Support and issue routing

PayPerPlates uses the customer and merchant assistants as the first support channel. The goal is to solve common questions immediately and create a tracked case only when a responsible team must act.

Who owns an issue

The restaurant owns:

• Order status, changes, and cancellation requests
• Refund requests
• Missing or incorrect items
• Food quality and allergen concerns
• Pickup and delivery issues
• Menu accuracy

PayPerPlates owns:

• Website or app defects
• Platform outages
• Merchant account and platform billing problems
• Privacy and security issues
• Platform feature requests

Routing is enforced by the application, not chosen from free-form AI text. An ordinary restaurant complaint cannot be sent into the PayPerPlates platform queue.

Restaurant support inbox

Open Admin → Support to see customer cases for the current restaurant. Staff, managers, and owners can:

• Read the complete case thread
• Reply to the customer
• Add internal notes
• Mark work in progress
• Resolve and close a case

New restaurant cases are emailed to the configured support email. If no support-specific address is set, the order-notification or owner email is used. The database thread remains the source of truth even if an email is delayed.

Resolving a complaint (Pro)

On the Pro plan, the inbox also suggests a fix for each order complaint and lets you act on it from the case:

• Refund just the items the customer marked as missing or wrong, or a suggested amount.
• Send a make-good coupon for their next order.
• Refire the order to the kitchen.

On every plan, customers can still raise a complaint and your team is alerted.

Customer Support settings

Under Settings → Customer Support:

• How customers reach you: choose Support inbox, so customers open a case about an order from your storefront and it arrives in Support, or Contact us directly, which shows customers your phone number and email instead. Problems with the website itself always reach PayPerPlates, whichever you pick.
• Case alerts: where new-case emails go. Leave it blank to use your order alert email, then the owner email. Turn Email me about new cases on or off, and set the reply time customers see.
• Order problems: let customers mark exactly which items were missing, wrong or not right, so you can refund just those items.
• Urgent issues: a note shown on your support page, such as "For an allergic reaction call 911, then call us at …".

Platform support cases

Ask Merchant Assist before opening a platform case. It searches the help guides and checks live configuration first. When escalation is still necessary, it records the troubleshooting already attempted and creates a case visible in the same Support inbox.

PayPerPlates handles platform cases from its separate platform queue. Restaurant teams cannot see another tenant's case, and customers see only their own public messages.

Customer access

Signed-in customers can open My Account → Help & Support to create a case, view the responsible team, and continue the thread. Unsigned customers can ask the storefront assistant for help; the assistant collects a name and email before submitting a case.

For order lookups, the customer must own the signed-in order or provide the exact checkout email. The assistant never asks for card information, passwords, or authentication codes.

Urgent situations

Routine support stays in chat and the support inbox. Immediate food-safety or time-sensitive order changes should go directly to the restaurant using its published number. PayPerPlates phone escalation is reserved for an active widespread outage, a credible security incident, or another issue where delay would cause material harm.