Even in the digital age, offering phone orders alongside an online shop can be a strategic advantage for businesses. While ecommerce provides convenience and efficiency, not all customers are comfortable buying online. By offering phone ordering, businesses can ensure inclusivity, enhance customer service, and build stronger, more personal connections with their customers.
Bluepark allows you to place orders for customers on their behalf using the Remote Control feature. With Remote Control, you can log into your website as the customer, add items to their basket, and proceed through checkout, including taking payment. You can also use this feature to edit orders, if customers want to make changes to ones already placed. Our How to edit orders guide explains how Remote Control is used for this.
The Remote Control button
In your Bluepark admin panel, you can access your website via the Remote Control feature wherever you see the red mouse icon. You will see this in at the top right of the homepage, as well as in Customers. You will also see it to the right of each customer listed within Customers and within their customer account itself. Which icon you use will depend on whether the customer has an account with you or not.
- Customer doesn't have an account - use the icon within the homepage or directly within Customers
- Customer has an account - use the icon to the right of their account in Customers or within the Customer Editor of their account
If the customer doesn't have an account, you will need to input the details of the customer, such as name and email address, into the checkout as you proceed. If they do have an account, the checkout will be pre-populated with the details on their account.
Understanding Remote Control on the website
Once you have clicked the red mouse icon, the front-end of your website (what your customers see) will open in a new tab. At the top of the website you will see a red bar with Remote Control: on the left and End Session and the Bluepark tree icon on the right.
If the customer doesn't have an account, it will say Guest next to Remote Control and if you have gone through the customer's account, it will say their email address next to Remote Control. This allows you to see which customer's account you are using in Remote Control at any time.
To exit the Remote Control feature on the site, click on End Session and the red bar will disappear, confirming you are no longer within that customer's account. The Bluepark tree icon will take you back to your admin panel, if needed.
Placing an order
Once you're on the front-end of the website using Remote Control, you can start adding items to the basket as the customer tells you what they wish to order. Once you've added everything they want to purchase, go to the basket and proceed through to checkout. Fill in their personal information, if needed, select the delivery method, and proceed to payment.
Choose credit / debit card as the payment method and enter their card details as they give them to you. Be aware that the 3D securewindow may come up at this time and the customer will need to confirm the payment via a text message, banking app, or whichever form of confirmation they've set up on their bank account. Once the payment has been completed, you will be taken to the Checkout Completed page and you can close the browser window.
During the process it is important not to write the customer's details down on paper. This will go against GDPR and PCI compliance and you could be liable if it is found that you are doing this.
Completing an unfinished order
If a customer has started placing an order on your site, and has proceeded to the payment stage, their order will appear within Orders > Unfinished Orders. You can find out more about this section in our Why you shouldn't ignore unfinished orders guide.
Should the customer phone you and ask you to complete the order for them, you can click on the red mouse icon to the right of their unfinished order to go to your website logged into that order. You can then complete the order as described in the section above.
Features of Remote Control
Whilst logged into the front-end of your site using Remote Control, there are a number of features you can use that aren't available otherwise. These will only show in Remote Control, your customers will never have access to them.
Sell hidden products
If you have products that you don't sell online, but wish to sell them over the phone, you can add these to Products within your admin panel. Don't assign them to any categories and then they won't appear on the site. There's no need to add any stock levels either. As long as they're set to active, they can be added to the basket using Remote Control.
Sell out of stock products
If you have products that are out of stock on your website, but you know you have them in stock or can get hold of some, you can add these to the customer's basket. The product must be set to active to be able to purchased but it can be hidden, as above.
Change product prices
Once you've added products to the basket, you can amend their prices, if needed. To do this, in the basket, click on the price to the right of the product and it will become an editable field. Type in the price you want to change it to and click Update Basket.
Change delivery cost
You can also change the delivery cost in the same way as changing the price. Just click on the delivery price, type in the new price and click Update Basket.
Complete the order without taking payment
Within the Payment section of the checkout, alongside your usual payment methods, you will see Offline Payment. This allows you to complete the order without taking payment through the website. This is useful if you agree to allow the customer to pay offline, such as via cheque or bank transfer, or you are taking payment via a card machine or virtual terminal.
