Work with customers

You can delete customers, conversations, and custom objects (KObjects) individually or in bulk. This is a useful way to clean up Kustomer and remove objects that are no longer needed in your Kustomer organization, or to comply with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requests. For security, delete events are recorded in the audit log.

Under the GDPR, contacts in your account have the right to request that you delete all of their personal data. When this happens, the GDPR requires that you permanently remove the contact record from your database, including email tracking history, call records, form submissions, and other engagement data and activity. Typically, these requests should be attended to within 30 days. The right to deletion is not absolute, and can depend on the context of the request, so it doesn't always apply.

In this article

• What happens when a customer is deleted?
• Permissions for deleting objects
• Delete a single customer from the timeline
• Delete a single conversation or KObject in the timeline
• Bulk delete in searches
• Notifications for bulk jobs

What happens when a customer is deleted?

You can delete a customer individually or in bulk to comply with GDPR removal requests. Once you delete a customer:

• The deletion is permanent and cannot be undone.
• You'll be redirected away from the customer timeline.
• The customer will no longer be available in search.
• Any links to the customer will no longer work.
• Your reporting will remain intact.

Permissions for deleting objects

There are two permissions linked to deletion of customers, conversations, and KObjects.

Users with the Delete permission checked in their permission sets will be able to delete individual objects from the timeline. Delete access is granted on a per-object basis, but follows object hierarchy rules.

Users with the Allow Bulk Delete permission checked in their Searches permissions will be able to batch remove items from search. The user must first be given Read/View access to Searches to grant this permission.

Delete a single customer in the timeline

Users with the proper role permissions can permanently delete customers and all their associated data from Kustomer to comply with a GDPR request. Once you delete a customer, it is permanently removed from Kustomer, and you can no longer retrieve any data associated with their profile.

To permanently delete a customer:

1. Navigate to the customer's timeline and select Customer Options from the toolbar.
2. Select Delete Customer.
   
3. Confirm the deletion by entering DELETE in the text field provided. This is to ensure that deletion doesn't occur accidentally.
   
4. Select I understand, please delete. The customer and all of their associated data is now permanently deleted.

Delete a single conversation or custom object (KObject) in the timeline

Users can delete individual objects from the timeline if they are assigned Delete permissions.

1. In the timeline, navigate to the conversation or KObject.
2. Select Options  for the conversation or KObject and then select Delete [Object].
3. A confirmation modal will alert you that this is a permanent action that cannot be undone. Type the confirmation, then press Delete [Object] to proceed.

Bulk delete in searches

GDPR-complaint deletion can also be performed on multiple customers at once through search. After assigning a user Allow Bulk Delete permissions to Searches, they can use search to delete multiple customers, conversations, or KObjects at once.

1. Use Searches to locate the objects you wish to delete.
2. Mark the checkboxes to select the desired objects.
3. Select the Delete icon in the toolbar. 
4. A confirmation modal will alert you that this is a permanent action that cannot be undone. Type the confirmation, then press Delete [Objects] to proceed.

By default, you can select up to 30 objects at a time. To delete all objects that match the search, Save your search, select the checkbox at the top of the results, and then click the link in the banner. You now delete all of the objects that matched the search.

Notifications for bulk jobs

It can take a little while to process a bulk delete, especially if you're removing hundreds of objects at a time. To help with this, we've set up a notification option to alert you when a bulk delete is completed, and to alert you if any errors occur during this delete attempt.

After you begin a bulk delete, the process will continue in the background on the server. You can safely close the popup as prompted without interrupting this process.

You can customize your notifications to control where or if you receive notifications for bulk delete status. In the Personal Notifications Settings, adjust the A bulk job I started has been completed setting as desired to control these notifications.