Customer statuses

Originally written by Luke Mavin. Published 18 April 2024 on the Motasoft VGM Help Centre.

Within VGM, users have the capability to create and apply statuses associated with their customers. These statuses serve multiple purposes, including indicating whether an account is on hold, identifying customers as part of a "friends & family" group, implementing blacklisting measures, and preventing individuals from making online bookings.

Creating Customer Statuses

To create and manage your statuses, navigate to the config > settings and select statuses. Under customer statuses, select new to create a new customer status.

Users can input information for the following fields:

• Description: The visible text.
• Background Colour: The colour of the background.
• Text Colour: The colour of the text.
• Create Online Booking Blacklist: A feature that will enable the blocking of online bookings when this status is applied to a customer.

Attributes of Online Booking Blacklist

When Create online booking blacklist is enabled, users can specify various attributes to construct a blacklist, preventing online bookings from specific individuals. This feature serves to mitigate issues such as frequent no-shows and recurrent booking attempts. Below, the functionality of each attribute is elucidated:

• IP Address: Prevents individuals from completing online bookings if their IP address matches that of a blacklisted customer.
• Vehicle Registration: Restricts online bookings associated with vehicle registrations matching those of blacklisted customers.
• Customer Email: Blocks online bookings made with email addresses corresponding to blacklisted customers.
• Customer Mobile: Prevents online bookings from mobile numbers linked to blacklisted customers.
• Customer Address: Disallows online bookings originating from addresses associated with blacklisted customers.

Assigning Customer Statuses

To assign a custom status to a customer, users can navigate to search > customer and select the customer profile. The status dropdown menu provides the option to select the relevant status.

Viewing Customer Statuses

These statuses are prominently displayed whenever a customer record is accessed within VGM, such as during the review of sales invoices.

Removing Blacklist Statuses

Users can utilize the filtering tools within the customer grid (search > customers) to identify customers with specific statuses. Subsequently, accessing individual customer profiles allows for the removal of these statuses as needed.