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
• Scheduled service — visits are booked in advance, plannable up to a year out
• 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. Complimentary first month begins — No charge for the first 30 days
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).

Dashboard first run (F3, Jul 2026): the “start with a photo” prompt appears only when the account has no lifecycle evidence yet — no stored items and no completed pickups or deliveries — not merely when there is no upcoming appointment. Once a member has any history, the dashboard shows their inventory and activity instead.

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)
• Declared value, size, and weight — Prominent in the create flow (F1, Jul 2026). Measurement data is load-bearing: it drives the coverage and capacity meters, logistics planning, and the long-term data asset — never treat it as an optional afterthought. When a member approaches a meter, the portal shows an informational note in membership voice ("your membership's space allowance", "your included coverage") that routes to the concierge — meter copy never mentions limits, upgrades, or pricing (F13.1, Jul 2026).
• Category — Optional categorization
• Tags — Searchable keywords

Customer-entered dimensions are estimates; ops captures verified dimensions/weight at pickup via the /ops Measure step, after which the physical measurements lock (see Operations).

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
• First month — Complimentary on all new subscriptions
• No setup fee — Eliminated for simplicity
• Membership rate guarantee — residents of a participating partner property keep the $299 rate for as long as they live at that address (DEC-025, Sep 11, 2026)

Billing States

What the Portal Shows

• Trial badge: “Day N of 30” — 1-based (the first trial day is Day 1), clamped to the trial length (plans.trial_days = 30 since Aug 26, 2026), computed in Eastern Time.
• First payment / next billing: the Account card shows the member’s real upcoming charge — discounts and referral credits included — via a live Stripe invoice preview (billing-preview edge function), falling back to the plan price if the preview is unavailable. Never hardcode $299 in first-payment copy.
• Dates: months are always spelled out (“July 24, 2026”, never “Jul 24”) across dashboard, account, activity feed, and item history.

Billing Management

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

• Update payment method
• View invoices
• Cancel subscription

Member Referral Program (W4)

Every member has a personal referral code (e.g. ZACH-7K4M), surfaced on a referral card on the Dashboard and Account screens.

• Friend’s offer (as designed): $100 off the first month, minted on Stripe coupon REFERRAL100, first month only, new customers only.
• Share link: the share message includes www.mystoragevalet.com/?code=CODE#signup — the website shows a referral banner and auto-applies the code at Stripe Checkout, so the friend never types anything (F2, Jul 14, 2026). The code is also discoverable by typing it at checkout.
• Referrer reward: $100 account credit, applied manually by ops when the friend’s first payment lands (Phase 1).

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