The Feature Request du Jour Thread

A big limitation on “selling more wine” is the system allowing only one zone to be assigned per state. From our origin California has 3 zones. Nevada, Washington, and Oregon are also split, and soon Arizona will be an issue as well. I have seen other software companies with zone grids populated by the actual couriers, and that would be extremely helpful.

@Erica - I’m curious about how you’d like this to be set up. Playing the advocate here… shipping/shipping rates are the #1 reason why consumers don’t buy online, or buy from an online competitor. Flat rate, or free shipping (just not called free shipping) are ways to sell more. The top 20% selling 80% of the wine sold online through Vin65 charge less than 5% of the order total for shipping.

Not to criticize your strategy, but I think maybe you should look at a way to use shipping rates as a driver of sales instead of trying to pass on the exact cost to customers 1:1.

Simplify your charts and rates, do what’s good for the customer, it will work out for your business.

1 Like

I agree and change can be a necessity, but this tool is possible and currently available elsewhere. With deeper wine discounts and sales it just does not work. When a club member from Florida visits and sees a case sale on the floor, they want to receive the same sale price and have it shipped upon their return.

@Erica - Thanks for the notes no this. From the studies we’ve done (and have seen other retail/ecommerce firms conduct), shipping discounts are more effective even if the product discount is more than the shipping discount (it’s crazy, but people love shipping discounts). We’ll add your request to the feature list (we saw it come through the form as well).

I wish that windows that indicate successful completion didn’t have the “Cancel” button as the only option. e.g. you import customers and then at the end, all you can do is ‘cancel’, even though it really just ‘closes’ the window.

3 Likes

I wish they even had the cancel button on the Inventory importer. At the end it just goes away - if you didn’t sit there staring at it waiting to finish, you’re left wondering if it worked okay…

Engineers will tell you “just click cancel, what’s the big deal?” - the big deal is that words like “cancel” carry a certain meaning, and you end up confusing non tech people - “so why is it okay to cancel here, but…?”

1 Like

Designing an administrative interface is not the job of the engineer at all.

1 Like

Remember that time a couple years ago when Vin65 was overhauling the entire UI to that nice responsive design and then just said “screw it” and went to Tim Hortons?

3 Likes

Hello Everyone!

I’m Jennalee from the Adirondack Winery in Upstate New York…I have a feature request for Shipping, and man it would be great if they did it!

We use the easy ship option with UPS which is awesome- It has made my life so much easier! It is lacking something small though that would save us time and money.

The way our UPS easy ship account is set up- is that all deliveries from the winery require a signature from an adult 21 or older (obviously because we’re shipping wine) Often times though we have orders for just accessories- wine glasses, winery apparel etc…in other words- non alcohol products that do NOT require an adult 21 or up to sign that could just be dropped off at customer’s houses rather than having someone be home to sign for it- and there is no way to make that known that with easy ship- every label printed has the designation “adult signature required” This also means that the customer has to be home during business hours to receive their delivery. Obviously with non- wine shipments this doesn’t make any sense! It is also more expensive to ship packages with a signature required. So instead of being able to use the easy ship, we have to sift through orders, see which labels can be printed through Vin65, and then we have to go to the UPS website and manually create a label from their site and it is a much more time consuming process. All of our products have a “category” assigned to them. Could it be adjusted so only the “Wine” category requires a signature, and the others do not?

I think it totally makes sense!

Thank you!

2 Likes

@EventsAdkWinery Do you guys use ShipCompliant? We are utilizing the ShipCompliant FedEx integration for label printing and they integrate with UPS as well. The FedEx integration works great, and only packages containing alcohol go through as signature required.

Club Wish List
I apologize for the length of this post and do realize that change is necessary, but the best way to “Sell more wine” is to meet the needs of your customers as efficiently as possible. These tools were available to us in the past and would be helpful to have again.
If anyone else would find any of this functionality handy please submit a feature request as well.

  1. POS needs the ability to update Club credit cards OR Default credit card should apply to club.
    a. Many will call customers come directly to the winery to update their information after receiving an email telling them their club transaction was declined.
    b. All cashiers should not have access to the admin panel. The ability to update the default club credit card is vital to capturing as many funds as possible, but is currently not available.
  2. Club “Segments”
    a. Instead of having a 3 Bottle Red Quarterly Club, 3 Bottle Mixed Club, 6 Bottle etc., within 1 club there are segments containing different selections. For example - participation in the Quarterly Club allows a 3 Bottle Red Selection or 3 Bottle Mixed or 6 Red etc.
  3. Club Processing via a “Batch”
    a. Batches are created per club
    i. For Example – Quarterly Club – June 16 Batch
    b. EVERYTHING can be done from within the batch to these orders only, the work flow would look like this

I had to break up the post to make the number formatting work correctly -

  1. Create batch on a per club basis: Quarterly Club – June 2016
    
  2. Build Packages per Segments: 3 Bottle Red includes these bottles, 6 bottle includes these, etc.
    a. Pricing should default to current structure if no special club pricing is selected. Manually entering pricing is timely and allows room for error. However, there are times when a club may be flat rate, comped, discounted, etc.
  3. Create orders with Preview Ability but not actually posting
    a. Look for and fix errors, packages, pricing, etc.
  4. Save/Post Orders: This is completely independent of the actual processing/charging of customer cards but is a crucial step.
    a. Orders are still flexible until payment is received
    i. If a club member comes in to pick up an order but was not yet charged, the cashier can open that club order and change what it contains prior to processing/charging all via POS
    b. No more multiple declines on customer accounts per club batch charge attempt
    i. Prevents duplicate club run charges if batch is re-processed (see below)
    ii. The cashiers process the actual club order via POS
    c. Easy to see “missed” club order participation per customer account: 1 June order with declined status, September paid, 1 December order declined
  5. Customize Orders
    a. Change bottles in order, change from Will Call to Shipping or Shipping to Will Call, update ship to info. for one time, future ship date etc.
  6. Compliance Check – Correct orders as needed and re-check.
  7. Process or Charge customer credit cards.
  8. Re-Process declined orders at later dates.
    a. This step would only apply to orders already created with the status of decline and would Not create a brand new order.
    b. Many declines are due to non-sufficient funds. Without the risk of duplicate club orders, this can be done a few more times to capture these funds.
  9. Will Call to Ship tool at later date.
    a. If a customer does not pick-up by a certain deadline or requests that their order be shipped, remaining will calls per batch are available to select and change to shipping.

Erica,

First let me say thank you for taking the time to get these things down. I would like to weigh in on a few of our suggestions and hopefully we can get enough support to get some attention on these.

I am not sure I understand the benefit of your batch approach for clubs so I will leave that alone but would like to comment on overall workflow.

  1. I am in complete agreement on bringing together club processing and normal processing. Promos, shipping discounts, etc. should all work during club processing and we should not have to replicate these in the club area. The various issues you raise about updating credit cards, editing orders which can cause the orders to not calculate discounts and shipping correctly are all tremendous problems for how the system works today. So a big yes to get these two areas to work together.

  2. There is a need for a new status for club processing. Once orders are created and charged, the orders should be held in a batch area. For wineries that don’t want the ability to edit orders, there should be a simple select all and release for shipping process but for others, the ability to change addresses, shipping dates, and edit the order to change selections or add additional bottles would be huge. Ideally, the changes should create a net billing adjustment rather than a complete cancel and recharge. The canceling orders and recharging can create a myriad of customer service issues, fees, and can cause our customers to have problems with their credit limits. We have so many customers that want to modify their orders and many want to add bottles to take advantage of club shipping pricing. Currently we are forced to cancel orders in multiple systems (Vin65, ShipCompliant, Fulfillment house, etc.). There are so many places that this can go wrong or cause problems. By holding orders for a reasonable time period and making adjustments, we can head off the majority of customer service issues before finalizing and shipping.

  3. Updating credit cards and shipping information. Too many times there are updated credit cards on file but not properly linked to the club. There should be an easy way to identify these and use the correct card on file for processing.

  4. Primary Address. Every customer should have a primary address on file. This address is the one that the system will look for when you flip from pickup to ship. If it is the same as the billing address, you should be able to check a box like most POS systems are designed.

  5. Refunds. When refunding after the initial charge date, there needs to be a simple one button refund process that works like the void process that refunds dollars, sends an update to ShipCompliant, puts inventory back in inventory, and emails your fulfillment house or whomever you designate.

6 Order types designated as club orders should properly populate all club reports. Regardless of whether created via admin or POS or club processing. If it has a club order type, it should be reflected in the club reports.

  1. Notes field in club area needs to be turned off. These notes are not date stamped or identified by who created them and can cause lots of issues downstream when they are missed or when they confuse the fulfillment house. These notes are visible to customers and are often used for all kinds of one-off things. Wineries have plenty of other ways to communicate with their customers and this is a bad one that needs to go away.

  2. Upload club orders process. For special offers, addons, etc. we should be able to create club orders by uploading orders and selections to the system. This would enable the use of special forms or other tools to create custom orders.

  3. Option to add optional items to choice clubs. These items would be optional and would not be counted in the minimum bottle requirements for choice clubs but would be a great way to offer limited wines in addition to club offerings (e.g., library offerings, special formats, etc.)

  4. Enable customers to select their shipping date when updating other club information.

I am sure there are many other items but if we can start chipping away at some of these we can begin to focus on selling more and administering less.

You know, I can actually respond constructively to many of these:

  1. I know why they didn’t do this at the outset. If you selectively enabled promos in club, I promise you it will increase their customer service load. Since they have a mature customer service organization now, I would urge them to reconsider. @Josh

  2. At least ShipCompliant holds them, limiting the damage.

  3. This sounds gross - because it is - but after the first run I will review all of the declines and see if there is more than one credit card on file. Then I will check emails to see if they did a recent update and try the other card.

  4. I thought the address choice in this case was already well defined?

  5. Yes. And it needs to work from the POS too.

6-1 As it was explained to me, club notes are not there for you. They are there for the member to communicate with you. It’s pretty much intended for initial signup. The problem I see with this feature is that if the member puts something here, you don’t really get anything that says “the member left you something in club notes”. Some sort of more positive alert would avoid many tears.

(If you are a WD Fulfillment customer, anything left in the notes field will cause your order to be stalled there, at least there is that, but that’s rather late in the process, and only works for shipping customers.)

6-2 I’m with you there.

6-3 and 6-4 I got nothing. And I’m all about administering less. :wink:

Jeff,

A few responses / clarifications:

  1. Yes you can make changes in ShipCompliant but this is not where the changes should happen and still cause many service issues. The problem is that the main system our team and customers has for checking on their orders is Vin65. When you make changes downstream, it is hard without researching everywhere what the real story is. I do use that process now but believe if we create an editable staging area in Vin65, we could get most of the changes made before passing on to other systems. Several other systems work this way and it is a smarter way to manage these shipments.

  2. Yes, I do this now. My biggest problem with Vin65’s processes are that they do not make you an efficient worker. You either need to be a large organization with tons of resources to throw at the problem or a small company where one person can manage the work load or be very adept like you are to figure out all the workarounds.

  3. Every customer should have a primary address attached to their account. If they use their billing address as their shipping address, then that should be an easy check box like on most commerce systems. The problem for us is that we have people that pick “pickup” at the winery and then we need to ship. They have a shipping address on file but it is not their primary address unless I go in and find it and make it so. If this is not done, when you go to flip to ship, you send to their billing address which is often a home where there is nobody to sign.

6-1. Our customers use this for all kinds of things even trying to quit our Membership. As you stated, there is no notice of when these are entered, no date stamp, no indication as to who created them (some of our staff also put stuff in there until I beat them to get them to stop). I would rather not have this or have it be a true notice to our shipping company. We have phone numbers, forms, etc. email addresses, etc. for folks to contact us so their requests do not fall through the crack or create havoc during club processing when we are chasing enough other problems. Yes I am familiar with how WD holds up orders that have comments in this field. Another reason to kill it.

1 Like

Somehow I left this out of my lengthy post, but it is very important for us as well. Thank you!

bump

How you cannot still have multiple e-mails for one contact (IE club members that are couples which are obviously going to have their own e-mail addresses) is beyond baffling at this point. C’mon engineers, make it happen.

4 Likes

This syntax seems simple enough…