product icon

Manage Customers

A customer is any distinct individual who is listed as a contact on the account (either manually or through self-registration). Typically customers are a client of one or more of the account's services, though it is possible to have customers without access to any services.

When a customer is granted access to a service, they become available to be added for selection as the customer for all incidents raised on the service. If they are given portal access, they can log in to the Customer Portal to create and track incidents, search the Knowledge Articles and view messages. Customers can also be assigned to specific companies as employees.

About customer access and permissions

You can choose whether or not each customer on your account is given access to the Customer Portal, and can even customize the features and services to which they have access.

The level of Customer Portal access granted to a customer depends on a few different settings, as follows:

  • (a) Customer Portal Access – This setting determines whether or not a customer is given access to the Customer Portal, and what type of access that may be (e.g., restricted access, admin access). If the Send out email invitation setting is enabled, new customers will receive email notifications inviting them to activate their new account for the Customer Portal. Customers can be given any of the following access levels: 
    • No Access – These customers have no access and cannot log in to the Customer Portal.
    • Standard Access – These customers can log in to the Customer Portal and submit incidents only for the specific services to which they have been given access.
    • Company Access – These customers can log in to the Customer Portal and submit incidents only for those services to which their company has been given access.
    • Company Admin Access – These customers can do the same things as those with "Company Access", plus they can view and modify incidents submitted by other employees in their company.
    Tip: You can update customer portal access individually, or choose to mass assign customer portal access levels to select (or all) customers.
  • (b) Services – The "Access to Services" setting determines which services a customer will be able to log incidents for when they log in the Customer Portal (only those services to which the customer's company has access will be shown).

Create a new customer (manually)

You can add a single customer at a time as follows. To add more than one customer at a time, see Create multiple customers (upload via CSV) below.

  1. Sign in to GoToAssist Service Desk with your email address and password at https://desk.gotoassist.com.
  2. Get to the New Customer page in either of the following ways:
    • Go to Configure > Customers > Create New Customer.
    • Go to People > New Customer.
  3. On the New Customer page, enter the information for each of the tabs (i.e., General, Services).
  4. Click Save when finished.
    General tab
    • Name & Contact Info – Enter the customer's details (e.g., name, email address) and select a company for the customer. Each customer can be assigned up to 1 company (or no company at all).
    • Avatar – Click Change to upload a photo, icon or logo to represent this customer. This avatar will appear within Service Desk records affiliated with this customer.

      You can upload any image size, but for the best quality it should be a .GIF, .JPG or .PNG file at least 61 x 61 pixels. It will be scaled down automatically.

    • Additional Details – Click to add additional contact information about the customer (e.g., phone, job title).
    • Customer Portal Access – Specify the user's "Customer Portal access", as described above.
    • Email Format – Choose from HTML or Plain Text formatting for emails sent to the customer by Service Desk.
    • Feedback Emails – Choose whether or not you'd like the customer to receive feedback request emails after an incident has been closed .
    • Time zone – Select the time zone in which the customer resides.
    • Locale – Choose the regional language for the customer (i.e., Deutsch, English, Español, Português, Français, Italiano).
    • Services – Click Add to jump to the Services tab.
    Services tab
    Access to Services – Specify the customer's access to services, as described above.
    1. Search Services – Use the search box to populate services by name
    2. Select Portal Access or No Portal Accessfor each service.
    3. Click the icon to remove a listed service.
    4. Click Save when finished.

Create multiple customers (upload via CSV)

You can upload multiple customers at once using a CSV file. This is also useful for importing historical customer data from a former data-management system.

  1. Sign in to GoToAssist Service Desk with your email address and password at https://desk.gotoassist.com.
  2. First, create a comma-separated file (.CSV) containing the customer information.
    Note: You can either download and use a sample .CSV file, or create one that adheres to the requirements listed below under Create a compatible CSV file (for uploading customers).
  3. Go to Configure (or People) > Customers.
  4. Click Import Customers at the bottom of the page.
  5. On the Import Customers page, click Browse to upload a .CSV file.
  6. Select which services the customers should have access to.
  7. If desired, select the "Send customers Customer Portal Activation emails" check box.
  8. Click Upload! when ready.
  9. A "Confirm Results" page will show you the customers that you are trying to add, as well as any errors that were triggered. Review and then click Save.

Export a list of customers

You can also export a .CSV file containing all of your customers.

  1. Sign in to GoToAssist Service Desk with your email address and password at https://desk.gotoassist.com.
  2. Go to Configure > Customers.
  3. Click Export Customers at the bottom of the page.
    Tip: To export specific customers, enter keywords in the "Filter" box.
  4. Click the hyperlink of the customers.csv to download, then open or save the file.

Edit a customer

  1. Sign in to GoToAssist Service Desk with your email address and password at https://desk.gotoassist.com.
  2. Go to Configure > Customers > [select customer].
  3. Make your desired changes.
  4. Click Save when finished.

Delete or denylist a customer

If a user, customer, or admin is deleted, the personal identification information (PII) associated with them is automatically removed from our system and is displayed as a blank value in all associated record data.

  1. Sign in to GoToAssist Service Desk with your email address and password at https://desk.gotoassist.com.
  2. Go to Configure > Customers > [select customer].
  3. At the bottom of the page use one of the following options:
    • Delete Customer – Click to remove the customer from the account.
    • Delete & Denylist Customer – Click to remove the customer from the account and also add their email address to the denylist.

Create a compatible CSV file (for uploading customers)

In order to properly import customers using a .CSV file, you must adhere to the following rules or download a sample to use:

  1. Create a header row – On the first row of your spreadsheet, fill in the name of each customer according to the possible fields (listed below).
    • first_name: string
    • fax: string
    • last_name: string
    • address: string
    • email: string
    • notes: text (supports textile)
    • email_aliases: string (comma seperated email addresses)
    • Company: string
    • office_phone: string
    • job_title: string
    • mobile_phone: string
    • department: string
    • other_phone: string
    		  
    • Limits: String can be up to 255 characters, and text can be as long as you like.
    • Duplicates and Updating Existing Customers: Existing customers are detected with an exact match of their email address – if they already exist, they will be ignored during the import. Also, if there are duplicate customers in the CSV, these are also ignored but messages will be raised.
  2. Fill in customer information – On each row, enter the appropriate information for each customer according to each header. If these fields contain commas, the entire string MUST be encapsulated in double quotes. For example:

    Example: John,Smith,john@company.com,"","",""","","","","This guy is a cool dude, and he's also pretty helpful."

    • Companies – You can add a customer to a company by filling in the "Company" column. This will either create/find a company record and associate the customer to that company.
    • Creating Customers/Companies with Permissions to Services – Customers that are created with a company are created with services that the company is allow to see.
  3. Convert your spreadsheet – Convert it into a .CSV file (UTF-8 encoding is recommended). Once you've done that, upload the .CSV file.

    Related

    Set Up People and People Management

    Manage Users and Admins

    Manage Groups

    Manage Companies

    Manage Employees

Related Articles
Article last updated: 27 September, 2022