Customers settings and privacy
This page is for the organization admin who sets up Customers. By the end Customers will be on, its statuses, tiers and revenue will fit how your company talks about customers, and you’ll know how to answer a person who asks what By Dawn holds about them, or asks you to remove it.
Everything here is in Settings, then Organization, then Customers. Only owners and admins see this section. Members use Customers once it’s on, but they can’t change these settings.
Turn Customers on
Section titled “Turn Customers on”Turn on Turn on Customers. Members can then add customers, attach their requests to tickets, and filter and sort the board by them, and Customers appears in everyone’s sidebar.
Customers needs a plan that includes it. If yours doesn’t, you see Customers is not on your plan (see Plans and billing).
You can set up Revenue, the excluded domains and addresses, and the sources before you turn it on, so it starts the way you want. Statuses, Tiers and Forget a requester can be changed once it’s on.
Turning Customers off hides it again, but deletes nothing: customers and their requests are still there when you turn it back on. If Intercom is connected, turning Customers on also goes back over the conversations already linked to tickets and records each one as a request (see Intercom).
Set up statuses and tiers
Section titled “Set up statuses and tiers”Statuses say where each customer stands. A new organization starts with Active, Trial and Churned. A status marked Active is a customer you serve. Turn Active off for statuses such as Churned, so they’re easy to leave out.
Tiers group customers by size or plan, such as Enterprise or Growth. A new organization has none, and a customer doesn’t need one.
In both lists you can add one (type a name and choose Add status or Add tier), rename one in place, pick its colour, and move it up or down. The order is the order menus and filters show.
A status or tier that customers still have can’t be deleted. Move those customers first, because otherwise they’d have nothing. Customers also needs at least one active status, so the last one can’t be deleted or made inactive.
Choose the revenue unit and who sees it
Section titled “Choose the revenue unit and who sees it”Revenue is the unit customer revenue is entered in: a Currency (Other… takes any three-letter code, such
as NZD) and a Period, Per year or Per month. Pick it before people enter figures, because changing it
doesn’t convert what’s already entered.
Revenue is commercially sensitive, so Who can see revenue offers:
- Everyone in the organization: every member sees revenue on customers and tickets, and can filter and sort by it.
- Owners and admins only: members don’t see revenue on customers or tickets, can’t filter or sort by it, and API keys don’t receive it.
Exclude domains and addresses
Section titled “Exclude domains and addresses”By Dawn finds a request’s customer by the requester’s email domain. Some domains don’t belong to one company, such as a university’s or a reseller’s. Add them under Excluded domains and addresses, so requests from them never match a customer:
- Domains: every address at that domain, such as
university.edu. - Addresses: one address, such as
[email protected].
Personal mail providers, such as gmail.com, and your organization’s own verified domains never match
either, so you don’t need to list them. A teammate forwarding mail from your own domain is never filed as a customer.
Choose where customers come from
Section titled “Choose where customers come from”Create customers automatically has one switch, From Intercom companies, and it’s on to begin with. When a teammate links a conversation from a company By Dawn doesn’t know yet, that company becomes a customer, with its name and its website’s domain.
Email, chat and API requests only match customers you already have. They never create one, so people who write to you once don’t fill the list. A member can still add one in a click from a ticket that came in by email.
Fill revenue, size and tier from Intercom
Section titled “Fill revenue, size and tier from Intercom”Under Attribute data source, choose where customer revenue, size and tier come from:
- None: people enter them in By Dawn.
- Intercom: By Dawn keeps them in step with the Intercom company, when a teammate links a conversation and once a day,
for customers that came from Intercom. Revenue is the company’s monthly spend, times 12 when your period is per year.
To fill the tier too, name the Intercom company attribute that holds it, such as
plan, under Tier from Intercom attribute. Its value is matched to one of your tiers by name.
Fields filled from Intercom show from Intercom on the customer and can’t be edited in By Dawn, because the next sync would overwrite them. Intercom has to be connected first (see Intercom).
Who can do what
Section titled “Who can do what”| Members | Owners and admins | |
|---|---|---|
| See customers and their requests | Yes | Yes |
| Add and edit customers | Yes, if they can change tickets in a project | Yes |
| Add, edit and remove a ticket’s requests | Yes, on tickets they can change | Yes |
| See revenue | Unless it’s limited to admins | Yes |
| Merge and delete customers | No | Yes |
| Change these settings, and forget a requester | No | Yes |
Restricted projects stay private. A customer’s counts and requests, and its export, include only tickets the viewer can see, so a member outside a restricted project never learns what’s in it through a customer.
What By Dawn keeps about requesters
Section titled “What By Dawn keeps about requesters”Customers are business data: company names, domains and figures. The people who ask are personal data, so By Dawn keeps as little about them as it can:
- Who asked: a request keeps the requester’s name and the source’s reference for them. That’s an Intercom contact ID, a chat user ID, or for email the address the ticket came from. By Dawn keeps no contact list, phone numbers or profile pictures.
- The quote: what they said, as plain text. From Intercom, it’s only kept when the teammate leaves Quote the customer ticked.
- How long: a request lasts as long as its ticket. Archiving the ticket keeps it, and deleting the ticket deletes it. Deleting a customer deletes its requests.
- AI: By Dawn’s AI features don’t read quotes, and nothing is used to train a model.
Answer an access request
Section titled “Answer an access request”When someone asks what you hold about their company’s requests, open the customer and choose Export CSV. It downloads one row per request, with its ticket, source, quote and requester (see Export a customer’s requests).
Forget a requester
Section titled “Forget a requester”When a person asks to be removed, Forget a requester clears their name, reference and quote from every customer request in your organization.
- Under Find by, choose Email address or Requester reference.
- Type their email address, or the reference the source gave them, such as an Intercom contact ID.
- Choose Forget…, then Forget requester.
By Dawn says how many requests it cleared, or No requests matched, so nothing was cleared. It can’t be undone. The requests stay, so the customer still counts on those tickets, but they no longer say who asked or what they said. By Dawn records that an admin forgot a requester and how many requests changed, without naming the person.
It matches the reference exactly, ignoring case. A request someone added by hand with only a name has no reference, so it isn’t found: edit or remove it on the ticket instead.
Forgetting covers customer requests only. A ticket that came in by email or chat still has the sender and their message in its own details, so edit or delete the ticket too if the request covers it.
We turned Customers off. Is our data gone?
No. Customers, statuses, tiers and requests stay. Turn it back on and they’re all there.
What happens if our plan no longer includes Customers?
Nothing changes while it’s on. Once an admin turns it off, it can’t be turned on again until the plan includes it.
What happens to customers if we disconnect Intercom?
They stay, with their requests. Only the link between By Dawn and the Intercom workspace goes, so new conversations stop adding requests.
Can members see revenue in the API?
API keys follow Who can see revenue. With Owners and admins only, keys never receive it.