Tracking Products after the sale-

[JCaffrey]

Hi! We sell and support a medical device we have a B2B2C sale.  I need a way to track service tickets/calls based on device, not by company or customer.  Since each customer could have potentially 1000 devices, and move them around to different end users. 

I was thinking of creating a ticket for each product- that way I could use it in an inventory pipeline as well before it is delivered and installed, but there isn't a way to associate a ticket with a ticket and that isn't helpful when there is a service call. 

The other idea I had was create a contact or company  for each product... but that would but me over my allowed contacts that way I can associate the service ticket and if It was a company I could put it as a child company to the customer. 

Lastly- I feel there is a way to do what I want with Products but I don't belive I can associate a ticket.... but I could use a customer field and workflow to populate this.... 

Help! 

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @JCaffrey,

This is not how HubSpot intended for its users to use tickets, just as a big disclaimer before we go further. Generally, what you're trying to achieve sounds like a job for an ERP software – HubSpot is, above all, a CRM.

Having said that, you would probably want each device to be a ticket. Which facility a ticket belongs to, would be documented in a ticket property. That way, you would have the device history on each ticket and you could filter tickets (= devices) by facility.

If there are customers who can potentially have >1000 devices, I'd recommend grouping devices into tickets – assuming that not all 1000 devices are in use in the same facility and that these devices are not all of the same type, e.g.

Ticket 1: Device type A, 250 units, facility X

Ticket 2: Device type B, 500 units, facility Y

Ticket 3: Device type C, 250 units, facility Z

Each characteristic (type, amount, facility) would be a custom ticket property.

That's how I'd approach it. You'll hit certain limits, e.g. 1 of the 250 units of device type A failing. You'll not be able to reflect the status of the device individually, it would be part of ticket 1. You would know that one device in ticket 1 needs repair.

Best regards!

[JCaffrey]

Hi @karstenkoehler , 

Thank you for your reply- 

I need to track service tickets on each of our devices that are in the field.  Repairs, upgrades, etc. 

Example- Customer ABC buys 10 of our Devices, they install them in Facility 1, Facility 2, etc.  They may move the device from Facility 2 to Facility 11 and I want the histor of the services tickets to follow the device, not the facility.  Currently we are logging Service tickets to the facility, which is a child company to the Customer. 

[karstenkoehler]

Hi @JCaffrey,

Could you provide more context what you mean when you say "track tickets based on device"? What exactly do you need to track, is this about device monitoring and maintenance or are tickets equivalent with incoming support requests about these devices? For my better understanding, what speaks against having all these tickets logged on a company record?

Would it be an option to track on a ticket record which device that ticket is referring to? (e.g. by including a custom device property for each ticket record)

If none of the existing objects fit your requirements, you could look into custom objects. However, custom objects are only available in Enterprise subscriptions: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/crm-setup/use-custom-objects

Best regards!