Tutorial 5.1: Custom customer reports

This is the detailed tutorial for customer reports.

What is a customer Report

A customer report is a list of customers that is pulled from your built-in customer database, based on the criteria you select. As your customer database grows, it becomes hard to find certain customers or groups of customers by looking at your entire database at once - just imagine trying to sift through 10,000 customers to find the customers who have made a purchase over $100.

Your online business allows you to build a Customer report. This means that you set certain conditions and then see a list of customers that fit that condition. You can then export that list of customers to a spreadsheet, or you can add those customers to an email list.

Example Uses of Customer Reports

You can use Customer reports to extract all sorts of information about your customers.

• Find out how many customers have spent over $100 in your online store.
• Find out how many customers have submitted a particular web form.
• Find out how many customers are named "Rumpelstiltskin"
• List all of a web form's submissions - i.e if you were running a survey
• Find all the customers who have made a booking to one of your events
• Find all the customers who have made a purchase in your online shop in the last week.

Creating a Customer Report

To Create a Customer Report, we start by going to Reports->Create a Customer Report, then clicking "Create a new Customer Report".

Now, choose your report type. Each report type will result in a list of customers. However, each different report type will also enable you to set extra criteria and export extra information based on the report type you choose.

• Contacts Only is for a report whose criteria and results are purely based on contact records
• Companies Only is for a report whose criteria and results are purely based on company records
• Customers(Contacts & Companies) is for a report whose criteria and results are based on both (or either of) company and contact records
• Customers and Cases is for reports whose criteria and results are based on customers and the web forms they have submitted, known as cases. This can also be used purely for reporting on the results of web form submissions, or web form reports.
• Customers and Orders is for reports whose criteria and results are based on customers and their ecommerce orders. It can also be used purely for order reports.
• Customers and Opportunities is for reports whose criteria and results are based on customers and their sales opportunities in the CRM.
• Customers and Bookings is for reports whose criteria and results are based on customers and their online bookings. It can also be used for booking reports.

Important Each Report Type is slightly different. We recommend you explore each type to understand the differences fully.

Tutorial: Reporting on Web Form Submissions with Customer Reports

First create a customer report as described above. Now select "Customers and Cases" as your report type, and click next.

Remember that each report type is slightly different. "Customers and Cases" allows us to extract or export information based on customer information and on the web forms they have submitted (known as cases).

Select What to Show on Your Report

In this step, we select exactly the information to display on the report. You don't need to choose to display a field if you are going to use it as a criteria - you only need to choose the actual fields you want to show.

We will choose the following:

• Customer Name
• Case Subject - this will, in general, be the name of the web form the customer submitted.
• Case Create Date - this will, in general, be the date the web form was submitted.
• Email 1 (Primary) - so we can see the customer's email address.

Once we've chosen these, click Next.

Select Your Criteria Using Filter Fields

You can filter by up to 5 fields. "Filtering" means to include (or exclude) some customer records based on some critera that you set. Some example filters would be:

• Customer Name ... equals ... "Bob" - All customers whose name is Bob.
• Case Subject ... equals ... "Contact Us Form" - All cases whose subject is "Contact Us Form". This will show the web form submissions for the webform called "Contact Us Form"
• Case Create Date ... greater than ... 12-8-2008 - show me cases which have ben created after 12th August 2008.
• Customer Name ... does not contain ... "McGee" - All customers whose name doesn't have the "McGee" in it.

Select Special Fields

Once you've selected your regular filters, you can also filter on special fields - in particular, the fields associated with Web Forms or CRM Forms, or other special fields.

Generally if you just want to show all the web form results, choose your web form from the drop down and select "Display all custom fields in report".

Using the Results of Your Report

Now click the "Generate Report" button, and see your results!

Once you have your results you can:

• Add your customers to a list, give them access to a secure zone, or add them to an affiliate program
• Export the results into a spreadsheet
• Save your report so you can come back to it later (click Next)
• Admire the results in stunned silence

Save Your Report For Later

Now you can save your report. Click Next, and then you'll able to enter a meaningful name for your report.

And next time you go to Reports->Create a Customer Report, your report will be waiting for you!

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