Introduction

Welcome to CustomerRater!

This app allows you, the provider of a service, the opportunity to rate your customers and examine other potential customers in your geographic area that have already been reviewed by your peers. Most customers are honest and understanding and appreciate the great work we do. However, some of today's customers feel that they are entitled to demand additional services that were not explicity discussed or outside the bounds of the contract. Some customers demand unjustified discounts based on what they thought they would get, but was not spelled out in the contract. Others don't pay on time or stop credit card or check payments, leaving the business in a state of difficult cash flow.

CustomerRater is an app designed to allow contractors, consultants, and any other business that does work for customers to rate them. Other businesses who subscribe to the service can then have a means for due diligence on their next prospective customers.

There are a number of screens that allow you to:

    • View all customers within your selected geographic locations (state and counties)
    • Add new customers
    • Modify existing customers
    • Show on a map your location with respect to the customer's location.

Using this app may allow you to make better decisions on your selection of customers as well as how to deal with contracts, payment and attitudes.

 

Getting Started

After the initial splash screen, you will be presented with the first screen which will guide you through the initialization setup. Follow the directions in the QuickStart Help by touching the Settings Icon. This will bring you to the Settings screen. If you are installing the app on another one of your devices, you can Login and your settings will be automatically installed for you (more on this later).

  

To get started, you must complete the Settings Preferences. This will allow you to join the system. Your name, email address are the keys for your entry. A password is required to allow you to access and download the database from the cloud.

  

Simply fill out the dialog form as shown. Some of the fields will pop up a new screen to select from a number of choices, State, Industry and Counties Chosen are those fields. The setting preferences must be completed and saved before you can begin to use the system.

Completing Your Settings

After completing the form, touch Save, to save your preferences, and then Back to Home Screen to complete the initialization. At this point, touch Download All and all the customer records from the cloud database will populate your local database.

  

Ready for Use

You are now ready to use the system!

Shown below is a description of the items in the First Screen List.

The screen consists of three sections, the header which shows the app name, which by default is Customer Rater, however, if you purchase the upgrade, it will display Customer Rater - Pro. It also has a local help button which will overlay the view and give more detailed information about the screen. The middle section is a list of all the customers located within your county(ies) area. Those rows with a light blue background are customers that were posted by other contractors - their names are hidden for privacy. Those with a white background are customers added and rated by you, showing all details. And finally, the bottom section is the tab bar which provides 5 options from this screen.

 

You can Add New customers, filter the list by name, address and other filters, you can modify your current settings, if necessary, download an updated database (this should be done each time you run the app) and finally, you can login using your email address and password. This function allows you to add another device and update it with your current settings.

This is the pop up screen for the Filtering. You can type in either the full search text or the first few letters of what you are searching for. The list display will then only show those items that match the filter criteria.

This is the overlay for context specific help. Touching any arrow will display context sensitive help for the item. To hide it simply touch the Hide Help button.

Shown below is a closup of the First Screen Tab Bar.

You can delete items from the list, if you wish. However, they are only deleted from your iPhone's local database. You can always get them back, if you delete, by downloading from the cloud again. The download will only add items that do not exist in your local database.

To delete, touch the red circled minus sign on the left of the item, and then touch Delete.

You will receive a warning about this. If you choose to Delete, the record will not show in your list any longer.

The next section will deal with adding new customers.

Adding Customers

Adding customers presents a blank form for you to fill in for the customer you wish to rate.

This screen allows you to create a record for the new customer. There are a number of fill-in fields, there are also three Yes/No fields, there are two segmented fields for rating and attitude and there are two drop-down fields for state and county.

The required fill in fields are First Name, Last Name, State and County fields, however, the more fields that are completed allow a more comprehensive record.

The Service Provided is the work you did for the customer. If the customer is a business, touch the Business Yes/No field; if there was a written contract, do the same and if the customer paid on time, touch that as well.

The Rating segmented field allows you to rate the customer from Best - 5 to lowest 1. And the Attitude segmented field allows you to give a subjective opinion about the customer during the job. The Comments field allows you to type any comments you feel are important and describe any issues you may have had with this customer in more detail.

After completing the form, touch the Save button in the bottom right of the tab bar. If you wish to cancel, simply touch the Home button to go back to the First Screen list.

The Map View can be used later after the customer is in the database.

These are the pop-ups for State and County, respectively.

  

If you need additional context sensitive help, touch Show Help and you will see the following screen. To hide the help, touch Hide Help. This Help overlay is available in Modify/View Customer Details (next).

Modifying/Viewing Customer Details

To modify or view details about a specific customer, touch any row in the First Screen. This will bring up the detail view of the customer. The fields are identical to the Add a New Customer, but they are now filled in. You have the opportunity to make any changes to any of the fields shown

You will notice that the First Name, Last Name and email address are grayed out and cannot be changed as they are index fields for the database. If you need to change any of those, you will have to delete this record (described later) and re-create the record.

If you make changes, don't forget to touch the Save button.

Touching the Map View button will bring up a map of your general location showing where you are and where the customer is located. To use this option, you will need to purchase the Pro-Version.

 

 

 

Show below is the message you will receive if you don't have the Pro Version.

If you have purchased the Pro Version you will initially see dialog asking you to allow location services for Customer Rater. If you answer Allow, you can see all the maps. If not, the map function will not be active. You can enable it later by going to your iPhone Settings->Privacy->Location Services and find Customer Rater. Here you should Enable Location Access.

  

The map tab bar items are shown below.

 

Pro Version Options

If you wish to get additional functionality in Customer Rater, you can purchase the Pro Version. A number of features are added with this version including:

  • Additional counties, the free version only allows one county
  • Ease of updating additional devices with your settings so that you can use the app on as many of your devices as you like, iPhones, iPads, iTouch.
  • Mapping of the customer's location

The Pro Version is ideal for businesses that serve multiple counties within a state and have multiple sales/contractor employees. The next three sets of screens shows the free version (on the left or top) and the Pro Version (on the right or below the free version).

Add settings to additional devices automatically

  

Show map locations of customers

  

Add multiple counties for customers