Reference Guide

Customers

Shop As This Customer

The Shop As This Customer feature lets you create or join a session in your on-line store using a customer's identity. The main use for Shop As Customer is to help a customer through the checkout process, if they are having trouble.

When a customer logs into your on-line store, the Miva Merchant software creates a session. The session is basically a record of the customer and their activities in your store: their username, the time that they logged in, the contents of their basket, etc. Some of the session information is encrypted and stored in a session cookie in the customer's web browser.

Before PR8 Update 7, you could find a customer's username and password through the admin interface, log into your store with those credentials, and help your customer with the checkout process. In releases after PR8 Update 7, the user's credentials are encrypted in the database, so you can't view them anymore. The Shop As Customer feature is a safer and more useful way to help customers with checkout.

Shop As This Customer can be used in different ways:

Join an existing session.	Create a new session. Customer is logged in.	Create a new session. Customer is not logged in.
The customer is logged into your store and has an existing session. When you join their session, you and the customer can view and change the same basket.	The customer has logged into your store and has an existing session. You create a new session with the customer's credentials. There are two separate baskets.	The customer is not logged in and doesn't have a session or a basket. You create a session and a basket with the customer's credentials.

Note that you can only use Shop As This Customer if the basket was created by a customer who was signed into their account. You can't use Shop As This Customer if the basket was created by someone who wasn't using an account in your store. See Basket Status.

To Install Shop As This Customer

1. Go to > Utilities > Add / Remove Modules.
2. In the Available Modules section, click on the Install button under Shop As Customer.

To Use Shop As This Customer

1. Go to > Customers > Edit a customer > Identification tab.
2. Click on the Shop As This Customer link. You will see one of the following dialog boxes.

	The customer is not logged into your store. Click Yes to create a session and basket with their credentials.
	The customer is logged in and has a session. Click Yes to share the customer's session and basket. Click No, create a new session to create a separate session and basket.

3. A browser window will open, showing your on-line store.