Customer switch — see the shop from a customer's account

"I don't see that price on my side"

A customer writes that a discount does not show, that a product cannot be found, that shipping is not what was announced. You look from your back office and everything seems fine. Of course it does: you are not seeing what they see. Their group, their prices, their discounts, their address and their history all change the page.

This module puts a button on every customer record. You click, and the shop opens signed in as them. You see their page exactly, with their own prices.

A banner that will not let you forget

Throughout the switch, a coloured banner stays at the top of every page: the customer's name, how long you have been there, how long is left, and a link to come back. There is no way to believe you are on your own account, which is the first way to make a mistake.

The switch closes by itself after the time you set, one hour by default.

Ordering is blocked

By default, no order can be placed during a switch. A message says so if you try. This is the protection that prevents an order accidentally placed on a customer's account, which would be very hard to explain afterwards.

A stricter mode exists: in read-only, every page that changes the customer's account is blocked, not just checkout. Your choice.

A token that lives one minute and serves once

The button holds no token. It leads to a controller that makes one at the moment of the click, valid for sixty seconds, usable once. Consumption is atomic: two simultaneous calls cannot both go through.

What is stored in the database is not the token but its fingerprint. Someone reading your database would find nothing usable, and a link copied into a browser history is dead before it can serve.

A log, so you can account for it

Every switch is written down: the date, the employee, the customer looked at. The log cannot be edited or purged from the module. If several people work in your back office, this is what lets you know who went to which account, and when. Accessing a customer's data is defensible; you still have to be able to find the record of it.

What your customers see

Nothing. The banner exists only for you, during your session. No trace appears in the customer's account and no email goes out on their side. You can, if you wish, receive an alert on every switch.

What it does not do

• It does not give you the customer's password, and does not change it. You never need it.
• It does not allow switching into a disabled or deleted account.
• It changes neither your theme nor the checkout: the banner is placed through a standard hook.
• It does not purge its log: a log that erases itself is of no use.

Installation

Upload, install. The button appears on customer records at once, with ordering blocked and a one-hour limit. Two minutes. A complete manual comes with the module.