well, active. A Customer will probably
remain in the Active status until some business rule set by your
company dictates that the customer status be changed. Interchange
offers you 3 potential Customer states, Active, Inactive, and
Deleted. You can change between Active and Inactive pretty much
whenever you like. Deleted however is permanent, so make sure the
decision to delete a customer is made appropriately.
Lets
move on now and describe the functions of the Active Customer
screen. Starting at the top of the screen and working down, on
the right hand side of the screen, below the Search for Customer
search box is the “Switch to a User” window. This
window is populated with all Active Customers. If you select one
of the customers, and then click on the “Switch”
button, you will be brought to the public side of the catalog, as
the selected user. For example, lets assume that you have just
updated a customers order
status , and you want to check and see how it is
displayed for the customer. Simply switch to the customer whose
order you have updated, then go into the Customer Service area,
and choose Order Tracking. The order status will be displayed
exactly as the customer will see it.
Moving
further down the page, and into the customer table.
Sort
link – The customer table has headings at the
top of each column that are called Sort Links. You may want to
sort your information for any number of reasons.
Interchange makes it easy. At the top of each column, is
the column heading. In the Active Customer table the column
headings are: Actions, ID, Name, Company, and Location. All of
these headings with the exception of Action, are sort links. If
you click on any of these headings, the page will be sorted
according to the order of the column selected. For example, if
you wanted to sort by the customers name, from A-Z, simply click
on the Name Column. Want to sort from Z-A? Click on the Name link
again. This time is will be sorted in reverse order.
Line
Item Link – Line item links are links that are accessible
from the each record line. In the Customer table there is
only one line item link, and it is on the value in the ID column
of each record. In the screen above the first line item link is
ckirk. When you click on this link it will take you to
the View
Customer page.
Vertical
Check boxes - The vertical column of check boxes under the
“Action” label and adjacent to individual Customer
records, allows you to select individual customers, or a
group of customers that you want perform an operation on.
For example if you place a check mark in the box adjacent to the
first Customer, ckirk, then you can use one of the BUTTONS
at the bottom of the page to:
Delete
Checked Customers - CAUTION! This is permanent. Use this
button to DELETE all Customers with a check mark in the vertical
check box next to the adjacent Customer record. You can
also use the small red located just to the right of the Vertical
checkbox to DELETE an individual Customer. Again, use with
CAUTION, clicking on this icon will delete the order WITHOUT
FURTHER ACTION!
Deactivate Checked
Customers - Use this button to move to the Inactive
Customer
page all orders with a check mark in the vertical check
box next to the adjacent Customer.
Version
5.3.2 and higher: In conjunction with the radio box which allows
selection of a single record, you can Merge checked users to
one user. This operation
merges users together. WARNING: This permanently deletes the user
whose orders are being merged.
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5.1.1
- Active Customers - View Customer
Sub
Tabs
View
- View detailed information regarding selected Customers.
Shipping
- View and Update selected Customer shipping information
Billing
- View and Update selected Customer billing information
All
– Edit any part of selected Customer information, including
Dealer status and price
Preferences
– View and Update selected Customer preferences including
emailing
Enter
Order – Enter an order using the current
Customers information.
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The
default window for View Customers is the View tab. Overall, the
View Customers area can be thought of as an maintenance area for
individual Customer information. All of the Customers details,
such as billing and shipping address, persistent order
information, and many other customer preferences are kept and
maintained in this area. So lets get started with the View tab.
The
View Customer page is really set up to do just what it says, view
a Customer. There are clickable links and additional tabs on
this page, but you should keep in mind that you are viewing info
in this area, not changing it. There are designated areas to
change or edit Customers, but the View Customer was primarily
meant to use as an informational area. So lets start out and
explain the layout of the View Customer page. We will
identify major parts of the page, starting at the top left and
working left to right and down.
User
Name - Self-explanatory, the link will take you to Customer
View.
Account
Status - Overall Account Status. Some typical statuses
might be: Active, Inactive etc. This will again depend on how
your system has been set up. There is no link in this box.
Total
Sales – Will normally show the total of all this customers
orders, including shipping, tax, etc. (including archived orders)
Last
Login - The date and time this customer was last logged into the
site.
Customer
Details - This area gives you some of the basic information for
the customer related to this order, Name, Company, Phones, Email,
and Payment type used for this order. There are 3 links in
this area, two of them, Customer Details and the customers name,
both bring you to Customer
View page,
and the third link simply starts your email program with an email
link to the customer, if your systems supports this.
Billing
Details - If your customer for this order has a Billing address
that is different than the Shipping address, it will be listed
here. Otherwise, you will get the standard message "Same
as shipping address".
Shipping
Details - This area holds the shipping address for the customer
connected to this order. This will have the standard
shipping information, Name, Company, Address, City, State, Zip,
and Country. There is one usable link in the demo version,
that is the customers name which links to the Customer
View
page.
Next
is the Orders list. This is a list of the orders associated
with the customer. The columns for the Orders are:
Status
- This is the order status. Some typical statuses might be:
Pending, Shipped, Partial, Backordered, Canceled, etc. This will
again depend on how your system has been set up. The link will
take you to the Order
Status page.
Order
Number - The order number for the Order. The link will take you
to the View
Order
page.
Order
Date - The date the order was placed. No links.
Shipped
to - The city the order was shipped to.
Number
of Items - The total number of items on the order.
Subtotal
- The total cost for all items, w/o tax or shipping.
Total
- The total cost for all items, tax and shipping.
There
are 4 navigation buttons at the bottom of the View Customer page:
Return
- This button takes you back to the Pending
Orders page.
View
Next Order - This will take you to the details of the next
order on the Pending
Orders
list.
Archive
Order and View Next - This will move the current order from
the Pending
Orders
list to the Archived
Order
list, and then display the next order on the Pending
Orders
list.
Delete
order and view next - Be
Careful!! This will DELETE the current order from the Pending
Orders
list, and then display the next order on the Pending
Orders
list.
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5.1.2
- Active Customers - Shipping
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The
shipping tab, aka Customer shipping information. This tab
displays existing shipping address information for the customer,
as well as allowing for additional shipping address entry. You can
have as many shipping aliases as you need.
For
example, in the screen above, the information shown is the default
shipping address currently in the customer records. If you would
like to have an additional shipping address, lets say for your
shipping and receiving dock,
First,
enter a name into the “Save to:” for the
current shipping info, such as Default or Main Office.
Then
click on OK. That saves your existing information. Now create a
new Shipping Alias:
Next,
simply enter the new information into the fields such as name,
address, city, state, etc, then
In
the “Save to:” window, type a short descriptive name
such as “ship_receive”, and press the OK button.
When
the screen returns, you will see your addition in 2 places, A. in
the links under the “Address Book Load from:” text,
and B. in the drop-down window to the right of the “Save
to:” window. (See below)
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Now
to bring up your “ship_receive” address, just click on
the link. To edit your new address, simply make the desired
changes and select the “ship_receive” label in the
drop-down window, and click OK. Your changes will be saved under
the chosen shipping alias.
The
phraseology could be better; Address book implies a book of
addresses, when in fact you are simply saving and recalling
individual shipping aliases. Collectively these are indeed an
address book, but the “Save to:” window implies that
you are saving an address to an address book. Semantics. The
demonstration and pictures above should make it clear. (Remember,
if you don’t like it, ask your Interchange
Developer
to change it!)
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5.1.3
- Active Customers - Billing
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The
Active Customers – Billing screen is a carbon copy of the
Active
Customers – Shipping
screen. The only difference of course is that it is billing
information, rather than shipping. For information on how to us
the Billing screen, please refer to the Active
Customers – Shipping
section.
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5.1.4
- Active Customers – All – NO
LONGER APPLICABLE
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5.1.5
- Active Customers - Preferences
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The
Active Customers – Preferences screen, is a subset of the
All tab, and a once again a collection of screens, many of which
contain information that is located elsewhere. Additionally, on
each sub-screen of the Preference tab, you will see a small icon
on the RIGHT side of the page, for each record.
This Icon is a link to an edit page in which you can change many
of the characteristics of the record you are viewing. You can
even change to view a different record in that space. CAUTION
: This is normally for a developer to use when your site is being
customized for your company. We will not go into how to use this
area, as it is beyond the scope of this manual. Suffice to say
that you can mess things up if you do not know what you are doing.
To move on,
Because
much of the information is redundant, we will go over each Tab and
associated items very briefly without screen shots. Each of these
screens contain the familiar OK and Cancel buttons at the top and
bottom of the screen. There is also a Delete button at the bottom
of the page. Use the OK button to initiate changes you have made
on the tab in question, use cancel to quit what you are doing and
return to the View Customer page. CAUTION:
Use the Delete button to delete the customer permanently!
Company
First
Name
Last
Name
Payment
Method – Default payment method for the customer
Mv_shipmode
– this is the default ship mode for the customer
Inactive
– This allows you to place the customer on the Inactive
Customer List, a way to store inactive customers without deleting
them.
Dealer
– This is a yes or no selection, and will mark the Customer
either as a Dealer, or not. If the customer is marked as a
Dealer, they will have access to all Dealer functions, areas, and
pricing. You Interchange
developer
can explain more to you about your particular situation, but such
things as special products available only to dealers, areas of
the website available only to dealers, dealer pricing, and so on.
Most of these functions would have to be added to your catalog,
but the field that can be looked at to enable these many
possibilities, is already built in to Interchange.
Price
Level – Price level allows you to set a price level that
this customer will be qualified for, and will see when he logs
onto the website. This works in conjunction with Item
– Edit – Pricing.
For example, if there is no wholesale price level set, then
setting the Price Level to wholesale in this dropdown window will
have no effect. (I
could not get this to work in the Demo, would like to further
document)
Purchase
Order No. – This window displays purchase order numbers if
they have been used.
Credit
Limit – Use this window to set a credit limit for your
customers who use PO’s. If you set this, then you must
have already chosen PO’s as an acceptable form of Payment
in Administration – Commerce – Payment, so that
option is available to the customer at checkout. If the customer
selects PO as Payment Method, and the amount of the order is
higher than the credit limit, a note will be displayed on the
checkout requesting the customer to call in, and will not allow
the order to process. However, the customer can then switch
Payment Method to Credit Card, enter a valid Credit Card, and the
order will process as normal.
Email
Address
Email_copy
– This controls whether the customer receives an email copy
of his order. Also in Preferences – Email Preferences.
Mail_list
– This controls which lists the customer would like to be
subscribed to. Each list can be used to generate custom mailings
and offerings and it is discussed in more detail in the Customer
– Mailing Tab. Also in Preferences – Email
Preferences
Daytime
Phone
Home
Phone
Fax
db_acl
& file_acl – Settings involved with implementation of
Interchanges flexible access control. Interchange can use many
different configurable arrangements to control access to various
entities, such as pages or files. For example if you need to
allow a person to have access to downloading a file for a
specific period of time, Interchanges access control can be used.
This is an advanced feature and you should contact your
Interchange
Developer
for assistance in the event that you need this type of feature
enabled for your website.
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5.1.6
- Active Customers – Enter Order
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The
Enter Order page is actually a link to the Repeat
Order page.
Please see the Repeat
Order page
for help on this page.
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5.2
Inactive Customers
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The
Inactive Customer screen displays a list of deactivated Customers.
You may want to move customers that are not currently actively
ordering into this area to allow you easier navigation through
your Active Customers.
Lets
move on now and describe the functions of the Inactive Customer
screen. Starting at the top of the screen and working down, on
the right hand side of the screen, below the Search for Customer
search box is the “Switch to a User” window. This
window is populated with all the Inactive Customers. If you
select one of the customers, and then click on the “Switch”
button, you will be brought to the public side of the catalog, as
the selected user. For example, lets assume that you have just
updated a customers order
status , and you want to check and see
how it is displayed for the customer. Simply switch to the
customer whose order you have updated, then go into the Customer
Service area, and choose Order Tracking. The order status will be
displayed exactly as the customer will see it.
Moving
further down the page, and into the customer table.
Sort
link – The Inactive customer table has headings
at the top of each column that are called Sort Links. You may
want to sort your information for any number of reasons.
Interchange makes it easy. At the top of each column, is
the column heading. In the Active Customer table the column
headings are: Actions, ID, Name, Company, and Location. All of
these headings with the exception of Action, are sort links. If
you click on any of these headings, the page will be sorted
according to the order of the column selected. For example, if
you wanted to sort by the customers name, from A-Z, simply click
on the Name Column. Want to sort from Z-A? Click on the Name link
again. This time is will be sorted in reverse order.
Line
Item Link – Line item links are links that are accessible
from the each record line. In the Customer table there is
only one line item link, and it is on the value in the ID column
of each record. In the screen above the first line item link is
jrollins. When you click on this link it will take you to
the View
Customer page.
Vertical
Check boxes - The vertical column of check boxes under the
“Action” label and adjacent to individual Customer
records, allows you to select individual customers, or a
group of customers that you want perform an operation on.
For example if you place a check mark in the box adjacent to the
first Customer, jrollins, then you can use one of the BUTTONS
at the bottom of the page to:
Delete
Checked Customers - CAUTION! This is permanent. Use this
button to DELETE all Customers with a check mark in the vertical
check box next to the adjacent Customer record. You can
also use the small red located just to the right of the Vertical
checkbox to DELETE an individual Customer. Again, use with
CAUTION, clicking on this icon will delete the order WITHOUT
FURTHER ACTION!
Activate Checked
Customers - Use this button to move to the Active
Customers
page all orders with a check mark in the vertical check
box next to the adjacent Customer.
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5.3
Create New Customer
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The
Create New Customer screen, is actually the Table
– New Entry
tab for the userdb table.
The
Table – New Entry tab allows you to insert new records into
a table one at a time. What is displayed in the editor will
depend on the table you are editing. We are using the userdb table
as an example because it is the source for the Create New Customer
screen. Each field from the userdb is displayed on the table
editor in an order decided by your IC Developer. The order, and
even which fields are displayed, can be manipulated but this
should only be done by an experienced developer.
So
lets get on with the description of the editable fields for
Creating a New Customer. On each sub-screen of the Create New
Customer screen, you will see a small icon on the RIGHT side of
the page, for each record.
This Icon is a link to an edit page in which you can change many
of the characteristics of the record you are viewing. You can
even change to view a different record in that space. CAUTION
: This is normally for a developer to use when your site is being
customized for your company. We will not go into how to use this
area, as it is beyond the scope of this manual. Suffice to say
that you can mess things up if you do not know what you are doing.
Each
of these screens contains the familiar OK and Cancel buttons at
the top and bottom of the screen. There is also a Delete button
at the bottom of the page. Use the OK button to initiate changes
you have made on the tab in question, use cancel to quit what you
are doing and return to the View Customer page. CAUTION:
Use the Delete button to delete the customer permanently!
Daytime
Phone
Home
Phone
Email
address
Fax
Payment
Method –This sets the default payment method for the
particular customer.
Password
– Enter a password for the customer.
Email_copy
– This controls whether the customer receives an email copy
of his order.
Mail_list
– This controls which lists the customer would like to be a
part of. Each list can be used to generate custom mailings and
offerings and it is discussed in more detail in the Customer
– Mailing Tab.
Mod_time
– Time customer logged on to website. Depends on database.
Inactive
– This allows you to place the customer on the Inactive
Customer List, a way to store inactive customers without deleting
them.
Billing
Company
Billing
First Name
Billing
Last Name
Billing
Address
Billing
City
Billing
State
Billing
Postcode
Billing
Country
Billing
Phone
Purchase
Order No. – This window displays purchase order numbers if
they have been used. You can enter a default PO here.
Account_id
– You can add an account number here if you want to
associate the customer with an account number.
Credit
Limit – Use this window to set a credit limit for your
customers who use PO’s. If you set this, then you must
have already chosen PO’s as an acceptable form of Payment
in Administration – Commerce – Payment, so that
option is available to the customer at checkout. If the customer
selects PO as Payment Method, and the amount of the order is
higher than the credit limit, a note will be displayed on the
checkout requesting the customer to call in, and will not allow
the order to process. However, the customer can then switch
Payment Method to Credit Card, enter a valid Credit Card, and the
order will process as normal.
Dealer
– This is a yes or no selection, and will mark the Customer
either as a Dealer, or not. If the customer is marked as a
Dealer, they will have access to all Dealer functions, areas, and
pricing. You Interchange
developer
can explain more to you about your particular situation, but such
things as special products available only to dealers, areas of
the website available only to dealers, dealer pricing, and so on.
Most of these functions would have to be added to your catalog,
but the field that can be looked at to enable these many
possibilities, is already built in to Interchange.
Price
Level – Price level allows you to set a price level that
this customer will be qualified for, and will see when he logs
onto the website. This works in conjunction with Item –
Edit – Pricing. For example, if there is no wholesale price
level set, then setting the Price Level to wholesale in this
dropdown window will have no effect.
Order_dest
– Not used.
Mv_credit_card_type
– Will show last CC type used if available. Do not use
for data entry
Mv_credit_card_exp_month
– Will show expiration date of last CC used if available.
Do not use for data entry
Mv_credit_card_exp_year
– Will show expiration year of last CC used if available.
Do not use for data entry
Order_numbers
– Will list order numbers if available. Do not use for
data entry
s_nickname
– This is an area that will display, or you can assign, a
shipping nickname.
Address_book
– This contains the contents of the customers address book?
B_nickname
– This an area that will display, or you can assign, a
shipping nickname.
Accounts
–
P_nickname
–
Preferences
–
Carts
– This area contains the contents of any customer saved
shopping carts.
owner
– Used with custom Interchange access options.
file_acl
– Used with custom Interchange access options.
db_acl
– Used with custom Interchange access options.
acl
– Used with custom Interchange access options.
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5.4
Customer Mailing
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The
Customer Mailing screen is an example of how flexible Interchange
is. Here you can create an email for customers. No big deal, you
can create an email anywhere right? Ok, how about one email
created to mail to multiple customers? Well, most email programs
will mail to a list. Ok, how about if the customer himself can
request to be on the list? In addition to that, the customer can
have a choice of which lists he or she is on. And, you have the
ability to offer multiple types of lists for virtually any use you
would like. Want to have a specials list that goes out every
month? How about a list for product upgrades? What about a
company Newsletter? It’s all available. So lets get to it
and describe how the example in Demo works.
As
usual, we will start at the top left and work our way down. The
first thing you will see on the Customer Mailing screen are some
fill in fields:
From:
Enter the return address you want displayed on the email here.
To:
The example shows {FNAME}{LNAME} <{EMAIL}> , in most cases
you will want to leave this as is. The letters in {} represent
variables. This allows you to use the list selection dropdown at
the bottom of the screen to select which “group” of
customers you want to send this email to. If you want to send an
individual email to someone, you insert your own email address,
but you can just use your standard email client for that!
Subject:
Put whatever subjects you would like to display on the email into
this field.
Reply-To:
You can put in an email address for the customer to reply to for
this promotion. If you leave it blank it will default to the
same as the From: return address described above.
Body
of the email – This will contain the main message for you
email, also known as the Body of the letter. In the example, it
starts with Dear {FNAME} {LNAME}, these of course are variables
and will be replaced with the appropriate First and Last names
from the chosen list of customers. Next is the <replace with
body of message>, of course you should delete this text
entirely, including the <>, and replace it with your
particular message. Next comes the “Best Regards, “
use it or change it. Next is “Note: You subscribed…”
You should customize this to match your company information and
website, some variables are included here such as {MV_LIST} which
will show which list the customer subscribed to, and in turn you
selected to send messages to. The last part, “You can
unsubscribe at any time with the URL:
{MV_BASE_URL}?list={MV_LIST}&what={MV_EMAIL}&who={USERNAME}
“ should be left untouched if you want to use the
unsubscribe function provided in the Demo. This url will bring
up the unsub.html page the site and if the customer is a valid
customer and currently is on this list, it will remove him. Again
please keep in mind that this works on the Demo, it may or may
not be available and/or functional on your site.
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The
first drop down window reflects the available lists to choose
from. Choose a list in the dropdown and then click on Select
list button. Directly below the dropdown list is a text message
that reflects how many users are on (and will be sent this email)
the currently selected list.
The
Clear form button will do just that, clear the form and return
the default entries.
The
next dropdown window displays either the “Don’t show
list”, or the “Show List Members”. If you
chose “Show List Members”, as shown above, it allows
you to view the list of customers to be emailed. It will also
allow you to restrict the mail to some, or the entire list. Just
use the check boxes next to each customer. If it’s checked
they will receive an email, if not, they will not.
The
list of members as previously mentioned has a checkbox next to
each member, to select for mailing. The next item in each record
is the email address of the member. This is a clickable link
that will normally bring up your local email client. Next is the
members name, and finally the userid which is a link to the View
Customer
page.
At
the bottom of the member list are 2 check boxes, Check all, and
Uncheck all. This simply allows you to automatically place or
remove a check from all the members check boxes, simply by
clicking one of these.
Preview
email – This button will produce a viewable list of the
emails to be sent, in the end form, as the recipients will see
them
Download
Mail Batch – When using IE 5.5, and 6.0 this button simply performed exactly like the Preview email button. You will need to do a save as, or cut and paste with IE in order to use the shell file. However using a Mozilla Browser, 1.2a a download was produced. This could normally be used directly as a shell script on a 'nix machine with Sendmail setup.
Send
now – Will send the emails using the mail program installed
on the server. IMPORTANT: The Demo is configured to use the
sendmail program, if your server uses a different mail server, or
if it is not configured properly this option WILL NOT WORK.
Please contact your IC Developer or System Admin if this is the
case.
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