Most customers arrive on their own, the first time they write to you. Importing is for the ones you already know about.

When importing is worth it

You are moving from another help desk and want the history of who your customers are from day one.
You have a customer list elsewhere. It might be in a CRM, a spreadsheet, or your billing system.
You want properties filled in before anyone writes, so the first reply already knows what plan they are on.

If none of those apply, do nothing. The automatic route covers it, and an imported list of people who never contact you is clutter.

What you need in the file

A CSV or XLSX file, with one row per person and a header row naming the columns.

At minimum you need something to identify each person. An email address is the sensible choice, because it is also how their conversations will be matched to them.

Export from wherever the list already lives rather than retyping it. Both formats come out of every CRM and spreadsheet tool, and a fresh export is more accurate than anything assembled by hand.

How to import

1Open Customers from the left-hand sidebar.
2Click the + button at the top of the list.
3Choose to import a list.
4Upload your CSV or XLSX file.
5Follow the prompts to confirm what the columns mean.

The option is in the same add menu as adding one person, so you can come back to it whenever you like.

What happens next

The import runs in the background. Gruvi creates everyone while you carry on working. A large list will not hold you up.

Once they exist, threads link to them automatically. Somebody you imported this morning who emails this afternoon arrives already attached to their profile, with whatever you imported about them already in place.

Getting the file right

One row per person. A row per order or per ticket will create duplicates.
One email column, and make it the right one. This is what matches conversations to people.
Clean the values before importing, particularly anything destined for a select property. "Business Pro" and "business pro" will not group together.
Start with a small test file. Ten rows will tell you whether your columns are understood, and is far quicker to undo than two thousand.
Leave out what you do not need. Every column you import is a field somebody has to maintain afterwards.

Do not import data you have no use for in a support conversation. A profile cluttered with fields nobody reads makes the two that matter harder to see.

What importing does not do

It does not import conversations. This brings in people, not their history with you elsewhere.
It does not create companies for you. Set those up separately and claim their domains. Imported people are then linked automatically, the same as anyone else.
It does not contact anybody. Nobody is emailed or told they have been added.

Importing customers from a CSV or XLSX