Customer Ratings That Warn You Before You Book the Job

By at Kereon Inc.

The short answer

An internal customer rating only helps if it shows up at booking, not buried in a notes field. In Taskrol, when you create a job for someone you've served before, their rating and the note behind it (didn't pay, was rude to the tech) sit on the job screen before you commit a slot. Rate the good ones too, and keep the note factual rather than an insult.

A call comes in, you start writing up the job, and it's not until the tech is halfway across town that it clicks: this is the guy who never paid you last spring. Now you're back on the hook for a customer you already swore off. Customer ratings exist in Taskrol so that never happens to you again.

A notes field doesn't warn you

Most field service tools only hand you a notes field. You can type "problem customer, didn't pay" somewhere on their profile, sure. But it sits buried, and it only helps if you happen to remember to go dig for it before you book. When you're busy, you don't. That's exactly when the bad ones slip back through.

The rating is on the screen when you book

Taskrol keeps an internal rating on every customer. When you create a job, if that person has been through before, the rating is right there in front of you. You can still drop into their full job history like you can anywhere else. But you don't have to go looking, because the signal is already on the screen: good customer, or one you had trouble with, along with the note on why. Didn't pay. Was rude to the tech. Whatever it was, it's there before you commit a slot to them.

It cuts the other way too, and honestly that's the part we like more. Mark your good ones. The people who pay on time, who are easy to deal with, who you'd happily drive across town for. Next time they call, you see it, and you take care of them the way you should.

Keep it factual

One small piece of advice from us: keep the rating factual. Write "invoice #204 went 90 days unpaid," not an insult. It's a record you're keeping on a real person, so make it something you'd stand behind. Facts protect you. Name-calling doesn't.

A simple feature, and it's the difference between learning from a bad customer once and learning from him every single time.

Taskrol is appliance repair CRM and field service software made by Kereon Inc. It runs every day at Cactus Appliance, an appliance repair company in Orange County, California. Customer ratings are for the customer every repair company wishes it had remembered sooner. About Taskrol →