Customers open their account inside your Bale bot
The customer portal now opens inside the business's Bale bot too: a customer sees their loyalty points, invoices and bookings with this business, and pays an unpaid invoice from there. It stays off until you turn it on.
Product update 2 min read
What changed
Customers who talk to your Bale bot can now open their account in Bale itself, without signing in anywhere or having a password. The page opens as a Bale mini app and shows:
- My points: the balance, what it is worth at checkout, the level and the referral code, when the loyalty programme is on
- this business's invoices, with View & Pay on the unpaid ones
- bookings, the coming ones first
Who opened the page is what Bale itself says. The first time, the customer shares their number with Bale's own button; from then on they see only what this business holds under that number.
How to use it
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The business's Bale bot must be connected and switched on under Messaging channels.
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In the Connections book, open the Customer portal in Bale tab, tick Let customers open their account in the Bale bot and press Save.
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In Bale, open @BotFather, choose your bot and set its menu button (or its main mini app) to the Mini app address the tab shows. A short label such as "My account" is enough.
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Put A link for your customers in your channel, a story or a text message. It opens the bot, and the bot answers with the button to the portal. A customer can also send /portal to the bot for the same button.
Good to know
- It is off for every business until somebody who manages the business turns it on.
- Bale's Bot API has no call to set the menu button, so that one step is done by hand in @BotFather.
- A customer sees only this business's records. If the same person also buys from another business, that is not shown here; and if their number is not on any customer of this business, the page says there is nothing yet.
- A number counts only when Bale sends it from the customer's own account. Somebody else's contact card opens nothing.
- The page keeps no password and no cookie: each time it opens, Bale's signature is checked against this business's bot token, and each opening is good for a day.
- The console can tell you whether the portal is on and where it lives, and turn it on or off; turning it on or off from the console waits for your approval.
- This release is for Bale only; a portal inside Telegram is not here yet.