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Managing Customers

This chapter discusses the following tasks related to customers:

• Accessing Existing Customers
• Editing Customer Data
• Associating a Contact with Another Company
• Adding Attachments
• Adding Comments
• Printing a Customer Page
• Performing Customer Activities
• Creating a Ticket for the Customer
• Transferring Tickets to Another Customer
• Deactivating a Customer
• Deleting a Customer
• Making Customers Available Again

Changes to customer data are always global changes, i.e., it does not matter where you carry out a change, it will always affect all places where this customer is used (customer page and tickets). This is because ConSol CM keeps the customer data in a central customer database.

Accessing Existing Customers

If you want to see all details about a customer, you have to open its customer page. There are several ways to access the customer page of an existing customer:

• Opening a customer page from the Customers Section of a ticket.
• Opening a customer page using the link in the ticket list.
• Searching for a customer using the Quick Search or the Detailed Search.
• Opening a contact page using the link in the Section for Related Contacts of a company page.
• Opening a company page using the Jump to company link in the context menu of a company in the header section of a contact page.
• Opening a customer page via a relation (e.g., in the Section for Related Customers of a resource page, or in the Section for Related Customers of another customer page).

Updating Customers

Editing Customer Data

You can edit customer data using the context menu in the Header Section or the link in the Groups Section provided that you have the required permissions.

Figure 90: Editing customer data

1. Click the Edit link in the context menu of the customer.
2. Click the Edit link in the upper right corner of the Groups Section.

The section's background turns yellow to indicate that it is in edit mode. Edit the customer data as required (see The Different Data Fields for details about the different types of data fields). Click Save changes to save the new data. The section background turns gray again (view mode).

Figure 91: Groups Section in edit mode

You can also edit customer data within a ticket where the customer is added as the main customer or as additional customer (see Editing Customer Data).

Associating a Contact with Another Company

If a contact is linked to the wrong company, you can fix this on the contact page. There you can change the company which a contact belongs to. To do so, please proceed as follows:

1. Open the contact page and click the Change link in the context menu of the associated company.
2. Provide the desired company:
   1. Start typing the company name and select one of the suggestions from the Autocomplete Search.
   2. Click the Create link to create a new company (see Creating a New Customer).

Figure 92: Changing the company of a contact

Editing the Additional Details

The Section for Additional Details of the customer page allows you to add comments and attachments to the customer. The respective permissions are granted independently from the permissions to read and write customer data, so it is possible that you cannot view or edit this section.

You can use the additional details to collect information about the customer which is not related to a specific ticket, e.g., adding the customer's service contract as an attachment, or writing a comment about the best way to contact the customer.

Adding Attachments

To add an attachment, click the Attachment link in the header of the section. The section background turns yellow to indicate that it is in edit mode. If the section is already in edit mode, you can also add an attachment by clicking the Attachment tab.

Figure 93: Adding an attachment

Please proceed as follows to add an attachment:

1. Specify the files to be uploaded by either:
   • Dragging and dropping them into the white area.
   • Clicking into the white area to open a file browser dialogue and selecting the files.
2. The selected files are displayed in a list below the white area. Optionally, you can add a description in the Description field. Click the Delete link to remove a file from the list.
3. Click the Add button to upload the files to the customer page.

The attachments are then displayed in the list of attachments below (still empty in the above figure).

The list of attachments provides the following information. You can filter the list using the drop-down boxes and text fields in the header:

• File type
  Indicates the file type of the attachment.
• Name
  Indicates the file name of the attachment. Click the file name to download and open the attachment.
• Description
  Indicates the description provided when the attachment was added, if any.
• Date
  Indicates the date when the attachment was added.
• Added by
  Indicates who added the attachment. This can be either an engineer (who uploaded the file) or a technical user (in case the file was automatically uploaded by the system).
• Action
  Provides links to the available actions. These are:
  • Apply filters
    Filters the list according to your selections in the header.
  • Clear filters
    Removes the filter, i.e., displays all entries.

You can delete an attachment by clicking the red cross on the right. The attachment is now displayed in italics. At this point you can still undo the removal by clicking Undo remove. As soon as you execute any other action, the attachment is removed permanently.

The possible file formats, maximum file size, and whether attachments are searchable depend on the individual configuration of your CM system.

Adding Comments

To add a comment, click the Comment link in the header of the section. The section background turns yellow to indicate that it is in edit mode. If the section is already in edit mode, you can also add a comment by clicking the Comment tab. Enter the comment and click Add. The comment is then displayed in the list of comment below.

The list of comments provides the following information. You can filter the list using the drop-down boxes and text fields in the header:

• Date
  Indicates the date when the comment was added.
• Added by
  Indicates who added the comment. This can be either an engineer (who entered the comment) or a technical user (in case the comment was automatically created by the system).
• Comment
  Shows the comment.
• Action
  Provides links to the available actions. These are:
  • Apply filters
    Filters the list according to your selections in the header.
  • Clear filters
    Removes the filter, i.e., displays all entries.

You can delete a comment by clicking the red cross on the right. The comment is now displayed in italics. At this point you can still undo the removal by clicking Undo remove. As soon as you execute any other action, the comment is removed for good.

Printing a Customer Page

You can print a customer page by clicking the Print link in the upper right corner of the customer page. A pop-up window is displayed where you can select the desired printer.

Performing Customer Activities

Customer activities allow you to perform certain actions for the current customer. You can find them in the Activities box next to the open customer page. Depending on the availability for a company or a contact, the activity is called company activity (company action) or contact activity (contact action). Click the desired activity to perform the corresponding action.

Figure 94: Company activities

Examples for customer activities are:

• Create a new ticket for the contact.
• Open the company's website.
• Load customer data from an external source.

The available customer activities depend on the type of customer (company or contact), his customer group, and the individual configuration of your CM system. You can only perform customer activities if you have the required permissions to perform activities for this customer group.

Managing the Customer's Tickets

Creating a Ticket for the Customer

The customer page provides a convenient way to create a new ticket for this customer. Please proceed as follows:

1. Open the customer page.
2. Click Create ticket in the context menu of the customer.
3. Fill out the required data on the Create ticket page and click Create.
   1. The current customer is already selected as the main customer of the new ticket.
   2. You can only select queues to which the customer group of the current customer is assigned.

Please see Creating a New Ticket for further information about ticket creation.

The Create ticket option is not available for companies in two-level customer models where tickets can only be created for contacts.

Transferring Tickets to Another Customer

You can transfer the tickets of one customer to another customer. This is necessary for example if you want to deactivate or delete the customer. Please proceed as follows:

1. Open the customer page.
2. Click the Transfer tickets link in the context menu of the customer.
3. Select the customer who should receive the tickets using the Autocomplete Search.

   The checkbox Transfer only open tickets determines if you transfer only open tickets (checkbox selected) or both open and closed tickets (checkbox not selected). Select the checkbox if you want to deactivate the customer afterwards. Leave it unchecked if you want to delete the customer, as you have to move all tickets in this case.

4. Click Transfer data and continue. The new customer will replace the previous customer in the tickets of the selected state (open / open and closed). This applies both to tickets where the customer is the main customer and to tickets where the customer is an additional customer.

Figure 95: Transferring tickets to another customer

Making Customers Unavailable

If a customer should not be used in the CM system anymore, you have two options to handle this situation:

• Deactivating the customer
• Deleting the customer

The following table provides an overview of the requirements and implications of each option.

Deactivating a Customer

You can deactivate a customer on his customer page or within a closed ticket of the customer. The preconditions for deactivating the customer (see table) have to be met and you need the corresponding permission. Please proceed as follows:

1. Open the customer page or a ticket of the customer.
2. Click Deactivate in the customer's context menu.
3. The customer is deactivated. If you deactivate a company, all the contacts of the company are also deactivated.

Deleting a Customer

You can delete a contact on his contact page, provided that you have the required permissions. Please proceed as follows:

1. Open the contact page.
2. Click Delete in the contact's context menu.
3. If the contact still has (open or closed) tickets, you need to transfer them to another customer (see Transferring Tickets to Another Customer).
4. The contact is completely removed from the system. The only remaining reference is the ticket history entry created during the transfer (see following figure).

Figure 96: History entry after ticket transfer

Making Customers Available Again

You can make a deactivated customer, which is displayed in italics, available again by reactivating him. To do so, please proceed as follows:

1. Open the customer page or a ticket of the customer.
2. Click Reactivate in the customer's context menu.
3. The customer is reactivated but he does not get his tickets back (in case his tickets were transferred to another customer before deactivating him). If the customer is a company, its contacts remain deactivated. You have to reactivate them one by one.