Customer Sales Tracking & Loyalty

These two optional modules dramatically expand your ability to service your customers. Not only will you be able to know at a glance what a customer has bought in the past, you will be able to sort this data to create targeted mailings for in-store events, catalog distribution, and book announcements.

The next powerful tool for running your business is the Loyalty Program software. Each store has a unique program to encourage their customers to shop with them on a recurring basis. Part of the installation of this software at your store will be a review of what your program is and the creation of the files necessary to mirror what you've been doing previously. Together, these tools will help you to "get to know" your customers as never before.

There will be changes both in the menus and within programs:

Menus:

1. There will be a new main menu choice, "Customer Tracking". Within this menu is the program to "View customer purchase history" and all customer tracking sorting and report tools.


Programs:

1. In the "Customer Tracking" menu is the "View customer purchase history" screen. Here you may view tracked sales data by customer, inventory record, or by section.

2. In the "Lookups" menu, the "Customer" screen has two new commands that allow you to view customer loyalty information.

3. In the "Point of Sale menu, the "Cash register" program has many new commands related to both the tracking and loyalty features.

The next section describes these 3 programs, and the changes that have been made in them.


View Customer Purchase History: [This program is only displayed if Loyalty is installed]

This program allows you to view sales data that has been tracked. This will be useful for times when a customer may want recommendations from the staff. They will be able to see at a glance the kinds of books that a customer has purchased in the past and make an appropriate recommendation. There are 3 ways to look at the data:

1. By customer record

2. By inventory record

3. By section record

A customer search can be done by customer name or number. Once you have chosen a customer, you may look at expanded customer information, or go right to viewing their purchase history. Purchase history may be viewed by section, receipt, or title.

  • Searching by customer number will match only that one customer.

  • Searching by name allows you to scroll through customers to find the correct one.

  • An inventory search may be done by title, author, or ISBN/SKU.

  • Searching by ISBN/SKU will match only that one inventory record.

  • Searching by title or author allows you to scroll through inventory records to find the correct one.

  • A section search may be done by section name or number. Once a section is chosen, you may look at section data for a range of dates or for all time.

  • Searching by section number will match only that one section record. Searching by name allow you to scroll through section records to find the correct one.


Customer:

There are two new commands in the customer screen. Before using either of these, a customer must be displayed.

1. Type <S2> in the command box and press enter. This will make the lower portion of the customer screen toggle between displaying Mail Order information and displaying Loyalty Information. The Loyalty Information consists of the I.D. number and name of your store's loyalty program. If a customer is not enrolled in your program, "no program" will display in the 'name' field.

2. The second commands may only be executed while you are modifying a customer record. From any field while modifying a customer record, press and hold <Shift> and <F2> at the same time. This will draw an additional screen on top of the customer's information. The screen will be divided between Mail Order information and Point of Sale information.

With the arrow keys, move down to the 'Program name" field in the POS area. You may enroll a customer in your program by pressing and holding the "Shift-F11" or "Shift-F12" key combination to move the highlight to your store's program name. When you enroll a customer, 'Start date' field will be filled in with the current date. Please note: Sales that accumulate through the WordStock Mail Order Optional Module do not update customer loyalty figures. This will be a future enhancement to this program.

You should not have to modify any other field in this screen during regular operations, as the "Cash Register" program will update customers who are enrolled in a program and whose sales are tracked. However, there will most likely be an initial phase once you've installed this software where you may enter information for your customers to reflect their current status in your loyalty program. If you change an enrolled customer to "no program" and "save" the change, that customer's history is permanently deleted.

For example, if your program consists of a customer purchasing $100.00 worth of product, and then receiving a reward (such as a $5.00 coupon), and that customer has receipts worth $57.87, you would want to enter that information when they are enrolled. In this case, you would enter '57.87' into the 'Sales$' and 'List$' field. Modification of these fields is currently not password protected. This is an upcoming feature.


POS/ Cash Register:

There are 4 new commands within the POS/Cash Register program:

  • Track;

  • Untrack;

  • Enroll;

  • Renw.

The "track" command may be used at any point before, during, or after a sale. If before, you will be asked if the tracked sale is the upcoming one. If you answer yes, "tracked" appears in the bottom of the Messages box. If you answer no, you will be prompted for a receipt number. Type one in or quit. This command is what updates the customer tracking data files with sales information. If a customer is enrolled in a loyalty program, using the "track" command will also update the loyalty data files.

The "untrack" command may only be used within the current sale. It will cancel both the tracking and loyalty functions for the current sale.

The "enroll" command allows for getting a customer into a loyalty program. If there is more than one loyalty program at a store, a box will display so the user can choose which one. If not, it will just do it. If the customer is already enrolled, the you will get a message asking if you want to change the enrollment status of a customer.

Track and enroll bring up the customer searching prompts. There is an option that controls whether this search will be performed as a default by customer name or number. If searching by name, you'll get prompted for last name, then first name. The closest match will be displayed. You can scroll through looking for a customer. If that person isn't in the database, press f9 and you will be at the enter a customer number prompt. From here you may enter a customer number or create a new customer record. Saving the customer and returning to POS leaves you in "tracked" mode. Searching by customer number will only match that one number.

Sales that are tracked will have that noted on the receipt. It will say "Sales for Customer #" followed by that customer's number.

There are many options that control what happens when a reward has been earned by one of your customers. Because each store will be different, these options will not be described here. Configuration of these options will take place during the setup of your store's program.