This page covers the basics of creating, assigning, and managing CRM Notes.

If you're still new to Orderbot or would like to know the basics of what CRM is used for and how it functions in Orderbot, check out our What is CRM? page.

There are two pages where you can create a CRM Note:

1. Customers > Manage Customers and Orders > New Orders

   Your first option is to use the same search and ordering menu that you use for your regular operations. This page can be reached from under both the Customers and Orders menu options. (This is because both customer search and order placement can be done on the same page.)

   •  Search for a customer (You can use filters like country or ZIP to help narrow down your search and locate your customer.)
   • You'll see a little clipboard  icon  and a triangle . Click the clipboard to create a new note.

   

2. Customers > CRM Notes

   Your second option is to use the CRM Notes page under Customer > CRM Notes. This colourful page is best for managing and following up with CRM notes once you've already created at least one CRM Note for a customer using the first method above. Using this method, you would mainly create a new CRM note once you're done with the previous one.

   

   • Search for CRM Notes. (You can filter by Status, Action, and Variable, or by the Sales Rep that your notes are assigned to)
   • Find the note that you would like to mark as complete. Click the little red X icon.
   • You'll see a popup asking if you would like to just mark your note as done or also create a new note. Pick 'Mark Done + New Note.'

   

   • This will close the previous note and bring up the page to create a new one. (Note that if you X out of this screen, you will have closed a note without scheduling any followup.)

Okay, so now you know where to create a note. You have that CRM Note open and you're ready to fill it out. What next?

Every CRM setup is a little bit different. You'll see the Statuses, Actions, and Variables that your admin has set up within Orderbot.

• Status: The current state of this customer. The status displays as a column on your customer search pages, allowing all of your reps to see important information at a glance, like if an account is delinquent or a lead is cold.
• Action: What has to be done? (e.g. Call, Send Sample)
• Action/Follow up Date: What is the deadline? If this date passes without this note being closed, it will show in the Past Due section of the CRM Notes page.
• Assign To: Who needs to do it?
• Variable: Filtering options. Common ones include Time Zone or Customer Ranking. See below about Variables and Searching.
• Complete Last Note: If there's already an existing note for this customer, this tickbox will automatically close that one when this one is created.

Once you have everything filled out, click Submit. 

 NOTE: The 'Assign To' dropdown menu on the CRM Notes page is different than the Sales Rep dropdown menu that you set up under the Manage Sales Rep page. This allows you fine control over operations. (e.g. You may have an account assigned to one rep, an order assigned to another, and a CRM note assigned to someone else entirely) However, it also means that if you re-assign a customer to a different rep, you will need to move your CRM Notes. Please jump to the section below on moving CRM Notes for more information.

 TIP: If you would like to create internal notes, you can create your own company as a 'customer' within Orderbot.

For each drop-down menu on your CRM Note, you will want to select the appropriate option for the type of note you're creating. For example, if you had set up a variable like 'Store' with a dropdown list of different store types (Grocery, Toy, etc.), then you would pick the one most appropriate for describing your customer.

Categorizing your CRM notes this way allows you to quickly search on the CRM Notes page for related notes.

Go to Customer > CRM Notes. Take a look at the Variable If Dropdown. This is where you can filter your searches by the custom variables that your admin user has set up at Prefs > Customer Setup > CRM Settings.

So if you want to pull up all of your notes related to a Grocery Store so that you can give them a call about your new promotion, it's as simple as searching by the variable 'Store' on the CRM Notes page. The same goes for any other variable you may have set up, such as 'Time Zone' or 'Customer Ranking.'

On the CRM Notes page, you can filter by the following fields:

• Status - The status assigned to a note.
• Action - The followup action assigned to a note.
• Variables (Variable If Dropdown) - These are custom variables that your admin user has set up for ou.
• Assigned To - The sales rep assigned to the note. (Do not use the 'assign to' option for this. See the note below.)
• Date Range - Pulls up all notes within this range.
• Include Completed Task - Allows you to include or exclude notes that have already been completed and closed. (You would probably want to include this if you're searching a past date range, for instance.)

 NOTE: You'll also see a little square on the right-hand side where you can select a date range and a rep to 'assign to.' This function is not used for searching for notes. You would use this to batch re-assign CRM notes to another sales rep. Please see the section below on reassigning notes.

If you would like to reassign an individual note, follow these steps:

1. Do a search to pull up the notes you would like to change.
2. Click on the Edit icon next to the note.
3. On the note screen itself, select the sales rep you would like to reassign to from the dropdown menu.
4. Click Submit. Repeat with other notes.

We also have a function for batch-reassigning notes:

1. First, do a search to pull up the notes you would like to change.
2. Tick the box on the left-hand side of each note you will reassign.
3. Up top, there's a little box that says select date and assign to. Pick a date and then select the new rep from the dropdown menu.
4. Click Submit. A message will appear at the top of the page to tell you whether or not the reassignment was successful.