Customers: Profiles, History, Import and Export

Overview

Customers → Customers is the list of everyone who has bought from you or been added by you: their contact details, where they came from, how many orders they have paid for and what they have spent. Open a customer for their full history, notes, tags and messages.

Customers are part of every plan.

Who can do what:

• See customers: the owner, admins, managers, staff, viewers and sales managers.
• Export customers to a file: the owner, admins and managers. Each export is recorded in the audit log with how many customers it held.
• Add and edit customers, write notes and send messages: the owner, admins, managers, staff and sales managers.
• Import a file and merge customers: the owner, admins, managers and sales managers.
• Erase a customer's personal data: the owner.

The list

• Search by name, email address or phone number.
• Filter by source with the buttons above the list: Online, In-store, Import, Referral or Manual, each with its count.
• Each row shows the customer, their group (see below) and up to three tags, the Source, the number of Orders and the Total spent.
• The list shows 50 customers a page.

The cards above the list count the customers that match your search and filters, their Paid revenue, the Avg spend per customer and their Paid orders. Only paid orders count. A customer's spend is what they paid for those orders with every payment method together: the part they paid with a gift card counts the same online as at the till, and a gift card they bought counts as their spend. Lifetime value, the customer groups and the retention cohorts use the same figure. The spend rules in segments count each order's recorded total instead (online, what was charged after any gift card), because the same rules decide at checkout who a promotion applies to. Revenue in your store's currency leads; revenue in other currencies is listed separately and never added in.

Customer groups (RFM)

Click Refresh on Customer segments (RFM) to group your customers by Recency, Frequency and Money, from all their paid orders. Each customer gets a score from 1 to 5 for each:

The scores give each customer one group:

• Champions — recency, frequency and money all 4 or 5.
• Loyal — recency 3 or more and frequency 4 or more.
• At Risk — frequent buyers (frequency 4 or more) whose recency has dropped to 1 or 2.
• Lost — anyone else whose last order was more than 120 days ago.
• New — one order, within the last 7 days.
• Potential — everyone else.

Click a group under the chart to show only its customers. For saved groups you can send campaigns and text broadcasts to, use Customers → Segments (see Segments and flows).

Add a customer

Click Add customer, enter a Full name, Email or Phone (a name or an email is needed), and choose the Source. Tick This customer agreed to receive marketing email from this store. only when they did.

Customers also arrive by themselves, from checkout on your storefront and from the till.

Import customers from a file

1. Click Import, then Download template for a file with the right columns: name, email, phone, source and loyalty_points. You may add a marketing_consent column.
2. Drop your CSV file in, check the rows, and click Import followed by the number of customers. Up to 5,000 rows a file.

What happens to each row:

• A row needs at least a name, an email address or a phone number.
• A row whose email address is already a customer updates that customer: the name and phone are replaced with the file's where the file has them, and the file's loyalty points are added to what they already have.
• A row without an email address always creates a new customer.
• source is online, pos, import, referral or manual; anything else is recorded as import.
• marketing_consent set to yes (also true, y, 1, opted_in or subscribed) records that the customer agreed to marketing email. Before such a file can be imported you must tick the statement that every customer marked yes agreed, and that you can show how and when; your confirmation is kept in the audit log. A blank or "no" never withdraws an agreement.
• sms_consent set to yes records that the customer agreed to marketing texts, separately from email. It needs three more columns on that row: sms_consent_date (YYYY-MM-DD, the day they agreed), sms_consent_method (web_form, checkout, keyword, in_person, paper_form or phone_call) and sms_consent_source (where they agreed, for example "website sign-up form"), and a valid phone number, which is stored in international form (+1...). You tick a second statement that you hold these consents and keep the records, because Canada's anti-spam law (CASL) puts the burden of proving consent on the sender. Each consent is kept with that evidence and your name, and shows on Marketing → SMS → Consents. A row missing any of these, or for a number that texted STOP to your store, is imported without the text consent, and the result lists those rows and why.

After the import you see how many customers were imported, updated and skipped, with the reasons for up to 20 skipped rows.

Export

• Export downloads a CSV of the customers that match your search and source filter, newest first, up to 10,000. If more match, you are told the file is partial; narrow the search to export the rest.
• To export particular customers, tick them in the list and click Export in the bar that appears. The same bar can Add tag or Remove tag for everyone ticked.

The Export file has each customer's name, email, phone, source, loyalty points, orders, total spent and currency, spend in other currencies, and the date they joined.

A customer's page

Click a customer to open their page.

• Timeline — their orders, reviews and notes, the visits to your store recorded for them, and the campaign emails they opened and the links they clicked, newest first.
• Profile — Contact information (name, email, phone and birthday as MM-DD), Tax exemptions, Tags & custom fields, and Shopping preferences they shared through your storefront quiz. Click Save changes after editing.
• Notes — staff notes. Only your team sees them.
• Lifetime value — what they have spent, their number of orders and the date of their last order.
• Segment — their recency, frequency and money scores, loyalty points and birthday.

Tax exemptions

Under Tax exemptions on the Profile tab, click Add an exemption, choose the kind (Canada status card, a reseller, fishery, farmer or contractor certificate for its province, and the rest), enter the card or certificate number and, if it has one, the date it is valid until, then click Add exemption. For Other, also choose the province and whether it takes off the provincial part or every sales tax. Each kind shows what it takes off before you add it; see Customer tax exemptions for the full list.

• The exemption is used when the customer is signed in to your store at checkout, on draft orders for them, and when you pick it at the point of sale (Tax exempt sale).
• Numbers show as their last four characters, here and at the till. The full number is kept for your tax records.
• Click the bin icon to remove one. Orders already sold under it keep their record.
• Adding and removing one needs permission to edit customers, and both are on the audit log.
• If your store uses Stripe Tax, the section says so: Stripe can only exempt a customer from all tax, so these apply only where your own tax rules price the tax.

Send a message

Under Send a message, choose how to reach them:

• Email — from your store's own email address (set one up under Settings → Email first). Needs an email address on file.
• Text — needs a phone number. If text messaging is not switched on for your store yet, the message waits and is sent once it is.
• WhatsApp — needs a connected WhatsApp number (Settings → WhatsApp) and a phone number on file. Through a number linked by QR code, WhatsApp carries replies and order updates only, never offers. Through the official WhatsApp Business number, a message outside the 24 hours after the customer last wrote must be an approved template, and an offer only goes to a customer who opted in to WhatsApp, with a way to stop them. A template asks for what it needs (a photo or video from your media library, a PDF, the blanks, the end of a link, a code to copy) and shows a preview first. A sign-in code template sends a one-time code BestWebby makes; ask the customer to read it back and check it on the same page. See Inbox.
• Push — a browser notification, when the customer turned on notifications on your store while signed in to their account. (A shopper who turned them on from an order confirmation also gets the shipping notification for that order; see Push notifications.)

A message about an order, a question or their account is sent as it is. If it promotes a sale, a product or an offer, tick This promotes a sale, product or offer. It is then sent only if they agreed to marketing, with your unsubscribe link and your store details. Every message sent is added to their timeline as a note.

From the list, the message icon on a row sends an email or saves an internal note.

When phone calling is set up for your store, the page also has Automated calls, where you record a customer's agreement to automated follow-up calls and schedule one. See Phone calls and SMS.

Merge two customers

When one person has two customer records, click the merge icon on the record you want to keep, search for the other one, select it, and click Merge → keep (the button names the customer you keep).

• Everything that belongs to the person moves to the customer you keep: orders, reviews, notes, saved addresses, tax exemptions, gift cards and store credit, subscriptions, returns, appointments, offers, referral codes and the rest of their history.
• Their recorded marketing-consent history moves too, unchanged, so you can still show when and how each agreement was given or withdrawn.
• Saved body measurements move when the customer you keep has none. When both have them, the more recently updated set is kept.
• Loyalty points are added together and tags are combined. A name, phone number or birthday the kept customer lacks is copied over.
• The customer you keep keeps their own email address and their own marketing, SMS and call agreements. The other record's agreements are not carried over, because they were given for the other email address.
• The other customer is then deleted, and anyone signed in to your store as that customer is signed out. A Google or Apple account they signed in with is unlinked too, because it proved the other email address, not the one you keep: its next sign-in is matched by its email address again.

It all happens at once: if anything fails, nothing changes and both customers stay as they were. The message says what happened: for example that the merge took too long (try again) or that one of the customers was changed at the same moment (reload and try again).

A merge cannot be undone. Merge into the record whose email address and marketing agreement you want to keep.

Erase a customer

On a customer's page, the owner can click Erase (GDPR), type ERASE and confirm. Their personal data is erased for good. See Privacy and Quebec Law 25.

What customers see in their account

A customer signs in to your store with a link emailed to them (no password), or with their Google or Apple account when you offer it (below). Under My account → Orders they see their orders, newest first, and View order opens one with:

• each item with its option, quantity and price, and the order's subtotal, discount, shipping, tax, gift card and total, as they were charged;
• how it was paid and any refunds, or, for a business buyer on net terms, the invoice it was billed on, its due date and what has been paid;
• every parcel, with the carrier and a link to track it;
• the buyer's PO number and reference, when they gave one;
• Receipt (or Invoice for an order on net terms), a printable page they can save as a PDF from their browser, with your business name and address;
• Start a return, when the order can be returned (it has arrived, at least one item is still within its return window, and no return is already open).

The order page and the receipt are in English or French, following the language the customer sees your store in. A customer only ever sees their own orders on your store.

Sign in with Google or Apple

Turn on Settings → Business → Shopper sign-in to show Sign in with Google and Sign in with Apple above the email box on your store's account page. It is off until you turn it on, and a button appears only once BestWebby has connected that provider; the card says which are available. The emailed link always stays.

• The shopper signs in at Google or Apple and comes straight back to your store's own domain, signed in. Google and Apple show BestWebby as the app asking.
• Their account is matched by the email address Google or Apple has verified for them, exactly as the emailed link matches it: an existing customer with that address signs in as that customer, anyone else becomes a new customer. An account with no verified address cannot sign in this way.
• Later sign-ins with the same Google or Apple account reach the same customer, even if the address at Google or Apple changes.
• A shopper who chooses Apple's Hide My Email gets a new customer with an address ending in @privaterelay.appleid.com. Apple forwards mail sent to it, but only from sending domains registered with Apple.
• Signing in this way gives no marketing consent, and a visitor blocked under Settings → Blocked visitors (by address, connection or device) cannot sign in.
• Apple gives the shopper's name only the first time; it is saved when the customer has no name yet and never replaces one you hold.
• When a shopper stops using Apple with BestWebby, or deletes their Apple Account, Apple tells BestWebby. Their Apple account is unlinked from the customer in every store that holds it, and anyone signed in with it is signed out. The customer, their orders and history stay with you; a later sign-in is matched by email address again. Deleting the customer stays your decision, or the shopper's own erasure request.
• When a shopper turns off Hide My Email forwarding, marketing email to that @privaterelay.appleid.com address stops until they turn forwarding back on. Receipts and order updates are still sent. An unsubscribe, bounce or complaint for the address stays in place either way. A deleted Apple Account forwards nothing, so its relay address is suppressed the same way.
• Each of these is recorded in your Audit log against the customer (the Apple account and the address are not).
• Erasing a customer removes the Google or Apple accounts linked to them, and their data download lists them.

Help guides for your shoppers

Signed-in customers find Help in their account menu, at /account/help on your store. It holds short step-by-step guides with simple pictures of your store's own screens, in English or French to match the language they see your store in. The guides carry your store's name, logo and colours, never BestWebby's, and each one ends with a button to the page it describes, such as Open your orders.

Only the guides for what your store offers appear, and they follow your settings by themselves:

• Always there: signing in, tracking an order, the order page and receipt, cancelling an order (customers are asked to contact you, since only you can cancel one), saved addresses and the postal-code fill, the wishlist and back-in-stock emails, privacy (downloading their data and asking for deletion) and contacting you.
• Returns and exchanges, when Returns is on for your plan. It names your return window when every returnable product on that storefront has the same one (for example 30 days), says the window is on each product page when they differ, and links to your refund policy.
• Subscriptions, when subscriptions are on for your plan and a product on that storefront offers Subscribe & Save, or the customer already has a live subscription.
• Gift cards, when a gift card is for sale on that storefront or the customer holds one with a balance.
• Pickup orders, when a pickup location has an address checkout can tax. The step about choosing a pickup time appears when one of them has pickup hours.
• Local delivery, when an active local delivery method sits in an active shipping zone.
• Age-restricted items and Buying by weight or length, when a product of that kind is for sale on that storefront.
• Single steps follow too: the wishlist emails step appears when your store has a mailing address (the alerts need one), and the Cookie preferences step when your cookie banner is on.

The guides are for signed-in customers of your store only. A visitor who is not signed in is sent to sign in first, and the emailed link brings them back to the guides; someone signed in to another store sees nothing of yours. The guides are never indexed by search engines and are not in your sitemap. Their wording is fixed; for help pages in your own words, use Settings → Help center.

Churn risk

On the Growth plan and above, Churn risk at the bottom of the list scores customers who may not come back: click Run analysis, and Mark actioned once you have followed up.

Each row shows the customer's name (or their email address when there is no name), with a link to their page, a risk score out of 100 (red from 70, amber from 40) and the main reason, such as "No order in 4+ months". The list holds the 50 highest-risk customers scoring 30 or more. Insights → Retention shows the same scores with lifetime value and win-back actions.

Common questions

Does a customer with an email address get my campaigns? Only if they agreed to marketing email. Having an address on file is not agreement.

Why did a customer's loyalty points go up after an import? Points in the file are added to the points they already had.

Can I change what the shopper Help guides say? No. They are written for every store and fill in your store's name; which guides appear follows what your store offers. Write anything else in Settings → Help center.

Can I import customers without email addresses? Yes, with a name or phone number. Import the same file twice and those rows are added twice, because there is no email address to match them by.