Using the customer status

The customer status is a very powerful tool in ResponsiBid because it makes sure at all customers are moving toward a goal. Here is the definition of the default statuses:

• Open- The bid has been created, but no other action has been taken.
• Pending- The customer indicated that they want to schedule, but ResponsiBid doesn’t know that they have scheduled yet.
• Scheduled- The customer’s appointment has been scheduled, and ResponsiBid knows what services are going to be rendered, how much they will cost, and when the company will be performing it. The date of a scheduled job will ALWAYS be in the future. If that date moves to the past, ResponsiBid will automatically convert the customer to the next status… Closed.
• Closed- The job has taken place in the past. There is ALWAYS a date associated with a closed customer, which usually starts out as the scheduled date. You can enter a customer into the closed status manually as long as you choose a date in the past when prompted to.
• Declined- The poor customer had no idea what they were missing out on!

All of these statuses come as defaults, and cannot be deleted, but you can also create or delete your own statuses to add to the list.

Statuses do 2 things:

1. They drive the follow-up of the customer. The customer can only be in one follow-up sequence at a time, and that sequence will be determined by whatever their current status is, and the date associated with it. Sometimes the date is something you entered in (like the scheduled or closed date) and sometimes the date is just the time when the customer became that status (like the moment the bid was given the customer becomes an “open” bid). Because the customer can only be one status at a time, every time a status changes the follow-up from the previous status stops immediately and the new status starts it’s associated follow-up immediately.
2. Statuses determines reporting information. ResponsiBid analyzes statuses to determine things like close rates, average ticket prices, and other important information. If you do not let ResponsiBid know about the status changes, things get out of whack… so keep ResponsiBid in the know… this will not a hard thing as long as ResponsiBid is part of your workflow.