This topic explains how retailers can enable customer management capabilities at the point of sale (POS) in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce.
It’s important that store associates can create and edit customer records at the POS. In that way, they can capture any updates to customer information such as the email address, phone number, and address. This information is helpful in downstream systems such as marketing, because the effectiveness of those systems depends on the accuracy of their customer data.
Sales associates can trigger the customer creation workflow from two POS entry points. They can select a button that is mapped to the Customer add operation, or they can select Create customer on the app bar on the search results page. In both cases, the New customer dialog box appears, where sales associates can enter required customer details, such as the customer’s name, email address, phone number, address, and any additional information that is relevant to the business. That additional information can be captured by using the customer attributes that are associated with the customer. For more information about customer attributes, see Customer attributes.
Sales associates can also capture secondary email addresses and phone numbers. Additionally, they can capture the customer’s preference about receiving marketing information via any of those secondary email addresses or phone numbers. To enable this capability, retailers must turn on the Capture multiple emails and phone numbers and consent for marketing on these contacts feature in the Feature management workspace in Commerce headquarters (Systems administration > Workspaces > Feature management).
Default customer properties
Retailers can use the All stores page in Commerce headquarters (Retail and Commerce > Channels > Stores) to associate a default customer with each store. Commerce then copies the properties that are defined for the default customer to all new customer records that are created. For example, the Create customer dialog box shows properties that are inherited from the default customer that is associated with the store. Those properties include the customer type, customer group, receipt option, receipt email, currency, and language. Any affiliations (groupings of customers) are also inherited from the default customer. However, financial dimensions are inherited from the customer group that is associated with the default customer, not from the default customer itself.
Note:
The receipt email value gets copied from the default customer only if the receipt email ID is not provided for the newly created customers. This means that if the receipt email ID is present on the default customer, then all the customers created from the e-commerce site will get the same receipt email ID as there is no user interface to capture the receipt email ID from the customer. We recommend that you leave the receipt email field blank for the default customer of the store and use it only if you have a business process that depends on a receipt email address being present.
Sales associates can capture multiple addresses for a customer. The customer’s name and phone number are inherited from the contact information that is associated with each address. The Addresses Fast Tab of a customer record includes a Purpose field that sales associates can edit. If the customer type is Person, the default value is Home. If the customer type is Organization, the default value is Business. Other values that this field supports include Home, Office, and Post box. The value of the Country field for an address is inherited from the primary address that is specified on the Operating unit page in Commerce headquarters at Organization administration > Organizations > Operating units.
Sync customers and Async customers
[IMPORTANT] Whenever the POS goes offline, the system automatically creates the customers asynchronously, even if the Async customer creation mode is disabled. Therefore, regardless of your selection between Sync and Async customer creation, Commerce headquarters administrators must create and schedule a recurring batch job for the P-job, the Synchronize customers and business partners from async mode job (formerly named the Synchronize customers and business partners from async mode job), and the 1010 job, so that any Async customers are converted to Sync customers in Commerce headquarters.
In Commerce, there are two modes of customer creation: Synchronous (or Sync) and Asynchronous (or Async). By default, customers are created synchronously. In other words, they are created in Commerce headquarters in real time. The Sync customer creation mode is beneficial because new customers are immediately searchable across channels. However, it also has a drawback. Because it generates Commerce Data Exchange: Real-time Service calls to Commerce headquarters, performance can be affected if many concurrent customer creation calls are made.
If the Create customer in async mode option is set to Yes in the store’s functionality profile (Retail and Commerce > Channel setup > Online store setup > Functionality profiles), Real-time Service calls aren’t used to create customer records in the channel database. The Async customer creation mode doesn’t affect the performance of Commerce headquarters. A temporary globally unique identifier (GUID) is assigned to every new Async customer record and used as the customer account ID. This GUID isn’t shown to POS users. Instead, those users will see Pending sync as the customer account ID.
Convert Async customers to Sync customers
To convert Async customers to Sync customers, you must first run the P-job to send the Async customers to Commerce headquarters. Then run the Synchronize customers and business partners from async mode job (formerly named the Synchronize customers and business partners from async mode job) to create customer account IDs. Finally, run the 1010 job to sync the new customer account IDs to the channels.
Async customer limitations
The Async customer functionality currently has the following limitations:
- Async customer records can’t be edited unless the customer has been created in Commerce headquarters and the new customer account ID has been synced back to the channel. Therefore, the address can’t be saved for an Async customer until that customer is synced to Commerce headquarters, because the addition of a customer address is internally implemented as an edit operation on the customer profile. However, if the Enable the asynchronous creation for customer addresses feature is enabled, the customer addresses can also be saved for Async customers.
- Affiliations can’t be associated with Async customers. Therefore, new Async customers don’t inherit affiliations from the default customer.
- Loyalty cards can’t be issued to Async customers unless the new customer account ID has been synced back to the channel.
- Secondary email addresses and phone numbers can’t be captured for Async customers.
Although some of the previously mentioned limitations might make you inclined to choose the Sync customer option for your business, the Commerce team is working to make the Async customer capabilities more closely match the Sync customer capabilities. For example, as of the Commerce version 10.0.22 release, a new Enable the asynchronous creation for customer addresses feature that you can enable in the Feature management workspace asynchronously saves newly created customer addresses for both Sync customers and Async customers. To save these addresses on the customer profile in Commerce headquarters, you must schedule a recurring batch job for the P-job, the Synchronize customers and business partners from async mode job, and the 1010 job, so that any Async customers are converted to Sync customers in Commerce headquarters.
Customer creation in POS offline mode
Whenever the POS goes offline, the system automatically creates the customers asynchronously, even if the Async customer creation mode is disabled. Therefore, as was mentioned earlier, Commerce headquarters administrators must create and schedule a recurring batch job for the P-job, the Synchronize customers and business partners from async mode job, and the 1010 job, so that any Async customers are converted to Sync customers in Commerce headquarters.