How do my customers check where their job is?

Every customer on your books has one private progress link. It shows the steps you chose to share and anything you are still waiting on from them. Nobody needs a password, and a customer can get their own link without anybody on your team doing a thing.

The three ways a customer gets their link

1. They ask your AI. On web chat, text, WhatsApp or the phone, somebody who asks where their job is up to is offered their link. It goes to the email address or the phone number already on their record, never to whatever they type into the chat. If they have an email address on file it goes by email, and if they only have a phone number it goes by text. A text sent this way also shows up in your Inbox, inside your ongoing conversation with that customer, so you can see it without leaving the conversation.
2. They go to your own customer page. They type the email address you have for them, and the link arrives a moment later. Nothing is shown on screen either way, so a stranger guessing addresses learns nothing.
3. It rides along on the messages you already send. Put {{task_link}} in an automatic text or email and every customer gets their own link inside it, see How do I send an automatic text, email or task when something happens?.

However they ask, the link only ever goes to details already on their record. Somebody you have no record of gets nothing, and is told nothing.

Show your customers where to go

1. Open TMS, then Setup, then the Journey tab.
2. Under "Send your customers here" is your own customer address, with a Copy button. Paste it on your website, in your email signature, or anywhere your customers look.
3. If it says you have not picked a web address yet, claim one under Settings, then General, then come back, see How do I give my customers a link to sign in and see their documents?.

You can also offer it under a lead form, so somebody who is already yours does not fill in an enquiry form just to ask for an update. Open Settings, then Lead forms, open the form, and tick "Show a link to check job status" under "People who are already customers". One line appears under your embedded form, "Already a customer? Check your job status.", and nothing else about the form changes: no extra question, no extra answer saved, and no new contact created by it.

What your AI will and will not say

Your AI does not read an account out loud to somebody it cannot be sure of. It will not confirm or deny anything about a person's own job, order, invoice or appointment, and it treats a name, an email address or a reference number typed into a conversation as a claim rather than as proof of who they are. A chat window cannot prove who is on the other end of it.

What it does instead is offer to send the link, or offer to put the person through to your team. It says it is sending the link rather than that it has already sent one, because the message goes out just after the reply is written. This is a Peakify rule, it applies on every channel, and it is not something you can switch off.

The one exception is a customer it can be sure of: somebody writing on WhatsApp or by text from the number on their contact record, saved with its country code, or somebody your own website has signed in on your chat. On Pro and up, it can tell them their stage, what you have received and what you are still waiting for, see How do I set the AI's tone and what it can and can't say?. It never states an amount owed, a payment, an invoice or bank details to anybody.

On the phone there is no such exception. If you switched on the "Look up an existing customer" tool, the assistant can find a caller's first name from the number they are calling from so it can greet them by name. A first name is all it gets back. A number showing on caller ID is not proof of who is holding the handset.

Choose which steps your customers see

A step shows on the progress link only if you switched it on. Open TMS, then Setup, then Pipelines, click Edit journey, open the job on a step, and switch on "Customer sees this", then publish. Leave it off and the customer never sees that step and never gets a reminder about it.

Tick the steps a customer would recognise as their own progress, and leave your internal ones off. If none are ticked, every customer opens an empty page. The Journey tab tells you so and gives you the number, see How do I set up my customer journey?.

Once a step like that is done, the customer sees its title, "Done" and the date it finished. The document your team or the AI produced for it stays with your team: your staff can still see it on the finished task.

The steps still to come

Below their finished and current steps, a customer also sees every client-facing step they have not reached yet, marked Coming up. It carries no date, since the work has not started yet, only your usual estimate for that stage; it gets a real date once the customer actually reaches it. A repeating stage in the Coming up list shows each session still ahead, for example "Weekly session (3 of 12)". These steps still count toward the progress bar, so a customer who has finished one of four visible steps sees 1 of 4 done, whether or not the rest are Coming up yet. A customer cannot press Confirm on a step that is still Coming up, only on one they have actually reached. If you change your journey, or skip a step for one customer, their Coming up list updates the next time they open the page.

Anything you are still waiting on from a customer, a document or a payment, shows at the top of the same page whether you ticked any steps or not, see What does my customer see they still need to do?.

If a customer says nothing arrived

1. Check the address on their record. The link only ever goes to the email address or the phone number already stored on that contact, so an old address is the usual answer.
2. Check they have not opted out. Somebody who unsubscribed from your emails, or replied STOP to your texts, does not get the link, and the page still tells them to check their inbox. A text also waits until quiet hours are over.
3. Ask them to leave it a few minutes. One customer can be sent the link three times an hour and once every five minutes, so pressing the button over and over only sends the first one.
4. Check your web address is still claimed. Removing it under Settings, then General, stops your customer page working straight away.

A link lasts about a month. After that the customer asks for a new one the same way, and the old one stops working. If you have been through all four and a customer still cannot get in, chat with us and we will take a look.

Who can do this

Copying your customer address and ticking which steps customers see are both admin jobs, like everything else on the Setup tab. Your customers need nothing at all: no account, no password, and no app.