Laddawn.com : To call or not to call

This really only applies to CE's handling of faxed or emailed POs.  Phone orders, or customers working online directly, can resolve discrepancies in real time.

It is CE's standard practice to contact customers when there is a discrepancy between the price on their PO, and Laddawn's current price.

There are about 30 customers with a 000 preference indicating they do not want to be called regarding price discrepancies; they want Laddawn to release the orders right way.

There are another 10 customers with a 000 preference insisting upon being called regarding pricing discrepancies (even though this is CE's standard practice).

Ladd and Dawn felt it was probably still important to get customer approval when there are price discrepancies, but that we might be able to streamline and/or automate some of this, and uncover a “silent majority” of customers who do not need to be contacted.

For instance, we offer a range of preferences like this ...

In the event that there is a discrepancy between the price on my faxed or emailed PO, and Laddawn’s current price -

1. Please contact me (auto email/fax ' triggered by place order' checkout) and do not release the order until you have my approval. (You have 24 hrs to get back otherwise we cancel order.)_ This will allocate stock for 24 hrs. Push back with 10 '000' customers on if this is still necessary, if they get an ack.and have 2 hrs. to approve. can we get away with just two prefs?+
2. Please contact me (auto email/fax ' triggered by place order' checkout), but it is OK to release the order if you do not hear back from me within 2 hours. this will Allocate stock. (Fax v. email customers?)
3. OK to release all orders without contacting me. Allocate stock.

Must ship today situation - the email when 2 hr window missees MST window - CE can call but does not have to?

Email will include self service link for customer to release own order (prefs 1 and 2).

While CE is handling the faxed/emailed PO, they will flag the discrepancy, and the hold/release logic above will automagically kick in. Q: how do we give real time feedback to CE that they must contact the customer? How would that work, what would that look like?

Not resolved was the where and how CE will flag the the existence of the discrepancy - in the cart? Checkout after clicking "place order." 

Don't show checkbox for customers with preference 3; CE will know that thes customers don't care.

Furthermore, Ladd and Dawn  thought we should dig deeper to see how such a preference might apply to other "on hold" situations. We need to determine what those are and see if we can gang them up together.

rough notes, 11-14-13 - other discrepancies NPDs

CE takes order all the way through -

Internal v. external on hold - enabling customer to resolve on own, or internal person (eg Mark) to resolve directly

formatting, familiarity, common language - make as much as possible happen w/in web environment, w/in reason for first release

CE on hold/routing functionality carries through to last checkout screen,  combo of reason types (top 3-7 reasons; this determines who to route to internally or externally) and free form field - email contains self serve link or buttons to release (or not release?) order

 What about multiple discrepancies - eg Price (external) + expedite(internal) ? Internal discrepancy trumps external. 

What about hand signed, hand filled out (eg lot #s)  'attach docs' (Laddawn-supplied docs) -

000 must call comments

000 'do not call' comments

Data on discrepancies found during quote conversion - during a brief sample period this summer