RE: Customer Service -- Online -- WEB400

Aaron,

The design will have a lot to do with the specific information you are
tracking, but here are a few generic recommendations:

1. From an error-prevention approach is that whenever possible use some sort
of a drop down/selection list.  You can do a lot with this approach from a
presentation standpoint and guarantee that the information you receive is in
the necessary format.

2. Make sure you have a very simple mechanism for finding the correct
account/customer record.  I have implemented a subfile-like searching
interface before and it is OK but could be better and paging is a pain to
code.

3. Use SQL (or at least OPNQRYF).  Very flexible and powerful, especially
for complex searching, and you don't have to create a new logical file for
every view you want.

4. Use JavaScript for error checking as much as possible.  Due to the nature
of the product you should have some level of control over your end users (PC
configurations and such) greater than typical web designers.  The more you
can put on the client the less you have to code around.

I wrote a Customer Service App for our employees to use and I'm getting
ready to start on a new incarnation.  Basically, there are four files that
we use to track all our customer information.  Each file has its own page
and update programs.  The current design shows a list of all the clients in
a table, and each client row has a link to these four pages.  It's kind of
busy and has no searching because the client list is (was) very short.
We've grown enough now that it is cumbersome to use so I am looking at
redesigning it.  E-mail me off line and I'll make a screen shot available
for you to view.

Are the CSRs going to be using this product solely in house or will they
need to access it from the field?  I ask because accessibility may be the
determining factor of whether or not you need to use sessions.

Joel R. Cochran
Director of Internet Services
VamaNet.com
(800)480-8810
mailto:webmaster@vamanet.com


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bartell, Aaron L. (TC) [mailto:ALBartell@taylorcorp.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 07, 2002 6:32 PM
> To: 'web400@midrange.com'
> Subject: [WEB400] Customer Service -- Online
>
>
> I have been asked to look into what it would take to create a customer
> service application(s) for our in house CSR's (Customer
> Service Reps) in a
> GUI environment.  My first avenue of research is going to be
> if the browser
> is the right place for it and how I would make navigation painless (if
> possible), and intuitive.
>
> So now that you know that.  Is there any GUI based customer
> service design
> concepts, sites, screen prints that somebody could share?  Or
> some words of
> advice from past experiences?
>
> I am planning on using CGIDEV2 to start out with but may end
> up trying out
> Nathan's Relational Web product so I can retain the state of
> an application.
>
> Thanks to all whole reply,
> Aaron Bartell
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