How to add a customer

A customer is the record at the center of everything you do in Lychee — presentations, appointments, orders, and follow-ups all hang off it. This guide walks through adding a new customer: the details you can capture, and who will be able to see them.

Permissions

What you can see and do with customers is controlled by permissions, and they vary from person to person. Depending on what your business has granted you, you might be able to only search customers, add and update them, or manage every customer in the business — so some of what follows may not match what you see.

Two permissions matter for this guide:

Adding customers lets you create new records, which is what this guide covers. If you don’t see a way to add a customer, you don’t have this permission yet — ask your admin.
Managing customers lets a person see every customer regardless of visibility, and change a customer’s visibility. Most associates don’t have it.

Adding a customer

Start a new customer. You can add one directly from the customers area, or create one on the spot from most places that ask you to choose a customer — so you’re never held up by someone who isn’t in Lychee yet.
Enter their name. First and last name are always required. If a customer gives you only one, enter a dash (-) in the other and update it once you know it.
Add contact details. (Optional) An email and a phone number. Lychee checks these against every customer in your business — not just the ones you can see — so you don’t create a duplicate. If the email or phone is already on file, Lychee flags it, even when the existing customer is one you don’t have access to.
Fill in any other fields. Beyond the name, it’s your business that decides what to capture — and what’s required. Your admins set which fields appear when you add a customer (a birthday, a mailing address, preferred brands, and so on) and which ones you must complete before you can save, so your form may ask for more than a name and may look different from another store’s. Fill in what you can; anything that isn’t required, you can add later.
Save. Their history in Lychee starts building from here. If the details you entered match someone already on file — brought in from your point-of-sale or another system, or added by a colleague — you’ll be connected to that existing customer instead of creating a duplicate.

Whether the record is new or already existed, the customer is now one you can see and work with. Who can see them going forward is set automatically by your business’s default visibility (explained below). And if they already existed, keep in mind you may not see their whole history — how much of their past you can see depends on your permissions and the customer’s visibility.

Who can see a customer: visibility

Every customer has a visibility setting that decides which of your colleagues can see and work with them:

All — everyone at your business can see this customer.
Restricted — only you, and the specific colleagues or teams the customer is shared with, can see them.
Private — only you can see this customer.

As a sales associate you don’t set this — a new customer automatically takes your business’s default (often Restricted), which your admins choose in settings. If a customer needs a different visibility, ask someone who can manage customers to change it.

Two things worth knowing:

Managing customers overrides visibility. Anyone who can manage customers sees every record regardless of this setting — so Restricted and Private limit your peers, not people with that permission.
Some customers may be hidden from you. If your business hides imported customers (records brought in from other systems), those may not show up for you even when they’re set to All.

After you’ve added them

Once the customer exists, you can — depending on your permissions — record a presentation, add notes (and keep sensitive ones private), apply a badge, or add them to a segment. Every interaction you log from here builds the history that makes Lychee useful.