Customer Experience

Customer Promise

Residents can rely on:

• White-glove pickup and return — we handle the logistics
• Searchable inventory — find any item instantly via photos, tags, descriptions
• Predictable scheduling — 48-hour lead time, bookable weeks/months in advance
• Clear chain-of-custody — always know where your items are

Service Model

What Customers Get

New Customer Flow

1. Sign up — Customer subscribes via Stripe Checkout
2. 14-day trial begins — No charge during trial period
3. Create inventory — Customer adds items with photos, descriptions, tags
4. Schedule first pickup — Book directly in the portal (native Google Calendar slots, 48-hour lead)
5. First billing — Trial ends, monthly billing begins ($299/month)

What Customers Create

• Customer adds item names, descriptions, keywords
• Customer uploads photos (1-5 per item)
• Customer tags items for easy search (holiday, fragile, kid1, etc.)
• Search "holiday decorations" → find Christmas ornaments instantly

Language Guidelines

Portal Overview

Purpose (Non-Negotiable)

For Customers:

• Manage inventory (add, edit, delete items)
• View item state (home, stored, scheduled)
• Schedule services (pickups, deliveries)
• Recover items if booking canceled

For SV Ops:

• Capture item/service data
• Enable batching and density
• Produce operational metrics

Excluded: Real-time tracking, complex pricing dashboards, ops micromanagement UIs

Customer Surfaces (6)

portal.mystoragevalet.com serves the sv-portal-2026 codebase (since Jun 10, 2026).

Staff/Admin Routes (Not Customer-Facing)

Staff tooling lives in the v2 portal’s /ops surface (portal.mystoragevalet.com/ops), staff-gated (is_staff()) and AAL2-stepped-up — shipped W1.4. (v1 and its ops surface were decommissioned Jun 29, 2026.)

Item Lifecycle

Item States

State Transitions

[Created] → HOME ←──────────────────────────┐
              │                              │
              │ schedule_pickup              │ delivery_completed
              ▼                              │
       SCHEDULED (pickup) ──────────────────┤
              │         cancel/fail          │
              │         (revert → HOME)      │
              │                              │
              │ pickup_completed             │
              ▼                              │
           STORED ←─────────────────────────┤
              │                              │
              │ schedule_delivery            │
              ▼                              │
       SCHEDULED (delivery) ────────────────┘
              │         cancel/fail
              │         (revert → STORED)

Note: DB status is `scheduled` in both cases.
Pickup vs delivery is determined by booking arrays
(pickup_item_ids / delivery_item_ids).

Booking Workflow (Items-First, Native Scheduling)

Overview

Customers book entirely inside the portal: select items, pick a slot from native Google Calendar availability (48-hour lead, up to 365 days out via the month-paged picker), and confirm. Confirming creates the event on the “SV Bookings” calendar; canceling or reverting deletes it. All writes go through fn_v2_* SECURITY DEFINER RPCs.

Flow

1. Select Items — Choose items at home to pick up (or stored items to deliver)
2. Pick a Slot — Availability = plan service windows ∩ 48-hour lead ∩ calendar FreeBusy (get-available-slots)
3. Booking Created — pending_confirmation with items attached (item status → scheduled)
4. Confirm — Booking → confirmed; Google Calendar event created
5. Service Completed — Items transition (pickup → stored, delivery → home)

Booking Statuses

pending_items and in_progress exist in the action_status enum for legacy v1-era records only; the current booking lifecycle does not use them.

Inventory Features

Item Creation

Customers create items with:

• Label — Item name (required)
• Description — Details about the item (required)
• Photos — 1-5 photos per item (at least 1 required)
• Category — Optional categorization
• Tags — Searchable keywords

Search & Filter

Customers can search by: Label (item name), Description text, Tags/keywords, Status (home, stored, scheduled), Category

Tag Taxonomy (Recommended)

Example Item Record

Title: "Holiday décor — ornaments + stockings"
Description: "2 ornament boxes, 6 stockings, 1 table runner; deliver after Thanksgiving."
Tags: holiday, decor, fragile, seasonal
Declared value: $500
Notes: "Customer prefers Friday delivery window."

Subscription & Billing

Pricing

• $299/month — Single plan, no tiers
• 14-day trial — Complimentary on all new subscriptions
• No setup fee — Eliminated for simplicity

Billing States

Billing Management

Customers manage billing via Stripe Customer Portal (hosted by Stripe):

• Update payment method
• View invoices
• Cancel subscription

Design Principles for Customer Experience

1. Customer clarity > internal convenience — Always show clear item state
2. Items > bookings — Items are persistent; bookings are transient
3. No dead ends — Every state has a clear next action
4. Revert paths are mandatory — Customers can always recover from scheduled states