The default of BigCommerce accepts new account registrations automatically and does not allow store owners to decline them. This sometimes brings inconvenience to customer management. Therefore, in this article, we’ll provide you a way to set up customer approval for your store and notify new customers after your approval.
What is customer approval?
Customer approval is the process by which the store owners approve or disapprove a new account registration on the store. Merchants can manage newly created accounts. If you want to reject certain accounts, you can choose to redirect these customers to other targeted pages that there is no log-in requirement.
Why do eCommerce stores need customer approval?
Customer approval is necessary for online stores, especially B2B eCommerce businesses, because it helps with potential security issues, fraud, and customer groups management.
Reduce fake accounts and fraud
Fraud is an unexpected thing for every eCommerce owner. That’s why merchants should manage new account registrations on their online store. Registration approval not only decreases fake accounts but also assures merchants a higher quality of visitors.
Manage different customer groups
Customer approval is a way to identify customers of different segmentations and permit each group to access certain contents or pages on your website. It’s more crucial when you are running a B2B and B2C eCommerce business or selling your products to wholesalers. For example, you’ll allow wholesale customers to access wholesale categories which consumer customers can’t. Or, you can launch an exclusive marketing program to only groups of customers you want.
Prove the credibility to customers
A strict registration process means that customers will worry less about risks with their information when logging and making transactions on your website. Therefore, they will trust your eCommerce business.
Guide to manually approve account registration on BigCommerce
1. Create two customer groups: one for guest and new accounts that don’t have access to any categories (Pending Accounts group, for example), and another for approved accounts that have access to your categories (Approved Accounts group).
To create new groups, go to Customers → Customer Groups → Create a Customer Group.
2. Assign products to the group which you want them to see. If you want to hide certain products from unapproved customers, don’t assign these products to the group.
3. When a new customer creates an account, he will be auto-added to the Pending Accounts group, and you will receive a notification.
4. Review the customer and then manually assign to the Approved Accounts group if you accept.
Go to Customers → View Customers, select the Approved Accounts group from the Group drop-down list. Your change will be automatically saved.
How to notify customers after being approved
To notify customers after you have approved their account, you need to use an integrated platform having this feature to help you. Consider the Atom8 automation app. Atom8 allows BigCommerce store owners to notify customers automatically without manually doing that.
The automation workflow is set up as follow:
TRIGGER: When the customer is updated
CONDITION: If the customer group is equal to Approved Accounts
ACTION: Send an email to the customer via Mailchimp
Additionally, you would want to get notified whenever there is a new registration on the store. The Atom8 can also help. When a customer creates a new account on your store, Atom8 will automatically send your team a notification email and add a card on the Trello board so that your team will know immediately.
To set up the workflow:
TRIGGER: When a new customer account is created
ACTION: Send an internal notification email to xxx@yourteamemail
ACTION: Add a Trello card
So, you can save a lot of time and effort with these tasks. Atom8 app also has many other useful features that support repetitive activities to streamline your operation, such as:
- Auto-segmenting customers based on location, order value, the total number of orders, etc. and auto-tagging customers on CRM and email marketing platforms;
- Auto-sending notification email to internal team or suppliers when a product is out of stock, etc.;
- Auto-generating order information, low-stock products, etc. on a spreadsheet;
- Auto-publishing products, categories;
- Auto-publishing sale price, content, switching themes, etc. for promotion programs;
- Auto-tracking discount codes and coupons.
Furthermore, you can take advantage of Atom8 to automate any workflow you need. It all depends on your own idea.
Conclusion
Customer approval is essential for eCommerce stores as it helps reduce potential security issues, fraud and manage customers effectively. We hope that the guide is helpful and easy to understand for you. Be sure to check out our blog to get more useful tips for your BigCommerce store.
