Gruvi records what customers said on its own. Labels and properties are how you record what *you* know about them.
Labels and properties are different
- A label
- A tag. Something either has it or it does not. "VIP", "Reseller", "Churn risk".
- A property
- A field with a value. "Plan: Business Pro", "Renewal date: 12 March", "Seats: 40".
The test is whether you would ever want to record a *value*. If the answer is only yes or no, use a label. If it is a number, a date or one of several options, use a property.
What a label is
A coloured tag you attach to a customer or a company, defined once and reused. They appear in the profile header and can be filtered on.
They exist separately for the two: Customer Labels and Company Labels in Settings, under Customers. A label for people and a label for organisations are different things, even when the word is the same.
How to add a label
- 1Open the customer or company profile.
- 2Click Labels in the header, or press L.
- 3Pick an existing label, or type a new name to create one.
Manage the full lists in Settings, under Customers.
What a property is
A field you define once, which then appears on every profile in its scope, waiting to be filled in.
A customer profile shows its properties with an option to pick or enter a value. An empty property is one nobody has filled in yet.
Properties are what make a profile genuinely useful rather than only a history. Knowing somebody is on the free plan changes the answer to half the questions they might ask.
The property types
When you create one you choose what kind of value it holds:
- Text
- Free text. Flexible, and impossible to filter reliably. Use sparingly.
- Number
- Seats, order counts, anything you might want to compare.
- Date
- Renewal dates, signup dates, contract ends.
- URL
- A link out to another system.
- Boolean
- True or false. Often a label would serve better.
- Select
- One of a fixed list of options. Usually the right answer.
How to create a property
- 1Go to Settings, then Customers, then Customer Properties, or Company Properties for account-level fields.
- 2Click New property.
- 3Name it something descriptive, like Plan or Industry.
- 4Pick its type.
- 5For a select property, add the options it can take.
It then appears on every profile in that scope, ready to fill in.
Scope: customer, company or thread
The same idea exists at three levels, and picking the right one saves a lot of repeated typing.
- Customer properties
- True of a person. Their role, their preferred language.
- Company properties
- True of an organisation. Their plan, their renewal date, their account manager.
- Thread properties
- True of one conversation. An order number, a case reference.
A plan belongs on the company, not on each of its five people. Recording it five times means getting it wrong four times.
Choosing between them
- Would you filter a list by it?
- Label, or a select property.
- Does it hold a value you would read out?
- Property.
- Is it true only of this one conversation?
- Thread property.
- Is it a note rather than data?
- Then neither. Use the Activity box on the profile.