Customers and companies
Open Help Desk → Customers. The page keeps one record per real person and one per company, whatever channel they used. Only identified people become contacts; an anonymous chat visitor never does.
Companies and Contacts
Switch between Companies and Contacts at the top.
Companies lists each company with its sources, number of people, open reviews, and last activity.
Contacts lists each person with name, company, title, and when they were last seen.
Search either list. Admins can also click New to add a company (name and optional domain) or a contact (an email or phone, plus an optional full name), or click Import to bring in a CSV: upload the file, map its columns to your fields, check the preview, and click Confirm import. Nothing is written until you confirm.
Click a row to open the record. Each record has Overview, Activity, and (for companies) Intelligence tabs, a Properties list, and a place to add notes. Notes are internal only; customers never see them.
Where records come from
A chat visitor who gives an email address becomes a contact, linked to the conversation.
An email sender becomes a contact.
A company is matched by its corporate email domain (free email providers do not count).
A customer organization that a signed sign-in names gets a company of its own (see below).
Connected business systems that carry customer records link to the same records, and the record shows which source each field came from.
A company that was created from conversations and is not in your CRM is marked Not in CRM.
Verification levels
Each contact carries a level that says how sure we are of who they are. You see it as a badge in the Customers list and on the contact record. Hover the badge to see what the widget may use.
Badge | Meaning |
|---|---|
Anonymous | Not identified. The widget uses nothing personal. |
Self-reported | The visitor typed a name or email, and nothing confirmed it. The widget uses nothing personal. |
Email verified | They proved they own the address. The widget can share their own history only, never company data. |
Verified | Your own website or app signed them in and told the widget who they are. Their own history only. |
Portal verified | They signed in through your platform, such as the customer portal on a gated Help Center. The widget can also use what you have confirmed about their company. |
A level only ever moves up. A later, weaker session never downgrades a contact.
When someone who signed in through your customer portal opens the chat widget on a gated Help Center, the sign-in carries over and the widget knows who they are. This works when the widget is set to Public knowledge only and has a signing key (see Website chat widget). Visitors who signed in with an email magic link start chat unidentified. The sign-in does not widen the knowledge the widget can answer from.
Companies from a signed sign-in
A signed widget pass or a portal sign-in can name the organization the person is acting for, with an account id. Each of those organizations gets its own company record the first time it is seen, named from the company name in the sign-in, or "Verified organization" when there is none. It is never matched to an existing company by email domain or by name, and it never takes the person's own company. So whoever signs in first, a consultant from another firm for example, cannot tie your customer's organization to their own company.
An account id counts only for the system that signed it. The same id from two of your customer portals, or from a portal and a chat widget, makes two separate companies, so two platforms whose ids overlap never share one. To file a widget's chats under a portal's company, have your server add that portal's company key to the signed pass as account_key: hc:, then the provider_id your sign-in page receives when the portal sends someone to it, a colon, and the account id.
This only happens when at least one of your gated Help Centers has company requests turned on (see Gated access and the customer portal). Otherwise no company is created.
If a company with the same name already exists, the new record shows Possible duplicate. Merging is the only way to make that organization one of your existing companies. The company you keep becomes the organization's company from then on, and requests filed under either record count for it.
Nobody is added to this company automatically, so at first it has no people of its own. Contacts still join the company of their own corporate email domain as usual, and someone on a free email address stays without a company. Once you merge the organization's company with its email-domain company, that company's people count as the organization's people.
Duplicates and merging
When a new record looks like an existing one but the evidence is not conclusive (for example, the same company name with a different domain), it goes to a review instead of being merged automatically. The company record shows Possible duplicate, and an admin can choose Merge or Keep separate. Merges re-point everything to the surviving record; nothing is deleted.
What operators see on a ticket
On a ticket, the customer panel shows the linked Contacts and Companies. One contact is the Primary reply contact; replies go to that person. You can search and link another contact or company from the panel. If no contact is linked, the panel says "No contact associated yet". On a ticket with no conversation behind it, such as one you created by hand, you need a contact with an email address before you can reply. You can still leave an internal note.
When someone whose sign-in names their organization sends a request from a gated Help Center, or starts a chat with a signed widget pass, the ticket is filed under that organization's company automatically. This happens only while company requests are on for at least one of your gated Help Centers. The company shows on the ticket, and the timeline records the change as automatic. A follow-up opened from a closed ticket is filed under the same companies as the original, with one muted "Ticket contacts and companies updated · automatic" entry on its timeline.
On a gated Help Center with company requests turned on, the companies linked to a ticket decide which portal visitors can see it, for visitors whose sign-in names their organization. If you link another company to a ticket, visitors whose sign-in names that company can open the ticket and read its conversation. When customers sign in as the company you add, the ticket also drops out of the requester's own company list. Check before you link a company to a ticket that has a portal requester. See Gated access and the customer portal.
For chat tickets, the panel also shows the visitor's page journey, AI-read sentiment, and a link to the visitor profile.
The visitor profile has a Verified attributes section. It describes the conversation's latest message: how it was identified (Anonymous, Self-reported, Email confirmed by sign-in link, Verified by signed token, or Signed in through the customer's platform) and, when that message was signed, the attributes and account id its sign-in passed along, such as plan or role. If the latest message was not signed, the section says so, even when the visitor was verified earlier.
Requests and replies sent from a gated Help Center by visitors who signed in through your customer portal show as Signed in through the customer's platform, with the attributes their sign-in carried. Requests and replies from visitors who signed in with an email link show as Email confirmed by sign-in link: the address is proven, and nothing else is. Replies by email or text message show as Self-reported. Anything not verified is just what the visitor typed.
Privacy
Customer data stays inside your organization. Help Desk conversations are kept until someone deletes or archives them. After that, they follow your trash retention window. See Data handling and retention. PII scrubbing applies to content you add as knowledge, not to conversations. For a data request, an admin can use Export data or Delete data under Data & privacy on the customer's record. Delete cannot be undone.