Your customer can follow the order through a private link

In re:praesent you can switch a deal board from private to public. Every deal on it then gets a private link that the customer can open on their phone, with no sign-in, to see which stage the order has reached, when, and what was ordered. The page never shows the deal’s value, who looks after it, your notes or anyone’s contact details.

The call you get every week

A kitchen is ordered in September and delivered in November. In between, the customer rings twice: has it gone into production, when is delivery. Each call costs you a look in the system and a few minutes. Each one is also a sign that the customer is waiting for news you already have.

Businesses that build, repair or deliver something over weeks all have this call. A link that answers it is cheaper than a phone.

How it is switched on

1. Open the deal board and choose Edit pipeline.
2. Under Customer tracking choose Public instead of Private. The text under it says what that means: each deal gets a private link a customer can open to track their order.
3. Save. A Public badge appears beside the board’s name.
4. Open a deal. Its top bar now shows Customer link with Copy, Open what they see, and New link.

Every board is private when it is created. Nothing is reachable from outside until you choose Public, and the choice is confirmed before it is saved.

What the customer sees

Your business name and logo. A status line with the current stage and an order reference. A timeline with the board’s own stage names, each reached stage with a tick and its date, the current one marked “You are here”, the next ones as hollow rings with no date. What was ordered. When the page was last updated.

The stage names are the ones you use on the board. Rename a stage and the customer sees the new name. There is no second set of words to keep in sync.

When the deal reaches its last stage the page says the order is complete, and can ask for a Google review if you have that turned on.

What they never see

• The deal’s value
• Who in your team looks after it
• Notes, tasks and emails
• Any contact details
• Stages you have hidden, or a lost stage the order did not end in

The link is a long random token. It cannot be guessed, it is not listed anywhere, and search engines are told not to index it.

Sending the link, and taking it back

Copy the link from the deal and paste it into an email or a message. If you use re:praesent’s email workflows, the link is available as a field, so the order confirmation can carry it automatically.

If you need to, choose New link on the deal: the old one stops working at once. Switch the whole board back to Private and every link on it stops working at once, so sharing is never something you can forget to undo.

Questions