Method Community

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

Hey Grif,

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.

I hope this helps Grif,

Nelson