Screenshot Demo of TH-VM
What's one of the big challenges when you're running a retail type of business?
Customer service would have to be somewhere on the list of priorities.
In a perfect world, an order is received, the customer pays, the product ships... but it's not a perfect world. Things go wrong. Customers call. They ask questions, they want answers.
This was the idea behind TH-VM. Create a way to weld Taskhopper and VirtueMart so that it would be easy to associate orders with tasks. If something did need follow-up, the person answering the phone could easily make the request and connect the action(s) needed directly with the customer order.
That is the essence of TH-VM. It's just version 1.1 of Taskhopper with some tweaks to make it VirtueMart aware. Below is a quick tour of what it looks like in action.
The architecture we recommend to make this happen is to put a new instance
of Joomla on your existing domain. e.g., support.your_store.com TH-VM
is installed there, with a tiny bit of code running on your store side to
connect to your VM data. Everything else is about the same. If you know
what Taskhopper is like, there are only a few differences which we'll show
you here.
Task list screen is just like the regular Taskhopper
Two new fields to connect you to your VM data
When you go to create a new task, you will notice two new items at
the top of the form. This is where you associate the VM record with
the task.
In most cases, customers know their order ID. If that's the case, just type it in and click the GO button. The order data is pulled and three data items (order, name and date) are combined into the task description field.
If the customer doesn't know that, then you have the Order Chooser option which will pop a new window so you can locate the correct order.
If you don't remember the order number...
You can enter "Murphy" in the customer field and all records
with that string will appear.
If the customer can't remember the name under which the order
was placed, the only other option would be a date search.
(But generally if the customer can't remember their name,
they have more serious issues than whatever was missing
from their order)
Data is auto-inserted, then you select WHAT (used to be "project")
In the original version of Taskhopper, the first field to classify
a task was called Project. In TH-VM we changed that to Request Type.
This is intended to tell what went wrong?
After you select WHAT, they the WHY. What's the reason for this?
With the "what went wrong" selected, this field is the "why did it
go wrong?" We have renamed this field to Reasons.
If you are concerned about running a quality business, you know how
important it is to review what went wrong. Using TH-VM, you now
have a way to produce reports that detail how you can improve your
business.
You can search for tasks, just like the original Taskhopper
So how it normally works... someone takes the call and generates a
task for follow-up. Now it's documented so others know what needs
doing, when and for whom.
If the customer should call back and want to find out the status of their service request, the search filter portion of Taskhopper is there to help locate the record.
If you know the customer name, order ID or order date, you can
find that by searching the VM Order Info. If you it was about
a Defective part, you could select that and all tasks regarding
that reason would be listed.
To open the search filter window
It's not always clear, especially if you're new to Taskhopper. To
open a search filter, click the little [+] in the upper left corner
of the task list screen.
To clear the search filter...
... and one important item. Filters are sticky. Once a filter is in
place, it stays until you remove it. Reason for this: In the original
TH we decided that in normal task processing, it's very common to work
with specific projects, or in this case, Reasons. If you should apply
a filter, then logout, that same filter will be there when you return.
Here's the tip: Be careful if you search for something that doesn't exist. If you do, you'll end up with a screen showing no tasks.
If
you logout, then return days later, you may freak out thinking all your
tasks are gone. It's a good idea to clear your filters before going
home for the weekend.