Product search and customer search in Store Commerce

  • 10 minutes

Product and customer searches are easy to use with the Store Commerce app and Store Commerce for web. Employees can quickly search for products and customers because the search bar is always present at the top of the Store Commerce app and Store Commerce for web windows.

Product searches

A product search can be performed as a local product search, and a remote product search.

  • Local product search - Occurs by default when you access either Store Commerce app or Store Commerce for web devices. A local product search will restrict the search output to what is currently available in that location. A local product search searches in the following product properties:
    • Product number
    • Product name
    • Description
    • Dimensions
    • Barcode
    • Search name
  • Remote Product Search - Expanding upon the local product search, an employee can switch to a remote product search will allow the search output to view the current location inventory as well as any other location the company manages. Select the Categories button on the left side of the page to change the catalog. Select the Change catalog button at the top of the pane that appears, and then browse one of the available catalogs. The system will look for products in the catalog you've chosen.

On the Change catalog page, employees can select any store, or they can search for products across all stores.

Screenshot showing how to change inventory catalogs in the Store Commerce application.

Being able to locate a specific existing customer to connect information to the transaction is a critical step for most retailers. An employee might search for a customer to view purchase history, reprint a receipt, or to conduct a new transaction for that customer. The search algorithm provides search output based upon the values present in the following customer properties:

  • Name
  • Email address
  • Phone number
  • Loyalty card number
  • Address
  • Account number

Of the customer properties, the Name offers the most consistency for queries involving several keywords, because the algorithm returns all customers that match all the searched keywords. The customers that most closely fit your search terms emerge at the top of the results. This action assists cashiers in cases when they look for a customer using the whole name, but the last name and first name were switched during the initial data entry.

All other properties, on the other hand, maintain the order of the search keywords for performance purposes. Therefore, no results would be retrieved if the order of the search terms does not follow the order in which the data is processed.

For example:

  • While searching with Name for customer John Doe. If you were to search for Doe, John, you would see results for John Doe as well.
  • However, if you were searching for a customer by their Phone number, (555) 987-6543, you could not search for just 987-6543. You would need to include the area code as well

Like searching for products, customer searches can also fall into one of two categories.

  • Local customer search - Enabled by default as an employee performs a search for a particular customer. A local customer search will only provide search output results for the customer address book associated with only that exact retail location.
  • Remote customer search - If an employee needs to search for a customer globally, across other retail locations or across legal entities.

To search globally, employees can select the Filter results button at the bottom of the page and then select the Search all stores option, as shown in the screenshot that follows.

Screenshot showing how the cloud powered customer search can be used.

Note

A minimum of four characters must be entered for a remote customer search to return results. For more information about how to enable the cloud-powered search feature, see Product search and customer search in the Store Commerce.