Customer Properties

This page list of content:

Benefits of Customer Properties

The customer properties feature helps you collect more information about your customers, giving you a thorough database of your clients’ properties. Registered customer properties can be seen by admins, the fieldworkers assigned to the customer bookings, and the customers themselves.

OctopusPro saves customers’ properties on their profiles. This allows your business to create full profiles for its customers’ possessions and/or dependents. This saves time as you do not have to ask about the same information every time the customer makes a booking.

The collected information about customer properties that is saved to the customer’s account ensures better communication between admins/fieldworker and customers. Field workers will know the customer’s details before even reaching the job location. This reduces communication time between the fieldworker and the customer, increasing customer satisfaction.

How to Set Up Customer Properties?

Admin users can set up customer properties from the Web or from the app logged in as an admin role. To create a customer property field as an admin user, follow the below steps

• From the sidebar menu select Settings > General Settings > Customer properties 

• Admin users will be redirected to the Customer Properties view page. The page will have no properties by default. To add a new customer property, click on Create New + button

Another way to set up a customer property is by navigating to Customers > All Customers. You will be redirected to the customer’s list page. From the top of the page click on + Create customer property

Then click on the button Create New +

Clicking on the “Create New +” button, the admin user will be directed to a new page to fill in the questions:

1. Give a title to your property: in this field, you should add the type of customer property you want to inquire about. It would be named something like child info, car details, etc. This field won’t appear to your customers. This field is mandatory.

2. Field label: in this field, type the question you want to ask your customers. This field is mandatory.

3. This is a drop-down menu where you can choose the type of answer your customers can add. The types are as shown in the picture below:

4. This field lets you decide whether it is mandatory for the customer to answer this certain question/statement or is it optional. The first question/statement related to a certain customer property is always mandatory to be answered. The rest depends on the admin user’s decision to make them either mandatory or optional. The difference is shown in the picture below:

5. This field gives you the option to either show the customer property in the invoice and booking PDF or not.

To add more information about a customer’s property, click on the “Add new field” button below the form.

Activating/Deactivating Customer Properties

After setting up customers’ properties, admin users need to add them to their business accounts. To do so, from the sidebar menu select Settings > General Settings > Customer properties

You will find the customer property/properties listed on the page:

Then, click on the settings icon ⚙️. A new window will open to connect the customer property to your trading name/s:

Slide the toggle to add the customer property to the trading name, then click “Save”:

Make the customer property mandatory to all your customer by toggling the button on the “Customer Properties” page:

How Users Can Add Information/Data to Their Customers

Customer properties can be added by admin users, fieldworkers, and customers themselves.

Adding Customer Properties as an Admin User from Admin Web View

To add the customer properties of a certain customer as an admin user, follow the below steps:

From the sidebar menu, select Customers > All Customers

Then, from the customer list, hover over the customer’s name. Click on “View Profile”:

The list of customer properties will appear on the screen:

To add the information about your customer properties click on the Add New + button

A window will open with all the questions about your customer properties. Fill it and then click “Save”

Adding Customer Properties as a Fieldworker User from Fieldwork App

Fieldworkers can add customer properties to the customer’s account when they are creating a new booking.

• From the side “Menu”, click on the “MAKE A NEW BOOKING” button:

• Search for the name of your customer:

• After selecting the customer, the customer properties will appear on the screen. If the customer does not have any customer properties attached to their name, click on “continue”:

• On the new page, click on the + Add new button:

• Fill in the information about your customer’s property and click on “SAVE”:

• The customer property will then be added. Choose it and click “DONE”:

Adding Customer Properties as a Customer from the Customer Portal

Customers can add info of their property on the Customer Portal when they make a new booking.

First, click on the “Book Service” button:

A pop-up window for the customer property will appear, with the button “+ Add New” to add a new customer property. Then click on “Next”:

Fill out the form, then click on “Save”:

The customer property will then be saved to the customer’s account.

If you have created a customer property, then add a new booking, a new field will appear listing all pre-entered properties related to the customer, so the person making the booking can select from.

Where Can Customers View Their Properties?

Properties added to customers can be viewed from different places in the system.

View Customer Properties as an Admin User

You can view the customer profile from the customer’s list. However, only the name of the property would be shown:

You can also view the full details of the customer’s property by viewing their profile:

Customer Properties in View Booking

Customer’s properties can also be viewed from the page that shows all the bookings:

Or when you view the booking details:

Customer Properties in Booking PDF

You can also view customer’s property from the booking PDF:

Viewing Customer Properties as a Fieldworker

Fieldworkers can view customers’ properties on each booking on the Fieldworker App.

To show the customer properties as a fieldworker, click on the action button on the upper left corner of the Fieldworker App:

The sidebar menu will appear. From there, under bookings, click on “All” to show all the bookings:

The app will redirect you to the page showing all the bookings assigned to you:

Choosing any of the bookings will show the booking details including the customer properties:

When clicking on the customer property listed in the booking, you will be redirected to a page with the details of the customer’s property the booking is made for.

Viewing Customer Properties on the Customer Portal

Customer properties can also be viewed by customers on the Customer Portal.

To view the customer properties on the Customer Portal, open the customer profile by clicking on the customer’s name on the top right corner of the Portal’s homepage. Then, click on “Profile” from the drop-down menu:

The customer’s properties will be listed on the profile:

Customer Properties When Booking a Service Through the Customer Portal

The Customer Properties feature makes the booking process on the customer portal faster and easier. Thanks to this feature, properties will be saved to their prospective customer’s accounts, so they do not have to add the information every time they make a booking.

Booking a Service as a Registered Customer

For registered customers, they can see their saved properties when making a new booking. Thus, they can choose the property/properties they are making the booking for.

Once the customer chooses to book a service on the Customer Portal, a pop-up window will show up with a drop-down menu with all the saved properties:

The customer will be able to choose which property to make the booking for:

A single or multiple properties can be selected.

Booking a Service as a Guest

When a customer accesses the Customer portal for the first time without having an account, they will be asked to provide their properties’ details when making a booking:

Once they click on the booking button, a popup window will appear to add their properties’ details:

The guest customer will then fill in the form with all the properties’ details and click on “Save”:

For future bookings, the Customer Portal will remember the customer’s properties and list them as the default:

The customer can choose to either keep the default choices or select different properties to make the booking for:

Viewing the Bookings of Each Property Alone

OctopusPro allows you to see the bookings related to each customer property. To see the booking related to each customer property, go to the sidebar and click on Customers > All Customers

You will be redirected to the customer list page. Click on the action dots and from the drop-down menu, click on “View profile”:

On the customer’s account page, all the properties will be listed. Click on the “Bookings” tab:

All the customer’s bookings will be listed regardless of the property they are pertaining to:

However, to view the bookings of a certain customer property, click on any of the properties, then on the “Bookings” tab:

You will be redirected to a new tab showing only the booking related to the property you have selected.

Customer Properties: Use Cases

Here are some use cases that highlight how to benefit from the Customer Properties feature for different industries. These are some of the best suggestions that business owners can get ideas from or even replicate when setting up their own customer properties. Here is a step-by-step guide to creating different customer properties for different industries:

Adding profiles for children for a childcare business

In a childcare business, the child’s information needs to be collected. However, children won’t be added as customers since they are not the bill payers. In this case, you should use the Customer Properties feature to save the child’/children’s information to the customers’ profiles.

Create a customer property from Customers > All Customers then click on + Create customer property:

In the Custom Property page, click on the “+” sign next to the Create New:

Set up a new property and name it “Children”:

Then, create all the fields and questions for the information you want to collect when adding a profile for a child. These fields could include things like name, gender, date of birth, etc.

Each customer could have multiple children under their account.

This way all the children’s information will be saved under the customer’s account. The children will appear in your customer profiles and you can record all details related to each child, allowing you to generate a report showing everything related to each child under each customer.

Pet Care

Like childcare businesses, pet care also uses the customer properties feature to collect information about the pets owned by the customer.

If you manage/own a pet care business, create a customer property from Customers > All Customers then click on + Create customer property:

In the Custom Property page, click on the “+” sign next to the Create New:

Set up a new property and name it “Pets”:

Then, create all the fields and questions for the information you want to collect when adding a profile for a pet. These fields could include things like type, breed, name, gender, date of birth, etc.

Each customer could have multiple pets under their account.

This way all the pets’ information will be saved under the customer’s account. The pets will appear in your customer profiles and you can record all details related to each pet, allowing you to generate a report showing everything related to each pet under each customer.

Autocare

Autocare provides services to vehicles to help them last longer, perform better, and keep drivers safe. Thus, as an autocare provider, you need to collect accurate information about your customers’ vehicles.

If you manage/own an autocare business, create a customer property from Customers > All Customers then click on + Create customer property:

In the Custom Property page, click on the “+” sign next to the Create New:

Set up a new property and name it “Vehicles”:

Then, set up all the fields and questions for the details you want to collect when adding a profile for a vehicle. These fields could include things like vehicle type, model, make, year of manufacture, plate number, etc.

You can add multiple vehicles under each customer account.

This way information about all the vehicles will be saved under the customer’s account. The vehicles will appear in your customer profiles and you can record all details related to each vehicle, allowing you to generate a report showing everything related to each vehicle under each customer.

Real estate agency managing multiple residential and business properties

Managing properties is not an easy task. Being on top of the maintenance of a property can be quite hectic. The customer properties feature allows you to keep track of everything.

If your business is in property management, save all information related to your customer’s property. Create a customer property from Customers > All Customers then click on + Create customer property:

In the Custom Property page, click on the “+” sign next to the Create New:

Set up a new property and name it “Property”:

Then, set up all the fields and questions for the information you want to gather when adding a profile for a property. These fields can include property type, location, size, year built, etc.

You can add multiple properties under each customer account. 

This way information about all the properties will be saved under the customer’s account. The properties will appear in your customer profiles and you can record all details related to each property, allowing you to generate a report showing everything related to each property under each customer.

Asset management “Vending machines”

If your business supports supplying more than one type of vending machine such as:

• Machine for Beverages
• Machines for gloves
• Machine for snacks

Or if you provide vending machines to different locations, you can use the customer properties to add the different types of machines which you’re providing, along with the different locations in which it is available.
To add different types of machines, please go to All customers, then click on Create customer property then click on create new as displayed below:

To add different locations, please go to All customers, then click on Create customer property then click on create new as displayed below:

When making a booking, it will be displayed as below: