Custom Vantage Office™
How to manage and create customers
by Becky Skelley
In this month’s exploration of Custom Vantage Office™, we’ll focus on how to manage and create customers, a vital part of any successful online e-commerce business.
We will also examine the set-up process and important tools to help you better manage your customers. Customer Management is simple to use and includes a vast array of potential information that you can link to each individual customer. You might need to keep track of multiple contacts for one customer or company while also managing the specific requests of another, and Manager can assist in both situations. Knowing more about these tools can also help you ease any confusion that may arise when the same customer orders via the Web and phone.
With customers correctly set up from the start, you’ll be able to eliminate future errors and also manage them from your Stamp Shop Web site, making life a lot easier for your employees and customers. Let’s begin with how to set up a customer in Manager.
Steps to follow
Begin by double-clicking the Stamp Shop Manager desktop icon or single-clicking the pinned icon on your task bar. Then, sign in to your company with your User Name and Password.
Customer Setup: New Customer Wizard
Once in Manager, under the Start Menu, click on the Customers button, and the Find Customers window will appear (see Picture 1).
In the upper left hand corner of the Find Customers window, click on the New button.
Next, the New Customer Wizard will pop up (this happens only if you have turned on the Use New Customer Wizard in your user preferences.) You must enter at least a phone number and/or a company name. If you click on the Find Match button, you will be able to verify whether a customer with the same phone or company name exists in your database (see Picture 2).
If you don’t have the Wizard turned on and you click on the New button, you’ll be taken directly to the Customer record screen, where all of the important data about the customer and his or her preferences are configured.
General tab
Within the Customer screen, there are 15 tabs across the top which allow you to store extensive customer details and establish special parameters for that client (see Picture 3).
On the General tab, you’ll see that the basic customer information is configured, including contact and address information. Because Manager includes more than 80,000 U.S. ZIP codes and over 800,000 Canadian post codes, when you enter the ZIP code, the city, state and country are automatically filled in for you. At the bottom on the right, you’ll find the Setup Information section (see Picture 3). Here you can establish important options, such as the customer’s appropriate tax rate (if any), as well as the default shipping method and other special circumstances. Let’s look at this section in greater detail:
Setup Information
- UPS—Enter the customer’s UPS or FedEx account number, and it will automatically be used for billing shipments.
- Active—Orders may be entered for this customer when this status is noted.
- Accept BO (Back Orders)—When checked, back orders can be created for this customer.
- Blind Ship—If this option is checked, when an order is created, Manager will print a packing slip instead of an order slip. Neither your company name nor any pricing information will appear on it. The shipping label will indicate that the package is coming from a dealer of yours to their customer.
- Credit Hold—With this option selected, no new orders for this customer may be placed until his or her bill is fully paid. Customers will automatically be placed on credit hold if the account is more than 75 days past due. As with everything in Manager, you can also adjust the timing of the hold according to your particular needs.
- PO Required (Purchase Order)—If this option is checked, an order cannot be processed without a purchase order (PO) number being entered.
- Verify Customer Info—When this option is checked, a sales representative from your company will be prompted to confirm contact details the next time this customer places an order.
Detail tab
Inside the Detail tab, there are three special areas (see red arrows in Picture 4).
The General Notes section, the top area on the right side, contains handy reminders, such as “No stickers” or “This guy’s picky. Wipe fingerprints.” These notes will automatically pop up when a new order or invoice is created for this customer.
Directly below General Notes is the Credit Card Account section. If you’re using the built-in credit card processing feature, the encrypted card information is stored here. You cannot access it, but you will be able to see that it is, for example, a Visa card ending in 3442, last used on April 20, 2014. If you need to pay an invoice, the card is automatically charged when you instruct the system to do so. Manager is fully PCI compliant and allows you to easily do recurring charges.
The third section is the Stamp Shop Web interface tie-in, located at the bottom on the right, where you’ll see the Email Address or Domain field. To link a customer’s website login to his or her particular account in Stamp Shop Manager, enter the appropriate email address or domain name here. When web orders are imported, they will then be added to this customer’s account. If more than one person orders online for this customer, enter only the domain portion of the client’s e-mail address. Anyone with an email address in that domain ordering from your site will be linked to this customer’s account in Manager.
Contacts tab
Within the Contacts tab, you can add specific information about the contact person for this particular customer. Click the ellipsis (…) button to view the Customer Contact window (see Picture 5).
You can also enter additional contacts for this Customer ID. Once you have finished, click the Save button. Now you will see your new contact name within the first row.
Clients tab
Inside the Clients tab, you can add a Client ID for the customer. Click the ellipsis button in the corner, just as you did to add information about the contact person. Then the Customer Clients window will appear, and you’ll be able to enter the general contact information for this client company (see Picture 6).
As you can see, the Customer Management tools within Manager are quite extensive. Stay tuned for our next installment, where we’ll review the Notes, History and Email sections and more within the Customers window. Each tab holds valuable information for your interactions with customers, and we’ll explain how to utilize each to your benefit.