Customer Comments on Articles

What customer comments are for

An article rarely answers every question. With customer comments switched on, a customer reading it in the portal's Help center can ask about it right there, under the article, and your team answers in the same place. The next customer with the same question finds the answer already on the page.

Customer comments are off for every article until a publisher turns them on, one article at a time.

Turning comments on for an article

Open the article in the editor and find Customer comments in the Audience panel. Switch on Allow customer comments.

• Changing it needs Publish knowledge-base articles. Without it the switch is disabled, and reviewers who only comment see it as Allowed or Off.
• The thread appears only on articles customers can already read: published, set to Portal, not inside an internal-only category, and shared with the customer's company. You can switch it on while the article is still internal; it takes effect when the article goes to the portal.
• Archived articles cannot change the setting.

Switching it off hides the thread from the portal at once. Nothing is deleted: switch it back on and every comment is still there.

What customers see

Under the article, a signed-in customer sees a Comments section with the public conversation, oldest first, replies beneath the comment they answer. A customer can:

• Post a comment, or Reply to one.
• Edit or Delete their own comments. Other people's comments cannot be changed.

Each comment shows who wrote it:

A comment deleted while it still has replies leaves the placeholder This comment was deleted., so the replies keep their context. An edited comment is marked edited.

Customers see only public comments. Your team's internal notes never reach the portal, even when they are replies in a public thread. A customer who is not signed in is sent to the portal sign-in page. Each customer can post up to 60 comments an hour.

Comments on articles are never emailed to customers. A customer sees an answer the next time they open the article.

Answering in the article editor

Customer comments appear in the editor's Comments panel alongside your team's review comments. A customer's comment carries a Customer badge beside their name and company (hover the name for their email), so you can tell at a glance who is asking.

Your team is told when a customer comments: the article's author and the staff already taking part in the thread get an in-app notification, whatever their other notification settings.

When you write, choose who sees it:

• Internal note — staff only. This is always where the box starts, for a new comment and for every reply, so going public is always a deliberate choice.
• Public comment — shown on the portal under the article, as Support. If customer comments are still off for the article, the box warns that customers will see it once they are turned on.

Writing a public comment needs Send Public Replies as well as Comment on knowledge-base articles. Without it you can still answer with internal notes. A reply in an internal thread always stays internal.

Privacy: erasure and merging requesters

Customer comments are covered by the same privacy tools as tickets:

• Anonymizing a requester removes their name and the words of their comments, including from your team's notifications. Their comments then show as Deleted user, and they can no longer edit or delete them.
• Merging two requesters moves their article comments to the surviving requester along with their tickets.

See Requesters and companies.

Related

• Article review comments — the internal review thread in the editor.
• Who can see an article — the settings that decide whether a customer can read an article at all.
• The customer Help center — what customers experience in the portal.
• Knowledge Base permissions — who can switch comments on and who can answer.