Customer index cards are elements of the customer file. The good old "cardboard file" from years gone by still exists. However, its appearance can vary greatly. In the sales force you can find anything from simple index cards and customer folders with comprehensive registers to virtual customer cards within a DP supported filing system for customer servicing. A customer file must fulfil the following requirements:

- Provide all information for preparation and follow-up of customer calls
- Ensure that the contained information is up-to-date
- Allow the interpretation of information by colleagues
- Show customer development - chronicle
- Encode internal data for third parties

A continuing and systematic maintenance of customers can hardly be imagined without a customer file.

Structure of a customer file

The customer file is composed of the totality of all customer index cards. In most cases, the index cards are sorted by the tour sequence. In case of a virtual customer file you can devise multiple sorting keys and make the computer sort the files in fractions of seconds to suit the current requirements. Possible sorting features are:

- turnover
- contribution margin
- potential
- tour
- postal code
- industry
- affiliation with professional organisations

A customer index card ought to contain the following elements:

- customer number
- precise customer address
- names of contact persons (boss, buyer, store master, etc.)
- supervisory area, sales district and tour data
- name of sales representative in charge
- name of responsible internal sales assistant
- development of turnover, contribution margin and potential
- assortment distribution
- industry
- affiliation with professional organisations
- terms and conditions
- notes on the customer (projects, advertising, requests, etc.)

Depending on the requirement of the sales force organisation, this list can be longer or shorter. Integrated DP systems print out customer cards today after preparing the data on the basis of input from accounting, sales controlling etc. However, there is a risk that an excessive amount of data is being used since todays data processing systems allow the quick and effortless composition of information. The sales manager and the sales representative should co-operate to determine which features should go on the customer index cards to ensure that only necessary information is included.

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