Files, the customer portal and the survey
Let customers attach pictures and documents, see their own requests and answer inside them, and tell you how you did.
Everything on this page starts switched off. Switch on what you want under Settings.
File attachments
Settings → File attachments. Customers can attach a photo of a damaged product, a receipt or a document to a form.
- Tick the forms that accept files (Contact, Warranty Registration, Quote Request).
- Tick the kinds of files: Pictures (JPG, PNG, GIF, WebP), PDF documents, Plain text files (TXT).
- Choose the Largest file (MB) (1 to 20) and the Files per request (1 to 10), then save.
The form then shows Attach files under its fields. What happens with a file:
- It is checked by its name and by its content. A file that only looks like a picture (for example a program renamed to .jpg) is refused, and so is any other kind, such as SVG, HTML or PHP. One refused file refuses the whole submission: nothing is saved and the customer sees why.
- It is stored encrypted, under a random name, in a private folder of your uploads directory. There is no web address that opens it; it opens only through Support Desk.
- Your team opens it on the request (Attached files, with a small preview of pictures). The customer opens it in their portal.
Your server has its own upload limit (PHP's upload_max_filesize and post_max_size); the screen shows it, and a larger setting is held to it. All files of one form travel together, so keep their total within it too.
Deleting a request permanently also deletes its files. Archive, Spam and Trash keep them.
The customer portal
Settings → Customer portal. Customers see their own requests and answer inside them.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Switch the customer portal on | Nothing is shown to customers until this is ticked. |
| Show "Support requests" in WooCommerce My Account | Signed-in customers find their requests there. Only with WooCommerce. |
| Portal page | Optional: a page with the shortcode [affstackdev_support_portal]. Without WooCommerce this is where customers go. |
| Also show requests sent signed out with the account's email address | Off at the start. Read the warning below before you tick it. |
| Private link in customer emails | The receipt and every reply carry a link to that one request. |
| Customers may reply in the portal | They can answer inside the request. |
| Customers may attach files to replies | With the kinds and limits of File attachments. |
Who sees what:
- A signed-in customer sees the requests they sent while signed in to that account.
- With Also show requests sent signed out with the account's email address ticked, they also see the requests sent without signing in with their account's email address (capitals or not). A request another account sent while signed in, and an erased request, never show up this way.
- Anyone with a request's private link sees that one request. That is how a customer who sent it without an account opens it. Anyone you forward the link to can read it, as with the email itself.
- Nobody else: another customer, a visitor or someone guessing addresses gets the same "This request is not available" page. Requests in Spam or Trash are never shown.
Warning: WooCommerce does not confirm that an account's email address belongs to the person who opened the account. With the setting ticked, anyone who opens an account with one of your customers' addresses sees that customer's earlier requests sent without signing in: what they sent, your replies and their files. Leave it off unless you trust your accounts' addresses. Unticking it hides those requests again at once; their private links keep working.
On a request the customer sees what they sent, its status in their words (Received, In progress, Waiting for your reply, Resolved, Closed), the conversation (your email replies, chat messages and portal replies) and the files of both sides. They never see private notes, who is assigned or the history of changes.
When a customer replies in the portal:
- Waiting on customer and Resolved become In progress; an archived request returns to the Inbox.
- Your support mailbox gets the email Customer reply in the portal (Settings → Emails) with what they wrote.
- A closed request takes no more replies; the customer is asked to send a new request.
Files for the customer: with the portal and its private links on, Email the customer on a request has Files for the customer. The files are added to the request and the email names them; the customer opens them on their request page. They are not attached to the email.
The request page has a Customer portal card: who sees the request, its private link, and Replace private link. Replacing a link ends every earlier link of that request; the next email you send carries the new one.
Suggested answers
Settings → Suggested answers. Show your help pages to visitors while they write to you, so many find the answer before they send.
- Tick the pages that answer common questions (for example your refund, shipping or warranty pages). Pages with a password are not listed.
- If your help is in blog posts, choose their category under Posts in this category.
- Tick Show suggested answers on the contact form and press Save suggested answers.
While a visitor types their message in the contact form, on its page or in the contact bubble, up to three matching pages show up under the message with a short excerpt. They open in a new tab, so nothing the visitor typed is lost, and the visitor can still send the form.
- Only the pages and the category you chose are searched, at most 100 of them; drafts, private posts and anything with a password never show.
- A page matches when the words of the message appear in its title (they count most) or in its text. Common English filler words are left out.
- What the visitor types is sent to your own site to find the pages and is not kept.
- The Warranty registration and Quote request forms show no suggestions.
Email replies
Settings → Email replies. When a customer answers one of your Support Desk emails, file the answer under its request, so you see the whole conversation in one place and the request comes back to your Inbox.
- Enter your support mailbox: Mail server (IMAP), Encryption and Port (your mail provider lists them), the User name (usually the address) and the Password. Gmail, Yahoo and iCloud need an app password.
- Leave Folder at INBOX unless the answers arrive in another folder.
- Tick File customers' email replies under their requests and press Save email replies. Support Desk signs in once to check the details.
Every five minutes Support Desk reads the new messages in that folder. A message is filed when it answers a Support Desk email of a request and comes from the address the request was sent with. It is filed like a reply in the customer portal: Waiting on customer and Resolved become In progress, an archived request returns to the Inbox, and allowed attached files are kept.
- Support Desk only reads your mailbox. It never moves, deletes or marks a message, so your mailbox looks exactly as before.
- Only messages that arrive after you switch it on are read.
- Out-of-office answers, newsletters, messages from other addresses, messages your mail server marks as failing its sender checks and answers to closed requests stay in your mailbox only.
- The earlier email the customer quoted is left out, so the request shows only what is new.
- The password is kept encrypted. Test connection checks the saved details at any time; the screen also shows the last check and how many replies were filed.
The satisfaction survey
Settings → Satisfaction survey. Ask customers how you did.
- Tick Ask customers how you did.
- Choose when: when a request is set to Resolved (or straight to Closed), or only when it is Closed.
- Write the question, or keep "How did we do?".
About ten minutes after the change, the customer gets one email (the Satisfaction survey message in Settings → Emails) with a link to a short page: Good, OK or Poor, and a comment if they like. If the request is open again when the ten minutes are up, no email goes out, and a request is asked only once.
Opening the link records nothing (some mail programs open links by themselves); the answer is saved when the customer presses Send. They can change it later. With the portal on, a resolved request there shows the same question.
The answer shows on the request (Customer rating), in its history, in the export and in Reports.