Understand customer types

Smile identifies different types of customers within your program. Customers are identified as either a Member, Guest or Excluded. You can see any customer’s type in the Customers table and on the individual customer’s profile in Smile Admin.

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Members

Members are customers who have joined your loyalty program. Typically, a customer becomes a Member by creating an online account on your store. For Shopify merchants, how a customer becomes a Member depends on the type of customer accounts your store uses:

• With legacy customer accounts, customers become Members by creating an account with an email and password.
• With customer accounts, customers become Members when they sign in using their email and the one-time 6-digit verification code sent to them and access Smile while signed in.

Customers also become Members when they place an in-store order using Shopify POS. When the order is linked to a customer using an identifier such as an email address, name, or phone number, they’re automatically recognized as a Member. There’s no way to manually convert a Guest into a Member, this only happens automatically through the actions above. To see when a customer became a Member, open their profile in Smile Admin and hover over the membership duration below their name. The exact date they became a Member will appear.

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Guests

On Shopify, Guests are customers who have not yet become a Member using one of the methods described above.

On BigCommerce only customers who have created store accounts are sent to Smile - no “Guest” customers are sent. BigCommerce stores will only have Member and Excluded customers identified in Smile. If you would like a customer to be synced over to Smile, be sure to get them to create an account on your store.

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Excluded

Excluded customers have been removed from your loyalty program. Customers can be individually excluded, or excluded based on their tag or customer group. When a customer is Excluded, they will not be able to see the Smile panel when logged in, or participate in your points, referral or VIP programs.

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Troubleshoot a customer showing as a Guest

If a customer using Shopify’s new customer accounts signed up but is still showing as a Guest, ask them to sign in using their 6-digit verification code and open the Smile rewards panel or Loyalty Hub (if enabled). Once Smile content loads during their signed-in session, their customer type should update. If the customer is still showing as a Guest after completing these steps, contact our support team at help@smile.io for assistance.