Customer Identity & Linking Accounts

Your customers meet you at different doors: your website, LINE, and other chat channels. This page explains how we recognize them at each door, and how a customer's doors can be connected (linked) without ever confusing one customer for another.

The short version: every door knows its own regulars. A logged-in website customer is a full customer. A LINE customer is a full customer. If the same person uses both, they can prove they own both accounts once, and from then on every door shows all of their bookings.

Two words we use carefully

• Channel account — a login at one door: a website account, or a LINE user inside your LINE official account.
• Customer — the real person, who may have one or more channel accounts.

Think of channel accounts as keys and the customer as the home. Each key is genuine on its own. Nobody is a "guest" at one door just because they also have a key to another.

How recognition works at each door

• Website (logged in): bookings belong to that account and follow the customer across phones, tablets, and computers.
• LINE: LINE tells us who is messaging (securely, on every message), so bookings persist across conversations automatically — no login, no reference numbers.
• A single chat thread: during one visit we also remember the conversation, so things continue seamlessly even before any account is involved.

Linking: one person, two doors

The interesting case: Mana books on your website in March. In May she messages on LINE and asks, "When is my appointment?"

At that moment, LINE alone cannot know that Mana-on-LINE is Mana-on-the-web. And we will not guess — for a very important reason:

We never link accounts because details match. A name, phone number, or email typed into chat can be found in seconds and typed by anyone. Linking on that basis would let a stranger claim someone else's bookings.

Instead, linking is a short ceremony that proves the same person holds both keys:

1. The assistant says it doesn't see a booking under this LINE account, and offers to connect accounts.
2. We generate a one-time connect link (or short code) — valid for about 10 minutes, usable once.
3. Mana opens it and logs into the website, then sees a plain consent screen: "Link your LINE account with this website account? You'll see bookings from both in either place."
4. She confirms. The accounts become one customer, and both LINE and the website receive a notice that the accounts were linked (with how to reach you if it wasn't her).

From then on, whichever door she uses, she sees everything. The same ceremony works in reverse: start on the website, finish by sending a short code in LINE.

What this means in practice

• Book once, ask anywhere. Book on the web, check or cancel on LINE. Book on LINE, manage it on the web.
• No duplicate customers by accident. Our system keeps an exact record of how accounts were combined, and the combined history is complete — a merge never deletes a booking.
• Staff can help, not shortcut. Your team can start the linking process for a customer, but they cannot merge accounts on someone's word over the phone. The customer still completes the proof — protecting them and you.
• Mistakes are recoverable. If accounts were ever linked in error, the link history lets an admin undo it deliberately, with a record of who did what.

Questions we hear

"I have bookings in two places — are they lost?" No. Bookings are never tied to a chat window. Finish the one-time linking (about a minute) and everything appears together.

"I don't use the website. Am I a second-class customer?" No. LINE customers are complete customers. Linking is optional and only matters if you also use another door.

"Someone in my family uses the same LINE account." A shared LINE account is one channel account. If it is linked to a personal website account at the consent step, bookings become visible through that website account too. If in doubt, ask before confirming the consent screen — that decision is exactly what it is for.

"How do I know my bookings can't be taken over?" Because linking never accepts a typed name, phone, or email as proof. It requires being logged into one account and proving control of the other, in one short, expiring process — the same principle banks and major platforms use to connect accounts.

Where this is available

Account linking is in staged rollout alongside the AI Booking Assistant. Pilot teams can already open a customer in the admin console — see channel accounts, linking history, and undo a mistaken merge — under Bookings for Admins & Teams.