Using ProductCart - Phone Orders

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Phone Orders

Printed From: ProductCart E-Commerce Solutions
Category: ProductCart
Forum Name: Using ProductCart
Forum Description: Running your store with ProductCart
URL: https://forum.productcart.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=5899
Printed Date: 01-November-2024 at 12:43am
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.04 - http://www.webwizforums.com

Topic: Phone Orders

Posted By: Chris Hadden
Subject: Phone Orders
Date Posted: 25-June-2014 at 1:41pm

I am going to try asking this again in a clearer manner.

How do you processes a phone order for a customer.....that requires special pricing, discounts etc. ?

Thanks
Chris

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Chris

Replies:

Posted By: whizzinpc
Date Posted: 21-August-2014 at 7:09pm

We usually place the order on the site for them... and at the last stage when its time for credit card we just abandon it and pull up the order in the incomplete orders list. We process that incomplete order change all the pricing and manually charge the credit card. Pretty annoying but it gets the job done.

Posted By: Brett
Date Posted: 22-August-2014 at 12:02am

Sadly, it seems that the majority of ecommerce software overlooks this issue. We so the same as whizzinpc and simply place the order through the storefront for the customer. However, I'd like to see some sort of place to indicate while placing the order that it is being entered by an administrator for a customer over the phone. I guess the challenge would be displaying this input only to administrators, so customers don't see it as well. I think the best solution would be one that uses session variables or cookies or something to indicate on the front-end that one is logged in as an administrator, which could then cause a few extra inputs to be displayed where the administrator can enter some information associating the order with the customer.

For example, we use Olark on our site and it displays a list of current visitors. When we take a phone order, we can usually view our Olark visitor list and figure out which visitor we're talking to on the phone. If we had a way to somehow associate that visitor with the order then maybe when browsing our Google Analytics dashboard later we could see more information about that order and customer, such as how they arrived on our site and which page they were on when they called us. It wouldn't be perfect, since there may still be customers who write our number down and call us a couple days after visiting, but incomplete information is still better than no information.

The other obvious solution is to simply not take phone orders, and to require customers to place the order themselves on the site. I've talked to a few site owners who did this to avoid issues with customers disputing the charge and saying they never actually read and accepted the terms and conditions since we took the order for them.

Posted By: Chris Hadden
Date Posted: 22-August-2014 at 12:40pm

Ok processing it as an incomplete order then going back and fixing it, if it has special pricing seems to be a work around. I actually hadn't though of that but it would work.

As far as telling a customer who calls in you can not take an order, they have to enter it on the web site??? That is pretty much like saying no thanks don't want your business. The only reason people call me to place a phone order is they are so computer illiterate they can't actually do it themselves....

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Chris

Posted By: ProductCart
Date Posted: 22-August-2014 at 2:28pm

Hi everyone,

While the "Place Order" feature (found in the ProductCart Control Panel) actually works pretty well for 'standard' orders... we agree that it's not adequate when there is special pricing involved, so will add this suggestion to our internal development wish list for a future release!

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The ProductCart Team

Home of ProductCart http://www.productcart.com" rel="nofollow - shopping cart software

Posted By: Brett
Date Posted: 22-August-2014 at 2:35pm

I agree Chris, and I know it sounds pretty crazy. I know a guy who runs a site and does just that though, and while he probably loses a few orders he never has to worry about people saying they didn't see the terms and conditions, and he probably spends way less time on the phone than most site operators.

Posted By: Chris Hadden
Date Posted: 22-August-2014 at 2:45pm

Yeah it would be nice to have something that is very easy to manipulate while creating on order on the phone. A scenario that happens a lot is I might be talking to a customer and they say well I need 40pcs of xyz and I might say well I have 48pcs left if you take them all I let you have them for .87 instead of $1.00
The way I handle this now is going back edit the order, manually figure out the new total, then tacking that on as one time discount, it's not very straight forward.

Thanks for listening
Chris

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Chris

Posted By: bodyexposed
Date Posted: 18-March-2015 at 11:21am

I have made a simple modification to viewcart.asp which uses a session variable to enable a text field, to over-ride the price of each item when admin is logged in. Hope this helps somebody.

Richard

<% if session("admin") =-1 then %>
                                <br><%=scCurSign%><input type="text" name="Price<%=f%>" size="3" value="<% response.write formatnumber(pcCartArray(f,3),2) %>">
                                <div><input type="image" id="submit" name="Submit" src="<%=RSlayout("recalculate")%>" onclick="javascript: if ((RemainIssue!='') || (RemainIssue1!='')) {alert('<% Response.write(dictLanguage.Item(Session("language")&"_alert_8b"))%>'); return(false);} else {<%if Session("Cust_GW")="1" then%>document.recalculate.actGW.value='';<%else%><%if HaveGcsTest=1 then%>document.recalculate.actGCs.value='';<%end if%><%end if%> return(true);}"></div>
<% end if %>

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Richard Bonfield

Underwear store for men

http://www.bodyexposed.co.uk