Searching for Customer when raising a request

[nasimg]

I've just noticed when searching for a customer (when raising an incident) you can find any staff provided you enter first name and surname (or part of it), but if you start with the surname it limits what you can get back.

Example: Search Stewart H returns Stewart Hall, but search Hall doesn't find Stewart Hall.

Obviously I can tell the analyst to search first name surname but why doesn't surname search work?

[James Ainsworth]

Hi @nasimg

Thanks for you post.  I have had a look at our own instance and on another instance and in both cases I appear to be able to search on just the lastname.  Could you try something for me?  Start raising a new request and test searching for yourself by last name.  If you have the same issue when searching for yourself, can you go into your profile and change your Handle (nickname), save, and then restart the raising the new request again and see if you are able to find yourself by lastname.  It might be that some users' information hasn't been fully indexed.  

Regards,

James

[nasimg]

Hi @James Ainsworth

I think the index is ok, in Admin I can find the user regardless of what I enter (eg. Stewart or Hall). But when you log a call I think only a max of 10 results are returned, so if the one you want is outside this you don't see it.

See attached - this is when I'm trying to raise an incident.

Nasim

[Ryan]

Hi @nasimg

You are correct, this component limits the result set to the first 10 results.

Ryan

[James Ainsworth]

Thanks for the screen shots @nasimg.  I see what's happening now.  We could look to increase the number from 10 but I would only see this as a temporary solution as once more names containing "Hall" are added you may find you run into the same issue again.  Ideally a "Show More..." or ''Show All Results" option might be needed.  

Regards,

James

[nasimg]

Thanks @Ryan.

@James Ainsworth that sounds good, also an advanced search option for more detail search criteria would be handy (searching other fields apart from the handle, eg. email or id).

As we have nearly 8000 customers, and potentially getting more, this issue will become more frequent. Any way you can help would be appreciated.

Regards

Nasim

[Tina.Lapere]

I also agree that the option to show more would be good as we have also come across this before.

Thanks

Tina

[Alex8000]

A more advanced search feature when raising a request would be terrific. We have about 9000 contacts in our (external) customer database with some of them having very similar organisation names. Being able to search for postal codes or the values in custom fields would definitely help us. Maybe 'hide' this under an 'Advanced Search' button in the Search Customer screen?

[Guest Ehsan]

@nasimg, @Alex8000 and @Tina.Lapere,

Thank you for your suggestions. We will investigate this and get back to you with some information.

Thanks,

Ehsan

[Guest Ehsan]

@nasimg, @Alex8000, @Tina.Lapere, @Martyn Houghton

I would like to get your opinion on potential improvements to the Customer Search option.

As I understand here, the results for a Search is limited to 10. We would like to keep this reasonable limit in place.

However, we could improve the Search option, by providing filtering options.

You have the option to Search for a User by entering your Search term and by selecting one of or both of Contacts and Co-Workers filters. As is now.

Now, in the event that you have not found the User who you are after, you can click on Advanced Search option which opens a pop-up. In this pop-up, you have the following options:

• You choose whether you are looking for a Contact or a Co-Worker. This will then present you with more options, depending on your choice.
• You select first name, last name, full name or email address - as the identifier of your Search term. You will hit the Search button, which will then present you with results.
• You select a combination of first name, last name, full name or email address AND organisation or site name. You will then hit the Search button, which will then present you with results.

Please let me know your thoughts.

Thanks,

Ehsan

[Martyn Houghton]

@Ehsan

That sound good, especially the third option which will allow us to search via the Contacts organisation name. If this can be shown in the results window for Contacts that would be a great help.

Cheers

Martyn

[nasimg]

Thanks @Ehsan sounds good to me too.

[Alex8000]

On 28-10-2016 at 1:32 PM, Ehsan said:

You select a combination of first name, last name, full name or email address AND organisation or site name. You will then hit the Search button, which will then present you with results.

Hi @Ehsan,

That third option would be great for us!

Might this advanced search also be the location where one is able to add a new contact record for an organisation without exiting the progressive capture? I understand that the ability to create a new contact record within the progressive capture is somewhere in your backlog, this might be a nice opportunity to pick that one up as well.

Thanks,

Alex

[Guest Ehsan]

Thanks everyone for sharing your thoughts! We are currently reviewing our options to best achieve a solution here.

@Alex8000 - As you have pointed out, we are aware of creating an option to create a new Contact within the Customer Search ProCap. As soon as we have a solution here, we can consider whether it would be feasible to shift this onto the same area.

Thanks,

Ehsan

[James Ainsworth]

Hi @nasimg

Going back to your original post I wanted to look first from the perspective of the support person.  The idea of progressive capture is to be able to quickly move through the capture to raise the request. From a support person's perspective I thought that having to click through the options on an advanced search would result in more clicks and selection which I didn't think would be desirable when you have a customer on the phone.  

From this we have added a bit more functionality within the search to work with the search string that you type. Prior to this change, if you type "Ainsworth" in the search and you had a large number of results, in order to narrow it down you would have to type the full first name along with the last name to find the contact.  For example "James Ainsworth".  Now, when searching for a customer (contact or user) you can now type part of either or both the first name or last name in any order.  For example

• J Ainsworth
• Jam Ain
• Ainsworth J
• Ains Jam

We have also introduced the use of a tag for filtering down by organisation.  While using the same combinations above you can also add an org: tag followed by the name of the organisation.  For example

• org:hornbill
• org:hornbill ainsworth
• org:horn ains
• ainsworth org:hornbill
• ains org:horn

I hope you find this useful.  

Regards, 

James 

[nasimg]

Thanks for the update @James Ainsworth

This should help but I'm wondering what if we get more than 10 results back - is there some sort of notification you could have

Regards

Nasim

[Alex8000]

Hi @James Ainsworth,

Thanks for the update!
Could you elaborate on how this new searching method handles the following situations?

• surnames consisting of multiple words (for example "van Egmond");
• first names with special characters (for example Dirk-Jan);
• organisation names consisting of multiple words.

For example when searching for "Floris van Egmond-Pasen" from company "Fancy Estate Agents", are these search strings valid?

• org:"Fancy E" van
• org:Estate Flo Eg
• org:agen van E
• org:"Fancy Agents" mond-Pase

Thank you,

Alex

[Daniel Dekel]

Hi @Alex8000,

At the moment the organisation name search will only take the first word and the space will assume that the second word is the first or last name. However, it will search on organisations that will start with that first word.
Your suggestion sounds good, I'll add it to our list, it should not be complicated to allow using exact names if wrapping with quotes.

Regarding names with spaces or special characters, should alright.

Thank you,

Daniel.

[Alex8000]

Hi Daniel, 

Thank you for your answer.

Please be aware of the fact that searching on just the first word in an organisation name wouldn't really work in some of our situations. A lot of Dutch companies have names that start with 'van' (with a surname + other words following). 

Best regards, 

Alex

[Daniel Dekel]

Hi @Alex8000,

The change was done and should be available in the next server release could take a week or so.

The change:

Customer Search now accepts quotes (") to wrap a words containing spaces or a more exact match. Use-> org:"my hornbill" james a

Note that if a surname has for example two words like "Van Halen" you will have to search with the correct order, it will not find "Van" but it will "Van Ha".

Best regards,

Daniel