Customers
In this article
Creating Customers
Customers can easily be created whenever you create a new appointment, warranty claim, or order.
You can also create a new customer at any time from the dashboard by navigating to “Customers” in the sidebar menu. From this page you can search for existing customers or create a new customer by clicking the "Create" button or clicking the “+” button to the right of the sidebar menu item.
Customer Details
To add a new customer to the database, you’ll need to input a first name, last name and either a valid email address or a valid phone number.
If the customer consents to receive notifications and reminders via SMS text messages, ensure that the phone number given is an SMS enabled mobile phone and that the “Send notifications via SMS” toggle is set to “Yes”.
Importing Customers
To help you get started quickly and easily, it is possible to import customer data you already have into Velodrop quickly and easily. To begin, prepare you will need to prepare an import file.
Preparing The Import File
Velodrop supports the following spreadsheet file types for importing:
- csv
The import file must be formatted to use the same column headings as Velodrop database fields. From the customers import page, you can download a template containing the required column headers.
If working with a file exported from another software, make sure that corresponding column headers are changed to match the ones Velodrop uses, and that any fields not used by Velodrop are removed from the document.
For successful import, each row must have at least:
-
A valid input in the first_name and last_name columns.
-
At least one contact method:
- a valid email or
- a valid e.164 formatted phone number
Import File Required Fields
The field names as shown in the table below are required as the header on the top row of the import file.
| Field | Format | Required |
|---|---|---|
| first_name | text | always |
| last_name | text | always |
| valid email address | without phone_e164 | |
| phone_e164 | valid E.164 formatted telephone number | without email |
| address_1 | text | optional |
| address_2 | text | optional |
| city | text | optional |
| state_region | text | optional |
| country_code | valid ISO 3166-1 2-character country code | optional |
| postal_code | text | optional |
Import File Size
The import file can contain a maximum of 5000 lines. If importing more than 5000 customers, you will need to split your data into two or more files and upload one file at a time.
Upload File And Begin Import
Once your file has been uploaded, the import process will begin. This process can take several minutes. To avoid losing data, do not close the active window until the process has completed.
Merging Customers
If you have duplicate customer records in your database, you can merge this data into one record. When you merge customers, the following actions occur:
- The primary customer record is kept. The secondary customer records are deleted.
- All secondary customer records, such as appointments, orders, warranties, etc., are added to the primary customer record
Merging can not be undone.
To Merge Customer Records
- Access what will be the primary customer record by clicking "Customers" from the sidebar menu, then searching for and clicking on the desired customer to edit.
- From the Edit Customer view, click the button labelled "Merge" at the top of the page.
- Search for a secondary customer record to merge. When found, select by clicking on the checkbox beside the customer name, then click the button labelled "Merge" below the search form.
Velodrop will try to find any possible duplicates and add them to the search results automatically. These results are highlighted and remain available above the manual search results for easy finding and merging.
Multiple records can be merged at once by selecting multiple customers from the search form.