Monitoring the Trouble Queue

Use the Customer Calling Queue to improve your customer service by monitoring orders "in trouble." Orders in trouble are those whose available dates have slipped, perhaps because the vendors are now behind schedule filling purchase orders.

In its default view, the trouble queue has columns listing each order's ship-to customer, phone number, order number, branch, ship date, and earliest available date.

To monitor the trouble queue:

From the Orders > Queues menu, select Customer Calling Queue.
In the Brch field, press F10 and specify a branch, territory, or ALL.
In the Type field, press F10 and specify Trouble as the type of order to list.

With Trouble as the criteria, the system lists all orders (regardless of the status code) where the ShipDate and the Earliest available date are no longer the same.

Specify selection criteria in these optional fields, as desired:

Field	Restricts listings to...
Writer	an order writer.
End Dt	the orders' ship date. We recommend using a future date, since orders that are in trouble as of today's date cannot be expedited.
In Slsp	an inside salesperson.
Out Slsp	an outside salesperson.
Via	the orders' ship via type.
Credits	whether they include credits (negative items, like returns). Press F10 and specify whether to Include, Exclude, or Only list credits.
Directs	whether they include direct shipments. Press F10 and specify whether to Include, Exclude, or Only list direct shipments.

When the Days in Trouble screen displays, enter 1, or another number of days if needed. The number you enter specifies the minimum difference between an order's ShipDate and the Earliest available date.

Once the list displays, use these hot keys as needed:

To...	Use this hot key...
open the selected order for viewing	View
open the selected order for editing	Edit
open the selected order's Header screen	Header
open the Detail Scheduling screen for the selected order	DetSched
enter notes about a customer phone call	LogCall
change the selected order's ShipDate to match the Earliest date	AdjShipdt
toggle the queue listing from ship date to required date	ChngView
view items on the selected order	Item
toggle the queue listing from bill-to to ship-to customer	BT/ST

Note: Once you have identified the orders in trouble, be proactive. Let your purchasing department know which orders need special procurements to meet deadlines. Or, you can make adjustments to less critical orders, so you can supply the more important ones. Finally, as the name of the screen suggests, call your customers. Let them know when orders are running late, or when you are taking extra steps to serve them.