After a customer gives you their email address, you might want to either link it to an existing contact or create a new contact. When linking or adding a contact in Chat, you're going to want to verify your customer is who they say they are before you discuss any account-specific details.
There are two ways to verify an email address belongs to a customer:
With verification questions
Similar to in a call centre, you can ask some account-specific questions to the customer.
Email verification
You can send a verification email to the customer which they have to verify manually.
You can use both ways, or only one, it depends on your agreed team or company policy.
Before you start
Things you need to know:
You must be a Chat agent.
Learn more in Roles and permissions of Chat.You must read and understand the article Chat verification security and compliance.
Verify with account-specific questions
If the customer requests account-specific details, first ask them to verify their identity.
In the Chat panel, you can see the customer's details on the right-hand-side. Use this information to plan your verification questions. Agents can see customer identity details, contact data fields, and marketing preferences.
Ask the customer some verification questions to identify themselves. You should pre-plan questions for you and your team to ask.
If the customer answers correctly, you can link the customer to mark them as verified.
Verify with email verification
If the customer requests account-specific details, tell the customer that they must verify themselves by email.
On the Chat session, select Send verification email.
Ask the customer to open the email and verify themselves. Once the customer has verified themselves, you see a notification in Chat.
Once verification is confirmed, you can link the chat to the contact in your account. Learn how in Link a Chat session to an existing contact.
Once you link the Chat session to the contact, their status changes to verified.
Verified customer is no longer verified
There are occasions when a previously verified customer might appear as unverified:
They're using a different browser or device.
They've cleared their browser local storage.
They're using private browsing (incognito mode) in the browser.
When a customer becomes unverified, you must verify them again.