Customers

Customer details are saved automatically when a customer creates a new account. In some cases you may need to add a customer manually or edit an existing customer. For example if a customer places an order as a ‘guest’ an account is created for them in the back end but you may want to go in subsequently and update their details.

NOTE that all fields that are marked with an asterisk are required. This is true also when importing customer data using the Import Customers section of IRP Admin. You cannot enter, for example, ‘N/A’ if you think that a county or phone number is not applicable.

To add or edit a customer, follow these steps:

1. Go to Customers > Customers in the IRP Admin left navigation menu.
2. To create a new customer, click the Add New Customer button at the top of the page. To edit an existing customer, use the search functionality to find the customer you want to update and click the Edit button at the right side of the row.
3. Enter or edit the following details on the Customer Information tab. If you see an asterisk (*) beside a setting it means that the setting is required.
   

   Setting	Description
   Basic Customer Details
   Customer ID	The unique IRP identifier for this customer. This is automatically generated when adding a customer.
   First Name	Customer’s first name.
   Surname	Customer’s surname.
   Gender	Customer’s gender: Male, Female, Prefer Not To Say, Other. Note that the 'Other' option will be displayed on the CustomerEdit.aspx page (and the MailingListEdit.aspx page) only when the Enable Other Gender Input Application Setting (in the 'Customers' grouping) is enabled.
   Account Type	Personal (Home) or Business (Business) account.
   Date of Birth	(Available only if the Application Setting called 'Enable Customer Date Of Birth Entry' is enabled.) This is the customer's DOB. Note that a 'year' input will be displayed for the 'Date of Birth' setting only if the Enable Customer Date Of Birth Year Entry Application Setting is enabled (in the 'Customers' grouping).
   Tax Number	If the customer creates a business account, enter the business’ Tax or VAT number.
   Tax Exempt	If the customer is VAT exempt you should enable this setting. No VAT charges will be placed on the customer’s orders. Note that if the customer is set to Tax Exempt after they have logged in, the customer would need to log out and log back in again in order for the Tax Exempt setting to take effect. Also, if the customer is set to Tax Exempt and they edit their billing address where no Tax/VAT number is provided, then the Tax Exempt setting will automatically be set to false.
   Guest Account	Signifies whether this customer has signed up for a full customer account or if the account has been added after they have placed an order using the guest checkout functionality.
   Date Joined	The date and time this customer account was created. This is automatically generated when adding a customer.
   Loyalty Scheme	The Loyalty Scheme that this customer qualifies for. Note that this shows ONLY if there are active Loyalty Schemes for the customer's country.
   Trade Settings (shown only if Account Type is Business)
   Company Name	Enter the name of the Company that this Customer belongs to. This is a Requirement for Business Accounts.
   Account Status	Select a status from the drop-down list. This can be ‘Awaiting Approval’, ‘Approved’, ‘Suspended’, ‘Rejected’ or ‘Not Trade Account’.
   Tax Number	Enter the Customer’s Tax / VAT Number.
   Tax Exempt	Check this box if the Customer is exempt from tax. Otherwise leave this box unchecked.
   Has Credit Limit	Check this box to set a credit limit for the Customer (the following ‘Credit Limit’ setting will then be displayed.
   Credit Limit	(Appears only if the ‘Has Credit Limit’ box is checked.) Enter a Credit Limit for the Customer.
   Price List	Select a previously-configured Trade Price List for this Customer. A ‘Default’ Price List takes any Default Trade Price values held against Stock items.
   Product Export Status	Select a Product Export Status for this Customer. The status can be ‘Requested’, ‘Enabled’ or ‘Not Enabled’. If set to Enabled, this customer will be allowed to download an extended product information file, which contains images and descriptions, in addition to their prices.
   Drop Shipping Status	Select a Drop Shipping Status for this Customer. The status can be ‘Requested’, ‘Enabled’ or ‘Not Enabled’. With this set to ‘Enabled’, you are the Drop Shipper for your B2B customers.
   Drop Shipping Logo	Browse to the location where you have a Drop Shipping logo for the customer, then click the Upload button. The criteria for whether a drop shipping logo appears is as follows: 1) The order needs to be a drop ship order 2) The customer must have it enabled 3) There must actually be a drop ship logo for the customer.
   Customer Category	Select the Trade Customer Categories to which the trade customer belongs.
   Contact Details
   Address Line 1	The first line of the customer’s address.
   Address Line 2	The second line of the customer’s address.
   Town/City	The town/city of the customer’s address.
   Region/County	The region/county of the customer’s address. Note that this must be a valid region or county — you cannot, for example, enter ‘N/A’ if you think that this is not applicable.
   Country	The country of the customer’s address.
   Postal/Zip Code	The post code/zip code of the customer’s address.
   Company Name	The name of the company that this customer belongs to. Note that this is a requirement for Business Accounts.
   Email	The customer’s email address. If you are editing customer details, you can click the Email button beside this field to email the customer 'on-the-fly' using your default email client. Note that this will be sent from the email address used by the Admin User; to send an 'on-the-fly' email from the company address to the customer, you would you need to set up an Admin User with the company address as their email address.
   Telephone	The main telephone number of the customer.
   Other Phone	An alternative telephone number for the customer.
   Other Customer Information
   Secret Question	Secret question to be used in password recovery.
   Secret Answer	Answer to secret question to be used in password recovery.
   Language	Customer’s standard language.
   Auto Login	If checked, the customer will attempt to log in automatically based on their cookie settings.
   Rank	Customer rank based on their spend history. This is not currently used in the IRP system but may be in the future.
   Discount (%)	The percentage discount that this customer receives. Note that this discount is applied after all other discounts have been applied (promotions, voucher, etc.) but before any Basket Points Loyalty Scheme discount. This allows the discount applied via a customer account to correctly consider items that are marked as non-discountable. In checkout, the customer will see a 'Customer Account Discount' row in the basket totals section set to the percentage entered in their customer account of the total price of the discountable items in their basket.
   Traffic Partner	Traffic partner ID of the traffic source partner associated with this customer account.
   External Customer ID	An external reference for this Customer possibly related to a value held in a 3rd party system.
   Points Loyalty Scheme	Select the Points Loyalty Scheme that the customer is enrolled in. See Points Loyalty Schemes for more information.
   Exclude From Points Loyalty Schemes	Check this box if you want to exclude the customer from enrollment or participation in Points Loyalty Schemes. See Points Loyalty Schemes for more information.
   IP Address	The last recorded IP address for this customer.
   GUID	A Globally Unique Identifier (GUID) value is stored in the customer cookie when visiting your website. It is a unique identifier which will be specific to that particular customer. It is used instead of the CustomerID from a security standpoint as access to a customer’s GUID will not enable access to stored customer details such as address, telephone, email, etc.
   Is Banned From Click & Collect	Customers are automatically banned from click and collect when a certain number of click and collect orders are cancelled (as determined by the ‘Click And Collect Cancelled Order Ban Threshold’ Application Setting). This only applies when the application setting ‘Enable Click And Collect’ is enabled. If a customer is banned from click and collect they will no longer be able to place click and collect orders on the website.
   Override Click & Collect Ban	If you check this box, this customer will always be able to place Click & Collect orders regardless of being banned or not.
   Estimated Customer Lifetime Value	This is an estimation of how much this person will be worth over their lifetime as a customer.
   Customer Password
   Reset Password	Clicking this button will trigger an email to be sent to the customer which they can follow to set their own new password. The link in the email will be valid for the time specified by the Application Setting ‘Temporary Customer Password Expiry In Hours’ (you can find this in the ‘Security’ group of settings). For more information about the IRP password reset functionality, see the section explaining the customer's Forgotten Password page in the main overview of the Customers help topic.
   New Password	Password for customer account.
   Confirm Password	Confirm the new password by entering the same value here.

4. After you have entered or edited the details, click the Insert Customer button or the Update Customer button to save them. If there are any errors with the insert or update, you will be notified at the top of the page. For example:
   
   

If all required information is entered correctly, the customer record will be saved and can be viewed on the Customers.aspx page.

From the CustomerEdit.aspx page, you can view the following by selecting the associated tab:

• Orders: All past orders placed by the customer. The Delivery Addresses listed against each order will include the Delivery First Name and Delivery Surname.
• Reviews*: All reviews made by the customer.
• Subscriptions: The customer’s current subscription settings.
• Dropped Baskets*: All dropped baskets associated with the customer.
• Recently Viewed: The models that the customer has recently viewed. Note that the 'Purchased' column is set to 'True' if and only if that customer has a completed purchase of a stock item within that model. Otherwise, this will be set to 'False'.
  
• Search Terms*: The search terms that the customer has recently used.
• Notes: Any notes relating to the customer.

*These tabs will be visible only if relevant to the particular customer. For example, if the customer has never submitted a review, you will not see a Review tab.

Currently it is not possible to suspend a customer account, for example because of suspected fraud. Instead, you could possibly put a manual step in your order processing to ensure that each order has an email address that is not on a list of banned addresses.

You can export customer data in the following formats:

• CSV: Comma Delimited Text File
• TSV: Tab Delimited Text File
• Pipe: Pipe Delimited Text File
• Microsoft Excel File
• XML File

You can either export records matching specific search criteria, or export all customer records.

To export customer data, follow these steps:

1. The export file will contain data based on your search requirements:
   • If you perform a Specific Customer search, the export file will contain that specific customer record.
   • If you perform a Search Criteria search, the export file will contain all customer records that match the defined search criteria.
   • If you perform an All Customers search, the export file will contain all customer records.
2. After you have performed the search and displayed the results, click the button to expand the export options section.
3. Select the file format that you want to use from the drop-down menu:
   
4. Click the Advanced button to open the Advanced Options lightbox. Here you can specify the exact columns from the customer record that you want to export, rather than exporting all columns by default.
5. Click the Export button to download the file in the chosen format.

Some customers may prefer to place their order as a ‘Guest’ and you can facilitate this by enabling the Guest Checkout. The Guest Checkout process simply removes the need for customers to create accounts, passwords and secret questions. Customer data will be gathered as normal.

Note that customers using the Guest Account cannot use the ‘Password Reset’ feature, as a Guest Account has no password and so cannot be reset. The idea of the Guest Account process is that the customer cannot log in to an account after placing an order.

If you have enabled the Guest Checkout, customers will see a YourIRP/Secure/Login.aspx page that looks something similar to the following screen capture when they are ready to start the checkout process:

When a customer clicks the 'Continue As Guest' button, they will be presented with a form to complete on the YourIRP/Secure/BillingAddress.aspx page.

Note that, as with non-guest accounts, customers can click the 'Use this address as my Delivery Address' box, so allowing them to proceed directly to the postage page without having to add their delivery address again.

As customers progress through the checkout, they will see the YourIRP/Secure/DeliveryAddress.aspx screen where they will be able to confirm that they want to use the address they have just entered as their billing address or else they can enter a different address for the delivery of their order. They subsequently move on to the YourIRP/Secure/Postage.aspx screen where they can choose their postage options and from there to the YourIRP/Secure/PaymentDetails.aspx screen where they enter their payment details. The final screen they will see before placing their order is the YourIRP/Secure/OrderSummary.aspx screen where they can see a summary of the order they are about to place.

Once they click the ‘Place Order’ button they will see the OrderConfirmation.aspx page and an Order Confirmation System Email will be sent to the email address that they entered. The email will include a link containing the GuestOrderKey as a parameter for viewing the order status. If they visit the OrderDetails.aspx page, the billing details and address details will be hidden. As described below, they have the opportunity to upgrade to a full account on this page.

After the customer has placed their order, their account details will be shown on the main Customers.aspx page in IRP Admin. When you click the Edit button you will see that their account is defined as a Guest Account. Only a single previously-placed guest order can be associated with a regular account which has been upgraded from the Guest account (either the last order placed, if upgrading on the OrderConfirmation.aspx page, or the order being viewed, on the OrderDetails.aspx page).

You can allow Guest customers to create a full account after they place their order (via an account creation box on the OrderConfirmation.aspx page) or when they view a previously-placed guest order from a link in their order confirmation email (via a Create Account link on the YourIRP/Secure/OrderDetails.aspx page). If the customer takes up this option, they will use the YourIRP/Secure/UpgradeGuestAccount.aspx page. Here they can enter their password details

Small Translations for the Guest Checkout

The Guest Checkout uses several Small Translations. You should translate these into all of the active languages on your system to maximise your opportunities for attracting international sales. Here is a sampling of some of the main Small Translations — to find out the ID of all of the ones involved, simply copy the text on the front end into the search bar at top of IRP Admin and select ‘Translations Small’ as the filter.

• 1699: This is used for the text on the header on the Guest Checkout box YourIRP/Secure/Login.aspx page. The default text is “Guest Checkout”.
• 1665: This is used for the text on the header on the Guest Checkout box YourIRP/Secure/Login.aspx page. The default text is “Fast and easy, and you can create an account later if you want to”.
• 1659: This is used for the text on the button on the YourIRP/Secure/Login.aspx page. The default text is “Checkout As Guest”.
• 1660: This is used for the tooltip text on the button on the YourIRP/Secure/Login.aspx page. The default text is “Click this button to checkout as a guest”.
• 1667: This is used for the text at the top of the YourIRP/Secure/BillingAddress.aspx page. The default text is “Enter your details below to proceed with guest checkout. All fields are required unless otherwise stated.”.
• 1666: This is used for Step 1 (email address) on the Guest Checkout form on the YourIRP/Secure/BillingAddress.aspx page. The default text is “Enter Your Email Address”.
• 1197: This is used for Step 2 (billing address) on the Guest Checkout form on the YourIRP/Secure/BillingAddress.aspx page. The default text is “Billing Address Details”.
• 1198: This is used for Step 3 (contact information) on the Guest Checkout form on the YourIRP/Secure/BillingAddress.aspx page. The default text is “Other Contact Information”.
• 1662: This is used for the text on the button on the ‘Submit And Continue’ button on the on the Guest Checkout form on the YourIRP/Secure/BillingAddress.aspx page. The default text is “Submit And Continue”.
• 1663: This is used for the tooltip text on the ‘Submit And Continue’ button on the on the Guest Checkout form on the YourIRP/Secure/BillingAddress.aspx page. The default text is “Submit your billing address details and continue placing the order”.
• 1677: This is used for the text on the YourIRP/Secure/OrderDetails.aspx page that encourages Guest Customers to sign up for a full account. The default text is “Why not create an account with us? Click here to upgrade this order”.
• 2601: This is used for the text on the YourIRP/Secure/BillingAddress.aspx page that allows customers to use the same address for billing and delivery. The default text is “Use this address as my Delivery Address”.

Application Settings for the Guest Checkout

You use the following Application Settings to manage the Guest Checkout functionality (all of these are in the ‘Checkout Process’ grouping):

• Enable Guest Checkout: This is the main switch to allow customers to check out as guests rather than signing up for full customer accounts.
• Enable Guest Checkout Standard Account Creation: If you enable this setting, Guest Checkout customers will be given the opportunity to turn their Guest Accounts into full Customer Accounts from the Billing Address stage of the Checkout process.
• Enable Guest Account Mail List Subscriptions: If you enable this setting, Guest Checkout customers will automatically be added to the Mailing List.

Occasionally it is possible that some customers' PayPal telephone numbers are not pulled through to the IRP from the customers' PayPal accounts (despite the customers saying that they have a phone number listed on their account). This is not an IRP issue — instead, you need to advise customers to update their PayPal details. As described in a PayPal Community post, there is a very easy solution to stop this from happening. In brief, you need to do the following:

1. Log into your PayPal business account.
2. Click on ‘Profile’ and choose ‘More Options’.
3. Under ‘My Selling Tools’, click ‘Update’ located next to ‘Website preferences’.
4. Scroll down to the ‘Contact Telephone Number’ section and click the button to require a contact telephone number.

Note that the only exception may be for customers who have ordered previously. See the following section Customer Phone Numbers and PayPal Orders.

Customer Phone Numbers and PayPal Orders

The IRP handles customer phone numbers on their IRP account as follows when they place an order via PayPal:

1. If there is no existing customer account, the IRP creates one using the PayPal account details, including a phone number if it is in the PayPal account.
2. If there is an existing account, and it contains a phone number, there is no update performed using the PayPal information. (Therefore if a customer has changed their phone number on their PayPal account, their IRP account will always show the old phone number even if they place new orders - unless the customer changes their phone number on their IRP account.)
3. If there is an existing account, and it does not contain a phone number, the customer is provided the opportunity to enter that information on the order confirmation page. If they choose not to supply it, that is up to the customer.

For more general information about PayPal on the IRP, see the PayPal Settings and PayPal API Accounts help topics. For specific information about PayPal Refunds, see How to Refund Card & PayPal Orders.

The Delete Customer button will be disabled if a customer has an order against their account – if you attempt to click the Delete button a message will appear stating that the customer account cannot be deleted.

You can only delete customer accounts if the customer has not made any orders. However, should a customer request the permanent removal of their information from an IRP website, you can use the following procedure to allow fully anonymised order records to be kept but for the customer details to be removed completely.

NOTE that this procedure will be reviewed when the next GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is implemented.

Firstly, confirm with the customer that this is a definitive action and cannot be reversed. Once you have received confirmation, take the following actions:

1. Customer Details:
   1. Locate the customer account via the Customers section of the IRP.
   2. Click the Edit button.
   3. Update the customer details as follows:
      First Name = 'Deleted'
      Surname = 'Customer'
      Address Details = 'Deleted on request by [your name] on [date]'
      Email Address = 'anonymous-CustomerID@websitedomainname.com'
      Password = Random 8 characters
      Telephone = 'Deleted'
2. Subscriptions:
   1. On the Subscriptions tab of the customer section, unsubscribe all subscriptions.
3. Mailing Lists:
   1. Search the Mailing Lists section for the customer email and update to the same as above.