We have just uploaded new functionality to The Customer Factor that allows you to schedule appts. directly from the calendar screens from within a “quick add” window. You’ve always been able to schedule “personal appts.” and “tasks” from within this window, but now you can schedule all appts. including prospects and customers from within the “quick add” window.

I’ve included a short video below for those who prefer to watch instead of read, but first we’ll talk about the specifics of this new feature…

Here’s a screenshot of our monthly calendar and the location of the “quick add” link:

An important point to make about this new feature is that it’s not about scheduling a “prospect” or about scheduling a “customer”. It’s about scheduling a “job” or an “estimate”. So what’s the difference? Glad you asked. 🙂 But before explaining…

Here’s a screenshot of the entire “quick add” window:

As you see in the above screenshot, we have 4 options available: Job, Estimate, Personal Appointment, and Task. And you’ll also see a search area.

So let’s say a john stonewood calls you up wanting a job done. Instead of figuring out whether they’re already in your account and whether they’re a prospect or a customer, all you have to do is run a quick search (recommended each time) from within the quick add window. You can search for “stonewood”, “stone”, “st”, or even just “s” if you want to. Any string of letters related to this customer’s last name will pull up in the results. Like this:

Now all you have to do is click on his name. If you run your mouse over any name, a box pops up where you can see he is a prospect or customer. But that doesn’t affect anything. We simply click on his name and all his info. will fill into the field boxes (name, address, phones, etc.).

Then all that’s left to do is to fill in his job details. If the person does happen to be a prospect that you gave a previous estimate to as in this example, you’ll be given the opportunity to insert it along with the estimate price with one click. Like this:

So now all that’s left to do is click “save and schedule another appt.” if you need to schedule someone else, or you can click “save and finish” if you’re done. The calendar screen will refresh and display immediately whatever appt. information you scheduled.

But here’s the best part: using the above example of scheduling a job for john stonewood who happens to have been a prospect in your account, when you schedule an actual “job” for him, The Customer Factor will automatically convert him from a prospect to a customer!

Same thing applies when adding an estimate from within the “quick add” window. Maybe a nancy jenkins calls and wants you to do an estimate for a gutter cleaning. Let’s say she’s a customer for another type of job your company provides, but you don’t know she’s a current customer and she doesn’t tell you.

All you have to do similar to our john stonewood example above is do a quick search for “jenkins” or “jen” or whatever other search string applies to her name (even use “j” if you want to). Click on the “nancy jenkins” result that comes up so that her details insert into the proper fields. Then insert the estimate details such as the date of the estimate and the job type.

When you save it, what’ll happen is if she is currently a “customer”, she will stay a customer of course, but a new estimate will be created for her within the “Estimate Information” area on her customer profile screen. And if she’s currently a prospect, then she’ll remain a prospect and a new estimate will be scheduled for her. 

The main point to make is that it’s now not necessary to focus on who is a prospect or who is a customer. Just schedule the appt. (job or estimate) that the person or company wants to schedule and let The Customer Factor do the rest.

Final Notes:

• If you do a search for the job/residential option or estimate/residential option, you’ll be searching by “last name”. For job/commercial and estimate/commercial, you’ll be searching by “company name”. You can read this by mousing over the question mark image to the right of the “Search” button.

 

• You can search by any string as talked about above. So if you don’t know the correct spelling of the person or company you’re searching for, no problem! Simply insert a partial string or even the first letter and you’ll get the results that apply to the search.

 

• If you do a search and some names display, and you then click one of the names to insert their info into the window, if you decide you clicked the wrong name, then all you have to do is click the right name and the previous info. will delete itself and be overridden with the new info.

 

• If you ever need to clear the fields after you click a name in the results to insert their info, a “(Clear)” link will appear. Simply click that and the info. in the fields will disappear.

If you have questions about any of the above, please don’t hesitate to contact us and we’ll walk you through it. Also you can watch a short video below for more insight into what this feature is all about. Have a great day.

Best Regards,

Steve

Here’s a short video of this new scheduling feature: