Our very popular Rate My Visit feature has just been upgraded to a more sophisticated, yet user friendly, tool for our clients. Salon owners and their managers now have the ability to create custom surveys, and retrieve the data in a more interactive manner. This article will serve as the reference point for any updates in these areas.
Whereas RMV 1.0 used only 5-6 static questions, stored on a single database table; RMV 2.0 will be built upon the LimeSurvey application, and have far more flexibility for customization. This was done by integrating LimeSurvey with iOffice, and enabling it to fetch ticket and customer data.
LimeSurvey itself is an open source, feature rich, survey program that has been used for over 16 years, and has such a track record for reliability, it was used during the 2004 US Presidential election by the Election Irregularities Reporting System.
The mechanism that enables this fetching and placement of ticket data is known as “piping”, and is unique to LimeSurvey. Questions are then tailored for the individual customer’s specifics, making their survey speak more directly to their experience in the salon.
The details are also still being worked out in this regard as well, but upon release, there will be both a regular and a pro version of the Rate My Visit feature available for clients. The standard version will allow for iOffice reporting, and limited customization, whereas the Pro version of the software will have more expanded features and advanced reporting capabilities.
Pro users will also have more room for customization by taking advantage of RMV 2.0’s LimeSurvey platform. They will also have the ability to create more personalized, branching surveys capable of much more than just tabulating a like or dislike.
The setup process for RMV 2.0 is very similar to before, with the initial steps being made in the SuperSalon Admin site. In the SuperSalon Admin page, the user will want to click on the Rate My Visit link as shown below.
This is where most of the initial customization is established, and the unique subdomain created on the RMV 2.0 server for the customer. Clients will also have their own admin access panel to implement any changes.
Below is a quick rundown of this form, and the breakdown of the individual fields.
Subdomain: The customer’s unique personal space (subdomain) on the server, designated by a customized name. Will be part of the store’s RMV URL.
Display Name: Should be a proper name as this is the one that will be the most prominently displayed to others.
Shard: Designates which production shard and iOffice instance the RMV account will be reporting to, and housed upon.
Store Definition: Allows to differentiate between different establishment titles such as “Barbershop”, “Spa”, or “Salon”.
Employee Definition: Like Store Definition, it allows the user to signify the unique titles of their employees such as “Agent”, “Stylist”, and / or “Barber”.
Password Settings: This is where the administrator password is set up. A generic password will be added if left blank.
Shown below is an image of a pre-configured RateMyVisit site, setup for demonstrative purposes. This next section of the article will cover the Admin console, and its various functions and customization options. For more detailed information on all of the customization options, and how to implement them, refer to the RMV 2.0 Manual.
To get to the admin console, we need only add “admin” to the end of the RMV URL as shown in the following illustration, and hit “Enter” on the keyboard.
The log in requirements for the screen below call for a Username and Password, and as you may recall, the field for establishing that password was in the previous section. The user name will always be the subdomain that was selected in the initial setup.
A successful login will result in the welcome screen shown below.
From the Admin Console the user has several menus and sub-menus to choose from that can accomplish several task such as creating new users and setting their permission levels, and on that note, the administrator (primary) account can create as many users as it wants from the interface displayed in the next image.
Creating users is just one function of the Admin console, as the following images will demonstrate. And again, a more thorough description is available in the RMV 2.0 User Manual. Going into the Global Settings from the main administration page is done by clicking on the crossed tools icon as illustrated below.
The first tab in the Global Settings will show an overview of all users, active surveys, and active token tables. Auto update functionalities are also available as evidenced in the next illustration.
The next illustration shows the General tab is where the primary template can be changed, and where a few other customization options for the survey itself reside.
Standard RMV 2.0 users will have access to the same report as before, but Pro users will have an expanded report functionality which will be described in more detail in the next section of this article. The following image shows the customization options for the iOffice aspects in the Global settings tab.
The manual goes into better detail for the remaining Global settings tabs, and everything within this interface as well.
There is the possibility of of bundling 4 or 5 generic surveys for the clients to test the waters with, but this is still being mulled over. Clients will have the ability to create branching narratives with their surveys that are based on the given answers through interfaces such as the Responses and Statistics page illustrated below.
The areas in red are where the LimeSurvey based software will perform its “piping” ability to retrieve information from the client’s ticket, and place that data in the relevant areas.
As mentioned in the previous section, RMV 2.0 Pro users will have an enhanced reporting functionality that will be better tailored to their custom surveys. When a Pro user logs into the reports section of iOffice for RMV, a LimeSurvey based console will then populate and give the user access to the expanded features.
One widely used report that is available in the Admin console is the Quick Statistics report available in the Statistics sub-menu. This feature uses a host of filters that allow for the recording on non-responses to specific survey queries as well. Shown below, this one report can answer most quick and easy questions in regards to their survey campaigns.
The RMV 2.0 overhaul also includes a new and improved interface for mobile devices, and the following images show a customized one available for Pro users, as well as the familiar, generic RMV format.