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Matching New Records to Existing Customers

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Overview

At the time orders or customer records are imported into the Order Manager, the system attempts to associate an existing customer record with the incoming order or customer record. This association is for purchasing history only, and DOES NOT change any of the billing or shipping, name or address information on the incoming record as it is imported. This basic functionality is controlled by the setting of the Customer Search parameters.

Unfortunately, mismatching can sometimes occur, particularly if a shopping cart doesn't require a customer email address or phone number to be entered with each order. For example, if the email or phone field is left blank in an order, some carts may read that as "0" and the Order Manager will interpret all orders with "0" in the email or phone field as belonging to the same customer, when in actuality they do not. The orders will be matched erroneously to the initial customer record that contains "0" in the email or phone fields.

To avoid the potential mismatching of new orders to existing customer records and to allow for the updating of existing customer records with newer information, the program offers the Customer Match feature, which allows the user to specify additional criteria that will be used to determine a customer match. This feature causes the import process to stop when a customer match is found and allow the user to determine how to proceed.

Configuring the Customer Search Parameters

The basic functionality of the program provides four system parameters that can be set to define what type of data the program will search when attempting to match incoming orders or customer records to existing Order Manager customer records. These parameters do not apply to customer information added at Manual Orders.

The program will determine customer matches automatically as it encounters the first match based on the criteria specified in the sequential order of the customer search fields, unless the Customer Match feature is enabled. If that feature is enabled, the program will display the Customer Match screen and allow the user to decide on the action to be taken. See the section below for more details.

System parameters CustomerSearchField1 through CustomerSearchField4 control which fields will be searched and in what order. These parameters can be set via the Set System Parameters screen or via the third page of the Order Processing section of the Store Setup Wizard. The possible settings for these system parameters are:

 

CustomerSearchField1

CustomerSearchField2

CustomerSearchField3

CustomerSearchField4

Additional Information

Configuring the Customer Matching Feature

Description of the Customer Match Screen

When the Customer Match feature is turned on and the program finds one or more matching customer records during the course of importing orders or customer records, the Customer Match screen is displayed to allow the user to decide how to proceed by clicking the appropriate box(es) and button(s) which are described below:

 

Figure 1: Customer Match screen

Order #: This field is only populated if performing an order import, and it will contain the Order Manager order number.

Bill To information from New Order: Choose which fields of the existing Order Manager customer record will be updated with the new information found in the imported order or customer record. If the check box next to the Address information is checked, all related fields are updated, Address, City, State, Zip and Country.

Check All:  This button selects all of the check boxes of the fields that are eligible to be updated.

Turn off customer matching for the remainder of this import: Click this button to temporarily disable the Customer Matching feature for the duration of the current import (customer or order).  

Show customer with matching:  If a certain type of data is present in the incoming record, the corresponding radio button will be selected.

Do Not Import This Customer: If this button is clicked, the no customer data will be changed.

Assign new order to selected customer: This button will cause the current order that is being imported to be associated with the existing customer record that is selected as a match. This button will not be visible when importing customer records.

Create New customer record: Click this button to have the program create a new customer record in the Order Manager from the information contained in the incoming record. If the update is a result of an order import, the order will also be associated with the newly created customer record.  

Update checked fields in selected customer record: Causes all of the selected fields in the current customer record to be updated with the incoming information from a new order or a customer record. A note will be written to the customer record indicating the changes that were made.

 

 

Updated 8/28/08

Modified: 7/3/14

 

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