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Customer Events Timeline

The Timeline at the foot of a customer page records what happened and who did it, newest first under date headings. Entries begin You or Staff, an order number inside one is a link that carries a way back, every sent email offers Resend, and the note box takes 2000 characters that only staff can see.

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Reading time
4 min
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The Timeline at the foot of a customer's page is the store's record of what happened to that customer and who did it. You read it before answering them, and you write to it when something happened that the store could not record on its own.

Customer Events catalogues the entries themselves and what each one tells you.

Before you begin

  • Your role includes View customers, which is what reading the timeline takes.
  • Your role includes Edit customers as well, if you intend to post a note rather than only read.
  • Go to Customers, open a customer, and scroll to the foot of their page.

What the Timeline looks like

A customer's page in the admin scrolled to the foot of the record, with the breadcrumb at the top left. (1) the Timeline card, holding the note box reading Add a note, four small icons beneath it, a Post button, a 0 of 2000 counter and the line Only you and other staff can see comments. Below the card the history hangs off a vertical line under date headings, beginning with an order confirmation email naming the order and the address it went to, where (2) outlines its Resend email control, then You placed order with its number, then Staff added a tag and Staff removed a tag (opens full size)

The Timeline card (1) holds the note box, and the history runs below it, newest first, grouped under a date heading with the time of each entry on the right.

Read the first word of an entry. Entries begin either You, meaning the account you are signed in as, or Staff, meaning someone on the team. That one word is the difference between "I did this" and "somebody did this", and it is the only attribution the line gives you: no entry names a person.

The entries fall into five kinds: the record itself, orders, money and returns, emails the store sent, and notes and privacy actions. Customer Events lists the wordings and says what each one does and does not tell you.

Reading an entry

Part What it does
The chevron on an entry Expands it in place for a little more detail. It does not leave the page
An order number A real link. It opens that order, and it carries a way back to this customer, so you are not stranded in Orders
Resend email (2) Appears on every email the store sent. It is the fastest answer to a customer who says a confirmation never arrived

Posting a note

The box at the top reads Add a note, and four controls sit under it: Add emoji, Mention someone, Add reference and Attach file. Post writes the note, the counter beside it caps what you type at 2000 characters, and the line underneath states that only you and other staff can see comments.

A note you post lands at the top of the history under today's date, attributed to you, and the customer never sees it. What is worth posting is the outcome rather than the conversation: what was agreed, what you promised, what the next person has to honour.

A note is not the same as the Notes card higher up the page. The card holds one standing description of the customer, replaced whenever it is edited. A note posted here is an entry in the history, sitting in date order alongside everything else, and it is the right choice when what you are recording happened at a moment: a phone call, an agreement, a decision. Customer Internal Notes covers the card.

What it is for

Read it before you reply to anyone. A customer writing to ask where their order is has a timeline that already says whether it was placed, fulfilled, cancelled or returned, and whether the confirmation email went out. That is usually the whole answer, and it takes seconds.

Write to it when the store cannot know. Tanqory records what happens inside it. A phone call, a promise made on chat, a decision about how to handle this customer in future: none of that exists until someone posts it, and the next person to open the record is the one who needs it.

If something goes wrong

  • You cannot post. Your role may lack the Edit customers permission.
  • An entry you expected is missing. The store only records its own actions; anything done outside it has to be written in.
  • The order link took you away. Use the way back it carries, rather than the browser's back button.
  • There is no history at all. A customer added by hand has nothing yet beyond the line saying they were created, and a record that was merged into another one has had its timeline emptied.

Next steps

Still stuck?

More in Customers

  • Customer Segments

    A segment is a saved question about your customers rather than a saved list, so its members change as they do. Tanqory gives you two ways to write that question, a query builder and a form of Field, Operator and Value filters, and this article covers both, plus the panel that starts closed, the AI Refine field and what to do when it answers with nothing, the forty-nine fields you can filter on, and everything the row menu lets you do to a segment afterwards.

  • Adding a Customer

    Creating a customer record by hand, from the Add Customer button to the saved record. Three fields are required and everything else can wait, the three marketing consents start unticked and are a record of what the customer agreed to rather than a way to opt them in, and the Save bar is on the form from the moment it opens.

  • Search the Customer List

    Finding one customer and finding a group are different jobs with different tools. The search box matches name, email and phone and nothing else, it searches inside the tab you are standing on rather than the whole store, and the thing people most often type into it, a tag, comes back as No customers found rather than as an error.

  • Customer Tags

    A tag gives a group of customers a name so it is already assembled when you need it. This article covers where tags are set, one record at a time or in bulk from the list, what a tag is actually good for once it exists, and the one thing it will not do, which is answer the search box.

All 49 articles in Customers

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