Why the list matters more than the sales
A sale is money once. A customer on your books is money on repeat, someone you can text a birthday nudge, greet by name, and win back when things go quiet. Big chains spend millions building this list. Yours builds itself one checkout at a time, if you let it.
The Customers tile on your home screen is where it all lives.
Capture people
At checkout or from the Customers screen, search by name or phone, results filter as you type, from the first character.
No match? Add New. Phone number is the identity key: it's how the app recognizes the same person next visit.
Enter a number that's already on file and the app says so (Customer Exists) and offers to open the existing profile, duplicates get caught before they're born.
The profile is your memory
Open any customer and fill in what a great regular-spot would remember:
- Contact Information, phone, email, address.
- Health & Safety, Allergies lives here. For a food business this section is safety, not courtesy. Write it down the first time; never ask twice.
- Birthday, the app counts down to it. A "your usual, on us" text in birthday week is the highest-return marketing a small business can run.
- Preferences and Notes, "oat milk, extra hot," "picks up Fridays." The stuff that makes a third visit feel like a thirtieth.
- Merchant note, Internal tag visible only to your team. Handy for tagging a walk-in sale ("Party of 4, John") that has no linked profile yet.
The ladder sorts itself
Loyalty climbs automatically with lifetime spend, Bronze, Silver, Gold, VIP. You don't assign tiers; buying assigns them. The VIP filter on the list is your short list for anything that deserves a personal touch, and Total Orders plus Last Visit tell you who's due for a "we miss you."
Linked customers own their own profile
Someone who uses the Tavvi app themselves shows up as a linked customer: their identity section is read-only to you, and they manage their own text-message preferences in their account. Your side of the relationship lives in the merchant note and your order history together, theirs stays theirs. That split is what makes handing over a phone number feel safe.
If something's off
- Same person, two profiles. Different phone numbers create different profiles. Pick the one with the real history going forward, and let the duplicate warning stop the next one.
- Search finds nothing. It matches names and phone digits. One character is enough to start; check the All filter isn't narrowed to VIP.
- A customer wants their texts stopped. They reply STOP to any message, or, if linked, flip it themselves in their account. Consent is theirs, not a setting you fight.