"Last Visted" tab in customer directory not accurate

[Effortless]

Hello,

I have 100+ customers in my directory that are showing "Never" under the Last Visited tab, even though they have visited - often multiple times. These visits were both scheduled and checked out in Square appointments. I can't figure out why they won't register in the Last Visited tab.

This makes it impossible to filter my clients based on their last visit, which is important for win-back campaigns, follow-ups, etc. I called in but was unable to find an answer. A ticket was created, but I figured I would as the community as well.

I've attached a picture to show what I am talking about.

[JustinC]

Hey there @Effortless - Sorry if I found this too late. Maybe I can explain what might be happening. 

The "Last Visited" column is specifically tied to completed card payments with a buyer. This excludes clients that pays for a transaction using cash and therefore will remain un-tracked from a Directory perspective.

The Customer Directly mostly relies on emails and phones that are linked to a payment card. If no emails were linked to the card and the phone number linked is different from the phone number of the customer profile used for the appointment, the Directory will not match it to the existing profile.

I hope this clears things up. Let us know if you need more help with this. 

[Effortless]

Hi Justin, thanks for the response. This can't be true, can it? No visits are tracked unless the customer used a credit card pay? This makes it impossible to sort through the directory to identify crucial customer segments such as regular customers, lapsed customers, etc.

Additionally, by my understanding this means that the campaigns in square marketing (a paid feature) will only work a fraction of the time. For example, I have a win-back campaign set up to target lapsed customers, but the system can only identify lapsed customers if they previously used a credit card to pay?

I just checked to confirm this, and to my dismay only a small portion of our clients have been receiving our welcome campaign emails because you are correct - they are only being sent to those who pay with a credit card. This makes me very unhappy. I have been paying a monthly fee for this service for over a year under the impression that these emails were being sent to all of our new clients.

[JustinC]

@Effortless - I definitely see your point - when paying for a service, you want it to work the way you expect. The unfortunate truth is that cash is hard to track since it's just simply paper and doesn't leave much of a crumb trail. That's why it's important to add your customers to each sell and add their email (if they haven't already opted into receiving digital receipts) using the Customer Mgt tool.

This ensures that each sale is attributed to the associated buyer so our system can properly track your customer's engagement at your biz. Adding their email makes sure those cash folks are reachable so campaigns are sent out to all your customers. 

Sorry if this info came as a surprise. I hope I helped some.  Let me know if you need anything else. 

[Effortless]

Hi Justin. Thank you for the response, although to be perfectly honest it doesn't really help much at all.

We are using Square Appointments from start to finish with every customer. They either book online themselves through the Square booking site, or we book the appointment for them in Square Appointments. This creates their profile in our Square customer database with all of the relevant details. Once the service is completed, we check the customer out in Square Appointments by selecting their appointment in the calendar and completing the transaction. We do this for all transactions - even cash. Therefore every single customer transaction is logged in the customer's history. You can even see it on their customer profile. But unless they use a credit card it doesn't count as a visit? So unless they use a credit card first time customers don't receive Welcome emails, lapsed customers don't receive Win-back emails, and it is impossible to filter customers based on how long it's been since their last visit, which in turn makes accessing crucial data impossible. All this simply because the most recent transaction for a customer doesn't communicate with the "last visited" system. This is nonsense.

What's more is we'll see a customer multiple times, and on their fifth visit they might use a credit card for the first time and suddenly they get our welcome campaign! $25 off their next service! This is completely unacceptable and has cost us a lot of money in lost revenue. 

Yet another crippling miss on a product that honestly misses far too often. These are glaringly obvious problems with very simple solutions, and there are way too many of them. We've been with Square since we began in 2016 and are deeply entrenched in your tools, but it's unfortunately becoming more and more apparent that we need to migrate to a different system.

[Effortless]

I was really hoping to receive a response with some answers because like I said, we are deeply entrenched in square tools. Our website is even customized with our square booking site. I REALLY don't want to switch to another scheduling system, but we absolutely must be able to filter customers based on their last visit. Is this it? Is the system really that broken with no fix in site? 

[nika]

Hey @Effortless. I'm sorry for the delayed reply. 

Justin's last response still holds true. Unfortunately a "visit" is considered so only when a credit card transaction is processed. Cash transactions are currently excluded from being considered as a "visit".

I'm sorry that this is a pain point for you. I did share this feedback with our Product team so that they can understand why implementing cash transactions as visits would be beneficial. I know there are other sellers who would appreciate this feature as well.

If this changes at some point down the road we'll absolutely keep the Community updated.

[Lori831]

Will this ever be fixed? We know you obviously want their money too but we shouldn't have to either have no contact with our cash clients or use a different booking/payment system. This is extremely unhelpful and shady.

[_Violet]

Hi @Lori831 - Thanks for reaching out to us here on the Square Seller Community.

You can still track transactions with your cash-paying customers. You'll just need to be sure to add the customers to each sale and also add their email (if they haven't already opted in to receiving digital receipts) using the Customer Mgt tool, as @JUSTINC mentioned above.

The Customer Directory relies on having either a customer's email address or phone number, which links to their payment card, and then links to their Customer Profile. When a Customer pays with cash, this process isn't able to happen automatically so this is why the customer needs to be added to the sale in order to link them to their transaction/visit.

I  hope this information is helpful but please do let me know if you have any additional questions.

[Immaculatebrows]

This is extremely frustrating. I also want to look up customers who have not been in in six months. Its always shows my clients who have not been in in six months or longer. I need this specific detail. 

[ThePowerofJuice]

I am unhappy with this situation as well. If I'm paying based on the number of customers in my directory, I want to get rid of those that are not active.

There are many customers in my Directory that have either an email address and/or a phone number associated with their account. I am diligent about adding customers to (almost!) every sale, and yet, many of the customers who have been added to a sale are still listed as never having visited my store. So, the response from April 2022 is not accurate in regard to linking customers to cash sales: I can see transactions attributed to these customers, yet they are still classified as having not visited ever.

I am going to see if a transaction report will give me the information I need to get rid of customers who have truly never visited the store. The transaction report notes method of payment.