A store can use the most advanced online store software, apply very good competitive prices, but still be unsuccessful due to insufficient customer relationship management. Thus, solving customer problems and grouping customers in segments are key for success.
An online store owner can need more than one login to manage different tasks on the store. For example, while a user takes care of orders, another can only enter and change information for products. OpenCart basically provides the ability to create new users with different permissions.
In this chapter we shall learn about:
- Advantages of customer registration
- Important customer settings
- Grouping customers
- Sending email newsletters and messages
- Adding customer information manually
- Adding a new user group
- Assigning permissions to a group
- Assigning a user to a group
- Testing user permissions
Although we have a chance to accept orders without any customer registration, there are very important advantages of storing customer information in the store both for the store owner and the customer.
Once a customer orders from the store, it will be easy to track the status of the order on the website rather than contacting the store regularly.
A registered customer can view all the details of the previous and current orders online.
It will be easy to order in the future after a simple login to the system, since a customer can create multiple addresses and select the needed shipping address instead of typing it each time.
If a customer is a regular buyer from the store, store administrators can notice the customer and apply special discounts.
As a store administrator, we can analyze the customer behavior: find top paying customers, regular customers, and then apply coupons and discounts for them.
We can send regular newsletters and news about the hot deals on the store. This builds up the customer relationship.
We can group customers according to their behavior and shopping habits on the store.