Customers
This page helps you see who asked for your work. By the end you’ll have your customers in By Dawn, their requests on the tickets they asked for, and a board you can filter and sort by how many customers want something and how much they’re worth to you.
A customer is a company you build for: its name, the email domains its people write from, and details such as its status, tier, revenue, size and owner. A customer request says that a customer asked for a ticket. It can be marked important and keep a quote of what they said, in their words. A ticket can have requests from several customers, so the most-wanted work stands out.
Requests come from wherever your customers talk to you: a member adds one by hand, and Intercom, chat channels, email intake, the API and the Linear import add them on their own (see Where requests come from).
Customers is off until an organization admin turns it on, and your plan has to include it. While it’s off, the Customers page tells you so, and nothing about customers shows on tickets or the board. Admins turn it on, and set up statuses, tiers and revenue, in Customers settings and privacy.
Open the Customers page
Section titled “Open the Customers page”Choose Customers in the Workspace group at the bottom of the sidebar. On a phone, it’s in the workspace menu. The page lists every customer, and opens the one you pick beside the list.
Each customer in the list shows:
- its logo, or its initials, its name and its status;
- up to three of its domains;
- its tier, revenue, size, and requests: 3 open · 1 shipped counts requests on open tickets, and on tickets that reached a completed column in the last 90 days;
- its owner, the member who looks after the relationship.
Sort the list by Name, Revenue, Size, Open requests, Shipped requests or Date added. Pick the same sort again to reverse it.
To find a customer, type in the search box. It matches the start of a word in the name, or the start of a domain. To narrow the list, add Status, Tier or Owner: Owner offers Me, each member and No owner, and Tier offers No tier.
Add a customer
Section titled “Add a customer”- Choose New customer.
- Type its Name. Two customers can’t share a name.
- Under Domains, list the domains its people email from, separated by commas, such as
acme.com, acme.io. - Pick its Status, and a Tier if you use them.
- Choose Add customer. The new customer opens.
Domains are how By Dawn recognises a customer’s people when their email or Intercom conversation arrives, so add every
domain they use. Each domain matches exactly: eu.acme.com isn’t acme.com, so list both if both write to you. A
domain belongs to one customer only, and By Dawn won’t take a personal mail domain such as gmail.com, one your admins
excluded, or one of your organization’s own.
Work on a customer’s page
Section titled “Work on a customer’s page”A customer’s page has its details, its requests, its domains and its external IDs.
Details are edited where they are. Pick a new Status, Tier or Owner from its menu, or choose the pencil beside Revenue, Size or Logo, change it, and press Enter. Revenue is a whole number in your organization’s unit, such as US dollars per year. When your admin fills revenue, size or tier from Intercom, those fields say from Intercom and are edited there, so the next sync doesn’t overwrite your change.
Requests are grouped by where their ticket is:
- Open: the ticket is still being worked on.
- Shipped: the ticket reached a completed column.
- Canceled: the ticket was canceled. This group starts folded.
Each request shows its ticket, its quote, where it came from, who asked and when. Choose the star to mark it important, or the bin to remove it. A ticket in a project you can’t see shows as A ticket you can’t open.
External IDs list the other systems that know this customer: an Intercom company, a Linear customer, or a tool your team connected through the API. They’re added by those systems, and you can’t edit them here.
Add a request
Section titled “Add a request”From a customer’s page, choose New request:
- Choose An existing ticket and search for it, or A new ticket and give it a Title and Project.
- Tick Important to this customer if it is.
- Paste what they said into Quote, in their words. It’s plain text, up to 4,000 characters.
- Type who asked under Requested by.
- Choose Add request.
From a ticket, use its Customers section instead (below). You need to be able to change tickets in the ticket’s project to add, edit or remove its requests.
See who asked on a ticket
Section titled “See who asked on a ticket”A ticket’s Customers section lists its requests. Each one shows the customer, an Important flag when it’s marked, the quote, where it came from and who asked. A request from Intercom or another tool links back to the conversation. With none yet, the section says No customer has asked for this yet.
- Add a request: choose Add, pick the Customer, and fill in what you know: Important to this customer, What they said, Link to the conversation and Who asked. Then choose Add request.
- Change one: hover over it and choose the pencil.
- Remove one: hover over it, choose ×, then Remove. The customer and the ticket stay.
A ticket that came in by email may also offer to file the request for you:
- acme.com isn’t a customer yet. Choose Create to add Acme as a customer, with that domain, and its request on
this ticket. Later email from
acme.comthen finds Acme on its own. - acme.com belongs to Acme, who hasn’t got a request here. Choose Add to add Acme’s request, with the sender filled in.
Neither appears for personal mail domains, or for domains and addresses your admins excluded.
Find the work customers want
Section titled “Find the work customers want”On the board, a card shows how many customers asked for it, a flag when any of them marked it important, and their combined revenue: 3 with a flag and $120K is three customers, one important request, and $120,000 a year between them. A list row shows the same. Nothing shows on a ticket no customer has asked for.
Under + Filter you’ll find:
| Filter | What it keeps |
|---|---|
| Customer | Tickets a customer asked for, or No customer |
| Customer status | Tickets asked for by customers with a status, such as Active |
| Customer tier | Tickets asked for by customers on a tier |
| Customer count | Tickets at least that many customers asked for |
| Customer revenue | Tickets whose customers’ revenue adds up to at least that much |
| Important request | Tickets with an important request |
Each filter can be is or is not. Customer count and Customer revenue offer common thresholds, and At least takes your own.
A column’s menu can sort by Customer count or Customer revenue, to put the most-wanted work at the top. Save the result as a view like any other (see Board and columns).
A ticket counts each customer once, however many requests they made, and a customer’s revenue is counted once per ticket.
Where requests come from
Section titled “Where requests come from”| Source | How a request gets there |
|---|---|
| Added by hand | A member adds it, from the ticket or from the customer’s page. |
| Intercom | A teammate files or links a ticket from a conversation in the By Dawn sidebar. |
| Slack, Discord, Microsoft Teams | A request filed in a channel bound to a default customer, or filed by a member who picked the customer (see Bind a channel). |
| Email intake opens a ticket for a client whose domain belongs to a customer. | |
| API | A tool your team connected adds it (see Customers API). |
| Import | The Linear import brings Linear’s customer needs. |
Only Intercom can add a customer you don’t have yet, from the company the conversation belongs to, and an admin can turn that off. Email, chat and the API only match customers you already have, so one-off senders never fill your list.
Merge or delete a customer
Section titled “Merge or delete a customer”Only an organization admin can do these. Members see the buttons greyed out.
- Merge combines two customers, such as Acme added by hand and Acme Inc. from Intercom. Choose Merge, then pick the customer to keep. Its name, status, tier and figures stay, and the other’s requests, domains and external IDs move to it. Links to the merged customer open the one you kept. It can’t be undone.
- Delete removes the customer with its requests, domains and external IDs. The tickets stay. It can’t be undone, so merge instead when the customer is really a duplicate.
Export a customer’s requests
Section titled “Export a customer’s requests”Choose Export CSV on a customer’s page to download its requests as a spreadsheet, for a customer review or a data-access request. It has one row per request you can see: the ticket, its title and state, the source and its link, whether it’s important, the quote, the requester and when it was added. It never includes revenue.
Why can't I see Customers in the sidebar?
Customers is off for your organization. An organization admin turns it on in Settings, then Organization, then Customers, if your plan includes it.
Why don't I see revenue?
Your admins chose to show revenue to owners and admins only. Then members don’t see it on customers or cards, and can’t filter or sort by it.
Why does a customer's count differ from what a colleague sees?
Counts include only tickets you can see. Requests on tickets in restricted projects you’re not in are left out.
What happens to requests when a ticket is archived or deleted?
Archiving keeps them, and the request shows under Canceled if the ticket wasn’t completed. Deleting the ticket deletes its requests.
Does merging two tickets keep their requests?
Yes. When triage merges a new arrival into an existing ticket, its requests move to that ticket, and two requests from the same customer and conversation become one, important if either was.
- Customers settings and privacy: turn Customers on, and set up statuses, tiers, revenue and privacy.
- The By Dawn sidebar in Intercom: file a customer’s request from a support conversation.
- Customers API: keep customers in step with your CRM.