🤝 Customer Ownership Management · Who Owns Which Customers

Assign customers to specific team members, paired with Permissions Management to achieve:

• Sales sees only their own customers — no data leakage
• Smooth handover when someone leaves — one click to reassign a departed employee's customers to active ones
• Clear accountability — follow-up and orders trace back to a specific owner

🎯 2 Assignment Methods

Method	Best for	Operations per round
👆 Manual assignment	Single customer / handpicked few	1 ~ 10
🏷️ Bulk by tag	Whole customer groups (e.g. "all US customers go to Zhang")	Hundreds ~ tens of thousands

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1. Manual Assignment

Best for handpicking and assigning a small number of customers.

Steps:

Step	Action
1️⃣	Left nav → 【Customer Management】→【Contacts】
2️⃣	Check 1 or more customers in the contacts list
3️⃣	Top 【More Actions】→【Assign Ownership】
4️⃣	Dialog: pick Contact Owner (target employee) → submit

In the dialog, pick the target employee and submit:

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2. Bulk Assignment by Tag

Best for assigning whole customer groups in one go (e.g. "all US customers go to Zhang / all European customers go to Li").

Steps:

Step	Action
1️⃣	Left nav → 【Customer Management】→【Contacts】
2️⃣	Top tag filter select the target group's tag (e.g. "USA")
3️⃣	Click 【Select All】 above the list (all contacts under that tag)
4️⃣	【More Actions】→【Assign Ownership】
5️⃣	Dialog: pick Contact Owner → submit

Step 1 · Filter the target group by tag:

Step 2 · Bulk assign after Select All:

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📋 Common Pitfalls

Pitfall	Consequence	How to avoid
🔴 Departed employee's customers not reassigned in time	Customers go without follow-up, missed opportunities	When someone leaves, immediately reassign their customers to active staff
🔴 Same customer reassigned repeatedly	Customer keeps changing contact persons, poor experience	Keep assignment rules stable (by country / industry) — no random changes
🟡 Assigning without tags	Later filtering / bulk assignment is hard	Tag first (language-country-product-role), then assign
🟡 No permissions paired → ownership is moot	Sales can still see all customers	Ownership + permissions must be used together
🟡 New customers not assigned in time	After entering the system no one claims them, idle for ages	Build an assignment SOP: searches save default to the searcher

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❓ FAQ

Q1 · After ownership is assigned, what can the employee see?

Depends on Permissions Management settings:

Sales role permission	Customers visible to employee
"View own customers"	Only those they own
"View department customers"	All customers owned by anyone in their department
"View all customers"	Everyone in the enterprise (admin level)

Q2 · Can customers be reassigned from A to B?

✅ Yes, anytime, new assignment overrides old. Example: customer originally owned by Zhang, reassigned to Li → Zhang can no longer see them, Li takes over.

Q3 · What happens to a departed employee's customers?

3-step handling:

Step	Action
1️⃣	Go to Member Management and disable / delete the departed employee's account
2️⃣	Go to Contacts, filter by "owner = that departed employee"
3️⃣	Bulk reassign to active employees (split by region / industry / workload)

Q4 · Can one customer be owned by multiple employees?

Currently only one owner. Want collaboration? Let both have "view department customers" permission in Permissions Management.

Q5 · Ownership vs Permissions — what's the difference?

Dimension	🤝 Ownership Management	🔑 Permissions Management
Question answered	Who owns the customer	What the owner can do (view / edit / export / delete)
Used together	Ownership = "to whom" + Permissions = "what to do"

→ Both required for complete team collaboration + data security.

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💡 Learning Tips

Principle	How to do it
🏷️ Tag before assigning	First use Tags + Views to segment by market / industry / tier, then bulk-assign by tag — cleanest logic
🤝 Combine ownership + permissions	Ownership says "who owns the customer", permissions say "what the owner can do" — both required
📋 Document assignment rules	Write internal rules: new leads by region / old customers stay with original owner / departed customers split by workload
🔄 Reassign immediately on departure	When someone leaves, reassign customers the same day — avoid lost opportunities
📊 Quarterly workload review	Each quarter, check how many customers each member owns; rebalance if uneven
🎯 Default assign new customers	Searches save default to the searcher, building "you search it, you own it" accountability

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📚 Related Features

Topic	Link	Description
🔑 Permissions Management	permissions-management	Decides what the owner can do (required pairing)
👨‍💼 Member Management	member-management	Employee add/remove / departures affect ownership
🏷️ Tags & Views	contacts-tags-views	Customer segmentation foundation (prerequisite for bulk assignment by tag)
📋 Manage Contacts	manage-contacts	View / change ownership in contact details
🏢 Enterprise Info	business-management	Enterprise edition overview

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