2015-2Q: CRM: Vacation Customers in SIMPLer

Many operators will have "seasonal" customers who only require service for certain months of the year and will need to be dealt with appropriately in SIMPLer. This document outlines the steps involved as follows:

• Section One: This section describes the process for customers who are seasonal, and will not receive ANY service, or ANY bills during their vacation period.

• Section Two: This section describes the process for customers who are seasonal, and will receive LIMITED service, and a LOWER bill during their vacation period.

Please note that in both cases it would be good to assign these "vacation" customers to a group so that you can perform searches easily and check on their accounts if necessary. (See Fig. 1-1). For more information on setting up groups click here

SECTION ONE:

Situation: A customer signs up for service in January and in May, they phone you to let you know that they will not be requiring your service from May until the end of August, and your policy is to disable service and billing for this period.

Step One: Move your customer from status "current" to "post" on the "general" tab in modify customer. (See Fig. 1-2)

Step Two: Add a reminder to your customer's account in the notes section to make sure you remember to switch them back to current on the appropriate date. (See Fig. 1-3). For more information on reminders, please click here

The note will appear in your inbox on the date selected and can also be viewed at any time by clicking on your inbox and viewing "all" reminders. (See fig. 1-4)

Step Three: If you do not wish to charge for any service from June to end of August, make sure to add credit days to the customer's account until the next day you plan to invoice them. (See Fig. 1-5) If you do not do so, once the customer goes back to current, their next invoice will be dates for June.

You can verify these changes by checking their next invoice date and amount. (See fig. 1-6)

Step Four: Do not forget to turn your customer back to "post" once you receive your inbox reminder! (Outlined in Step Two)

SECTION TWO

Situation: A customer signs up for service in January and in June, they phone you to let you know that they will not be requiring your service from July until the end of August.

Step One: Navigate to the customer subscription details and make sure that the regular subscription is given a VALID TO date of July 01, to make sure it expires before the July 01 invoice is generated. Add a subscription for the vacation product, and make sure it is VALID FROM July 01, and VALID TO September 01. If you are sure at this point that the customer will resume regular service from September 01 you can add the regular subscription, and assign a VALID FROM date of September 01, without any VALID TO date being set. See fig. 2-1 for more details.

Step Two: Some operators will not have any further actions required at this stage, if they are using a feature that auto maps subscription details to an appropriate bucket/RADIUS group on a nightly basis in order to assign the correct speed. If the feature described here is in use, and the vacation product is mapped correctly to a lower speed bucket/RADIUS group then all should be OK at this point. However, if this feature is not in use, the next step would be to navigate to the network details tab, and assign a customer to the new bucket. See Fig. 2-2 for the correct location.

Step Three: Verify that you are happy with all changes by reviewing your customer details as shown in fig. 2-3.