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.

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.