Re: Customer Portal vs New Leads Page on my website.

Method_Nelson — Thu, 17 Oct 2013 17:11:23 GMT

Hey Grif,

You brought up a couple of problems so I am going to address them in order:

1. How to explain the difference between the Customer Portal and Web-Forms (Leads)?

Our team here has been agressively creating short instructional videos (3 - 7 minutes long) to help communicate the functional differences between the Portal and Web Forms.
Here are a couple of relevant links I found very useful.
Quick Overview of Portal
Quick Overview of Web-to-Lead Forms

2. How can you avoid users from re-entering the same information into a web-lead?

When a lead is created through the Web-to-Lead form and updated in Method, its stored in the Leads table.
Until that lead becomes a customer, it wont actually exist in QuickBooks.
Thus, every time a user creates a new lead (fills out the web form) you can manually check if that person is already a customer. If they are, you can delete the lead (manually) and forward them a link to the customer portal.

3. How can you automate step 2?

If you're interested in automating step 2, you should consider leveraging the MethodAPI.
With the MethodAPI the incoming email address can be used to query the email field in the customer / contact table in Method, and then re-direct the users accordingly.
Note: this does require some advanced development knowledge.

4. Without using Method, you can present the user with popup / alert on their screen to find out whether they are a New or an Existing Customer?

If they answer New Customer you can take them into the lead form.
If they answer Existing you can take them to the portal page.
Just to reiterate, this would have to be a HTML / Javascript solution completely unrelated to Method.

I hope this helps Grif,

Nelson

Customer Portal vs New Leads Page on my website.

grif@myredhats.com — Wed, 16 Oct 2013 20:29:54 GMT

I have a customer portal & a new lead page on my website & I try to explain which one each person should use and I am not being very sucessfull.

Customers already in my date base will fill out what is in effect a new lead. This will add a duplicate customer & dulicate email address to the database.

I would like to let them enter there email address. If I have it in the database send them directly to the portal, if not to the new leads page.

Is there a method or technilque that I can accomplish this with?

Grif

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Re: Customer Portal vs New Leads Page on my website.

Customer Portal vs New Leads Page on my website.