Customer

The customer module of Shopware can be found in the backend menu in Customer > Customer. It is separated into 2 areas, the customer list where you can search for customers and filter them. On the other hand, there are the Customer Streams, which will described below.

If you open the user module the first time, a wizard will open which will roughly show you the functions. When you skipped or finished the wizard, this will be saved in the database for each backend user, so the wizard will never pop up again.

In the customer overview you can manage your customers, you'll see all the customer accounts here, can search for specific entries, filter by desired attributes and open these accounts.

Filter

By clicking on the small bar the filter panel will show up, it helps you to filter your customers by desired attributes.

Activate the filter by clicking the preceded checkbox and entering the desired value by which you want to filter. Then click the "Filter result" button below the filter panel to apply the filter. The customer list will update. To reset all filters, you can use the "Reset filters" button.

The customer list

the customer list describes a list of all your customers, which is the main feature of the customer overview where you have multiple possibilities:

• Open customer accounts by double-clicking them or clicking the pen icon on the right
• Send an email by clicking the email address, your default email program will open (mailto-link)
• Delete single customer accounts by clicking the delete icon on the right of the desired customer
• Deleting multiple accounts by selecting all on the left and click the "Delete all selected" button

"Locked until"

In the Locked until (1) column, you can see whether client accounts are locked until a certain date. The blocking of a customer is carried out by an automatic security mechanism if the password of an account has been entered incorrectly too often. The time is further extended if incorrect passwords continue to be entered. This security mechanism is intended to prevent customers' passwords from being determined or cracked.

 

Create a new customer account

To create a new customer account, click "Add item", an empty customer detail window will open.

At creating a new account, the following data is required:

• Email
• Customergroup
• Shop
• Password
• Salutation (can be set to optional)
• First name
• Last name
• Street
• Zip code
• City
• Country
• Default payment method

The payment methods, which are selected in the backend, will overwrite frontend logic. So if you select "Invoice" in the backend, the user will get invoice as his default payment, even if this should not be possible by frontend logic. In this case, once the customer changes the payment method in the frontend, the available payment methods adhere to the settings in the backend again.

Change existing customers

To change existing accounts, double-click the entry in the customer list or use the pen-icon on the right to open the detail window, where you can change all the details.

Data

In the tab "Data" you'll see all the basic information like email, customergroup, shop etc. Also, personal data like name, birthday and the default billing and shipping address and the default payment method are listed here. Below you can find the comment field and, if used, the free text fields. On the right you can find a short sketch of the customer's statistics like register date, last login, language, number of orders, turnover and selected payment method, you can also log into the customer's frontend using the "Perform order" button to e.g. place an order which the customer made by phone. When the user is an accountless one, you can also change this account to a normal customer, so he can log in with a new password in the frontend.

In the addresses tab, you find an overview of the user's addresses. The quantity of addresses per user is not limited.

The column Default for tells you, which address is default for billing and shipping.

Using the "Add item" button you can add a new address, using the pen icon you can edit an existing one:

In the address data, you can set all address relevant data and set the currently opened dataset as default for billing and / or shipping.

In the tab "Free text fields" you can edit all free text fields, if used.

Orders

In the tab "orders" you can see all the orders the customer made, Shopware will give you a statistic about this:

Above the graph you can filter it by the desired date, below you'll see all the placed orders with the most important information like order date, ordernumber, payment method, status and the possibility to open the order using the icon on the right, which opens the known order detail window from the order module. You surely can search the order list for the needed order.

In the frontend

Account area

In the account, "Change billing address" and "Change shipping address" have been changed to "Addresses". Your customer will see their default billing and shipping address as follows:

Using the link "or use another address" your customer can change their current address to another existing address:

The workflow continues in the checkout, where your customer can see their current billing and shipping addresses (and if they are similar or not).

Your customer can modify or change their billing or shipping address by clicking the corresponding buttons. When making any changes, the layout will change to the following:

In the checkout, the new addresses will be saved to the customer’s address book and be made available for future purchases.

Customer Streams

Customer Streams allow you to group your users by setting filters. This way you can provide different customers with different content. Content that is shown with respect to the customer's status can comprise different shopping worlds, vouchers or promotions. How to utilize customer streams and filters is what you will learn here. Just open the module via Customers > Customers > Customer Streams or directly via Customers > Customer Streams.

First start

If you open the module for the first time, a wizard opens, hinting you at the most important aspects of the customer stream feature:

After finishing the wizard, the module will open and you can start customizing it:

Module description

The module's structure is made up of the following areas:

Stream overview: In the overview on the left you see all existing Customer Streams including their names and customer count. Dynamic streams can be recognized by the open-lock icon as well as the action buttons that allow you to delete, copy and re-index streams. Static streams have a closed-lock icon showing the expiration date (if set) and are deletable, but can't otherwise be altered.

Filters are available only for dynamic streams and will filter your customers by a given value. When creating a new dynamic stream or editing an existing one, you can add any desired filter.

The Customer list will include all of your shop's customers upon starting up. By activating a dynamic stream it will list all the customers of the respective stream and if a static stream is selected, it provides you the list of all customers in this stream and also a customer search in order to add new customers to the stream.

Using the dropdown menu Switch layout, you can switch from the customer list to the analytics section.

Customer analysis

Let us begin with a few words concerning customer analysis, since this is an important issue when working with Customer Streams.

Gathering new customers and sorting them into specific Customer Streams works best using the cronjob Customer Stream refresh. You can activate it via the Basic settings located in "System > Cronjobs". This particular cronjob by default is executed every 2 hours. It analyses new customers and sorts them into their respective streams, according to your pre-defined automatic filters and stream settings. If this cronjob is not active, you have to analyze customers manually.

You can start the manual analysis by opening the Customer Stream module and clicking the button "Analyze customers". Depending on the number of customers you have, this process may take some time.

In addition to that, you can analyze all customers at the module's startup by activating the checkbox Analyse on startup. Note that in this case, the analysis will run at every startup of the module, and thus may consequently delay your workflow. Therefore, we recommend using the cronjob as your first choice tool for customer analyses.

Handling

Here we describe the handling of the module. First, analyze your customers to gather them in streams. The procedure has been shown above in the above section, customer analysis.

Create a new Customer Stream

To create a new Customer Stream, click on "Create stream" first. Notice that a new entry in the stream list appears along with a hint, stating that this stream has not been saved yet.

In the lower left you can name this stream, add a description and by ticking the check box, set the stream to static mode. Static in this case means the stream will not sort customers automatically using filters. Instead, you will have to select the customers you want to be included in the stream manually. This will work until the stream's expiration date is reached or you change the stream's status to dynamic again.

If you want to create a dynamic stream, leave the setting "static" disabled and add the desired filter criteria:

You cannot save your newly created dynamic stream until you define at least a single filter!

If you want to create a "static stream", activate the option "Static" and save your stream. Only then you can add customers to your static stream using the customer search in the upper right corner:

After adding your customers, click "Save stream" to save your changes.

Edit an existing Customer Stream

To edit an existing stream, select a stream from the list on the left. After that either the filters will be loaded or, in case of a static stream, the affected (manually chosen) customers will be shown. Now you can make your changes to the stream and save it using the button "Save stream".

Copy a stream

Please keep in mind, that only dynamic streams can be copied. To copy a dynamic stream, select at least one from the list on the left and click the "copy icon". The stream will be copied with all its properties, you can now edit and save it.

Analysis

A stream analysis is available in the module itself by clicking the button "Switch layout". Here you can choose from two different views:

Stream revenue

Stream revenue analyses the selected stream according to the following values:

• Order count
• Most / less expensive order
• Average product price

Revenue comparison

Via revenue comparison you can compare and contrast all your streams:

Integration

Customer Streams are seamlessly integrated into the following modules in Shopware.

Shopping worlds

In each shopping world, you can set individual Customer Streams that are reserved to display a certain shopping world to certain customers. Additionally, you can decide whether an existing shopping world should be replaced by another. Utilizing these options you can serve additional content to your customers. Another option is to replace or not show whole shopping worlds for customers of a specific Customer Stream.

Here you choose the Customer Streams, that will display this shopping world to their associated customers. As the circumstances require, you have to choose another shopping world that will be replaced by the first one.

Vouchers

In the voucher module, you can select the Customer Stream, for which the voucher is active. This way you can create vouchers just for specific customers, depending on their allocated stream.

If customers are not logged in, they nevertheless can redeem vouchers via the cart. But be aware that after the obligatory login vouchers might still disappear if the user is not part of an associated Customer Stream. Only if Shopware recognizes the user using the SLT cookie, redeeming vouchers will work right from the start. Since using the SLT cookie, Shopware remembers customers and their corresponding Customer Streams, even if they are not logged in.

Newsletter

You can adjust the newsletter settings with respect to Customer Streams as well as Customer Groups. Note that both functions, Customer Streams and Customer Groups are connected by an OR-function. So if you select all high-selling users via a Customer Stream and at the same time select a corresponding Customer Group, e.g. your B2B customers, all members of both selected constellations will receive your newsletter.

Advanced Promotion Suite

In the Advanced Promotion Suite, you can also select Customer Streams as a restriction or as a rule.

Tips & Hints

Shopware Login Cookie

Using Customer Streams without the employment of an SLT cookie is possible, but user-referred content will be available only after a proper login. When you are on the other hand using the Shopware Login Token, Shopware will recognize your customers and provide them with the right content associated with their respective Customer Stream(s).

Using Customer Streams via the REST-API

If you want to manage your Customer Streams externally, you can do that using the API-resource. More information is available in our developer documentation.