Your customer portal is a page in your business's name, logo and colours where a customer can see everything they have with you in one place, and send you photos or a video of a job.
Switching it on
Install Customer portal from Skills. It asks one question, what your customers can see, with everything ticked, and shows you your portal's address. Installing sends nothing to anyone. A customer only finds it when you send them their link.
To change what they see, or switch off Asking for work, go to Settings → Customers → Customer portal. Untick a section and it disappears from every customer's portal straight away. Uninstalling the skill switches the whole portal off.
What your customer sees
- Coming up: their next visits, with the date and time window. A visit you haven't confirmed yet says so.
- Quotes: each quote you've sent them, and whether it's waiting for their answer. They open it to read and accept it, just like the link you email.
- Invoices: what they owe first, then what they've paid. They open an invoice to pay it.
- Certificates: the certificates you've issued them, to download one at a time or all at once. If you've set certificates to go out only once the bill is paid, they stay off the portal until it is.
- Cover plans: their plan, if they're on one.
- Past visits: the work you've done for them.
They never see your notes, your costs, what you paid for parts, or anyone else at the same address.
Landlords and letting agents
A customer who is the client at two or more of your properties gets a different front page:
- Totals across all of them: what they owe, and how many quotes are waiting.
- Next visits, with the address of each.
- Waiting on you: the invoices to pay and quotes to answer, oldest bill first.
- Your properties: every property they hold with you, the one with the soonest certificate renewal at the top. Each row says what's outstanding there, like a visit booked or a bill to pay, and shows the next renewal from the certificates you've issued, such as CP12 due 12 Mar or CP12 overdue. They can search by street or postcode and narrow the list to Due soon, To pay or Visit booked. It shows 25 at a time, so it copes with an agent holding thousands.
Tapping a property opens its own page: the visits, quotes, invoices and certificates at that address, and When it's due listing each renewal. Download all on its certificates gives them every certificate at that address as one zip file.
On the front page, Download certificates gives them the latest of each certificate at every property in one zip, with a folder for each property, which is usually what a letting agent is asked for. Certificates you're holding until the bill is paid stay out, the same as on the page. If a PDF can't be added, the zip says which one so they can ask you for it. Anything not tied to one property, such as an invoice with no address on it, sits under Other visits and paperwork.
A customer with one property sees their page as before, with When it's due added.
Renewal dates come from your issued certificates' next inspection date. A renewal date shows even when you're holding that certificate until the bill is paid. The certificate itself stays held.
Asking you for work
Every portal page has an Ask for work button. The customer says what they need doing and which property it's for (on a property's own page, that one).
- If you take bookings online, they can Book a time: they pick the service and one of the times your booking page would offer at that address, with the same notice, travel and service area rules. It lands the way an online booking does. If you approve bookings, it's pencilled in with a card to approve. If they book straight in, it's in the diary and their confirmation goes out.
- Or they can just ask. They say how soon they need you: It's an emergency, In the next few days or No rush. You get a job with no date on that customer and property, with their words as the description, and a card in Actions that opens it. An emergency says so on the card and in the notification. Choosing emergency also tells the customer to ring you, and to ring the gas emergency line for a gas leak.
Either way, they can add photos or a video straight after, and they land on that job.
Nothing is booked from a request and nothing is sent to the customer until you act on it. To turn it off, untick Asking for work in Settings → Customers → Customer portal.
Your reviews on the portal
If you have Reviews switched on, every portal page shows What customers say: your Google rating, a few recent four and five star reviews in your customers' own words (first name and initial only), and a button to leave you a review. The button goes to your Google review page, or to your first other review site if Google isn't set up. Mucka never edits, picks or reorders the words, it just shows the newest.
Chat with your receptionist
If you have the AI receptionist and your online booking page's chat is on, a chat bubble sits in the bottom right of every portal page. It's the same receptionist as your booking page's chat, but it knows who is signed in:
- It never asks for their name or details.
- It can tell them when you're next coming, while the portal shows their visits.
- Anything it books goes on their own account and property, pencilled in for you to approve, like any receptionist booking.
- For work at an address that isn't theirs, it takes a message instead.
It shares the booking page's daily chat limits.
Photos and videos
Each upcoming visit has a Send photos or a video button. What they send lands on the job straight away, so you can see the problem before you go, or price it from the photos.
The portal only shows a customer the photos and videos they sent themselves. Your engineers' photos stay yours.
How a customer gets in
There's no password. A customer types their email address on your portal page, and if you have that address on their record, they get an email with a link to sign in. The link works once, within 7 days, and keeps that phone or computer signed in for 30 days.
To send a customer their link, go to Clients, open the customer and press Customer portal. Send it by email, or by WhatsApp if you've connected your WhatsApp Business number. From the same place you can open their portal and see exactly what they see.
The same sheet tells you when they last opened their portal. If they've lost a phone or you need to cut off access, press Sign them out everywhere. That ends every session and any link they haven't used yet. They can still ask for a new link with an email address on their record, so if that address is the problem, change it on their details too.
Each business has its own portal and its own sign-in. If a customer uses another business that's on Mucka, the two have nothing to do with each other.
Tenants
The portal is for the person who pays. Tenants keep the single-job links they already get, to pick a time for a visit, and never see prices.