Customers [pro]
The Customers tab controls how Phone Orders searches, displays, and updates customer data during order creation. You’ll find these settings at Phone Orders → Settings → Customers. Configuring them correctly reduces the time agents spend finding the right customer, prevents address form errors, and keeps customer profiles in sync with the data agents enter during calls.
Search Settings
These settings control how the customer search autocomplete behaves — how fast it responds, how many results it shows, and which data it searches across.
Caching search results sets how many hours Phone Orders caches customer search results. Increasing this value makes the autocomplete faster for stores with large customer databases, since repeat searches return cached results instead of querying the database each time. Set it to 0 to disable caching and always return live results.
Search for customer in orders restricts the autocomplete to customers who have placed at least one order. Turn this on when agents only ever deal with returning customers and you want to eliminate new, unverified registrations from appearing in search results.
Search for customers in last X orders narrows the customer pool even further — only customers who appear in the most recent X orders show up in search results. Set to 0 for unlimited. Use this on high-volume stores where an agent taking a repeat call is almost always dealing with a recent customer, making a smaller, faster search pool more practical than searching all records.
Customer search by shipping/billing fields extends the search to cover address fields — street, city, postcode — in addition to name and email. Turn this on when customers often identify themselves by address rather than name, or when your agents use address lookup to find a customer’s record.
Number of customers to show in autocomplete sets how many results appear in the dropdown when an agent types in the customer search field. Keep this low (5–10) for faster rendering; increase it if agents regularly need to scan more results to find the right match.
Default customer pre-selects a specific customer each time an agent opens Phone Orders. This suits stores with one dominant B2B client or internal accounts where most orders go to the same customer, saving agents from searching every time.
Profile Update Settings
These settings control whether Phone Orders writes back to the customer’s WordPress account when an agent updates address or name data during order creation.
Automatically update customer’s profile on order creation syncs any address data the agent enters during order creation back to the customer’s WooCommerce account profile. When active, the billing or shipping address the agent types becomes the customer’s saved default address for future orders. Agents must click Save to customer for the sync to run — the setting enables the button’s functionality but doesn’t trigger a save automatically.
Update user’s first and last name when updating billing information extends the profile sync to cover name fields. When an agent corrects a customer’s first or last name in the billing section, Phone Orders writes the updated name back to the WordPress user account. Again, the agent must click Save to customer to trigger this.
When to turn these on: both settings suit stores where customers frequently change delivery addresses or correct their name details over the phone. With both active, the customer’s profile stays up to date without a separate admin edit. Leave them off if your agents regularly use temporary or one-off addresses that shouldn’t overwrite the customer’s saved profile.
Form Behaviour Settings
Don’t close customer/address form automatically prevents the customer and address form from closing when the agent presses Enter or Ctrl+Enter. Turn this on when agents frequently trigger an accidental form close mid-entry by pressing Enter while filling in address fields, causing them to lose partially entered data.
Use payment and delivery preferences from last order pre-fills the payment method and shipping method on a new order using the values from the selected customer’s most recent order. This speeds up repeat order creation significantly for customers who always use the same payment and delivery combination.
Display Settings
These settings control which fields and sections appear in the customer panel during order creation.
Show Role/Language field adds a role or language indicator to the customer info section. Turn this on when agents need to verify a customer’s role (e.g. wholesale vs retail) or language preference before applying discounts or communicating in a specific language.
Hide fields lets you remove individual address fields from the customer form — first name, last name, company, address lines, city, postcode, country, and state. Hide any field your agents never use to keep the form compact and reduce cognitive load during fast-paced phone calls.
Require fields marks specific address fields as mandatory — Phone Orders won’t let the agent proceed without filling them in. Use this to enforce data quality standards for whichever fields your store needs for order fulfillment or reporting.
Show address book displays the customer’s saved address book below their primary address, allowing agents to select from multiple saved addresses rather than retyping them. This setting is compatible with the WooCommerce Multiple Customer Addresses plugin.
Show field “Shipping Phone” / “VAT Number” adds the Shipping Phone and/or VAT Number fields to the customer section. Turn on Shipping Phone when your delivery partners require a contact number separate from the billing phone. Turn on VAT Number for B2B stores where EU tax exemption depends on a valid VAT number being recorded on the order.
Show order history for the customer adds an Order history link below the customer search bar. Clicking it opens the selected customer’s order history panel without leaving Phone Orders, giving agents instant access to previous orders, totals, and statuses during the call.
Settings Summary
| Setting | Default | Turn ON / Set when… |
|---|---|---|
| Caching search results | 0 | You have a large customer database and want faster autocomplete |
| Search for customer in orders | OFF | Agents only deal with returning customers |
| Search in last X orders | 0 (unlimited) | You want to limit search to recent customers only |
| Customer search by shipping/billing | OFF | Customers identify themselves by address |
| Number in autocomplete | varies | Adjust to match your typical search result needs |
| Default customer | None | Most orders go to one specific customer |
| Auto-update profile on creation | OFF | Agents regularly update customer address data |
| Update name from billing | OFF | Agents regularly correct customer name data |
| Don’t close form automatically | OFF | Agents accidentally close the form with Enter |
| Use payment/delivery from last order | OFF | Most repeat customers reuse the same shipping and payment |
| Show Role/Language field | OFF | Agents need to see customer role or language |
| Show address book | OFF | You use WooCommerce Multiple Customer Addresses |
| Show Shipping Phone / VAT Number | OFF | Your orders require these fields |
| Show order history | OFF | Agents need quick access to customer order history |