Summary
In Mumble you can import customers in bulk from a CSV file. The import not only creates customer records—it can also assign each customer to a list, to an agent, and fill in custom fields for them. All of this in a single file, in the same action. After the import the customers are available immediately for sending a campaign, handling in the chat, and any other action in the system.
Where it is
In Mumble, go to “Customers” in the main menu. On the “Customers” tab, click the purple + button in the corner. An actions menu will open with four options:
- Create a new customer. A manual form for a single customer.
- Export all customers. A download of your existing customer database to a CSV file.
- Import new customers. The bulk import this article explains.
- Sample file. A download of a blank CSV template with the column headers exactly as Mumble expects them. It is always worth starting here.
Preparing the file
The file must be a CSV in UTF-8 encoding. It is recommended to download the “sample file” and work on it, because it already contains the correct column names. If you work in a different file and give the columns different names, Mumble will not recognize them automatically and you will have to map them manually.
Columns Mumble recognizes
| Column name in the file | Content | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| full_name | The customer’s full name | Required. A free-text field. |
| phone | The phone number | Required. Digits only, with no leading + and no local 0. Example: 972501234567. |
| country_code | Country code in ISO format | Required. Two English letters. Examples: IL, US, GB, IT. |
| Email address | Optional. | |
| description | A description or note | Optional. A free-text field that appears on the customer record. |
| label_name | List name | Optional. If the list already exists, the customer will be added to it. If not, it will be created automatically with default colors. |
| agent_name | Agent name | Optional. The name of the agent you want to assign the customer to. Must be the name of an existing agent in the account. |
Adding custom fields during the import
If you add a column to the file whose name matches the name of a custom field you defined in the account, Mumble will fill in that field for each customer according to the value in their row. In addition, you can create a new custom field simply by adding a new column to the file. This is useful when you import data from another CRM and there are fields that do not yet exist in Mumble.
Note the cap of 15 custom fields per account. If the file tries to create a new field beyond the limit, the import will fail. In that case you need to delete existing fields or remove columns from the file.
Common formatting mistakes
- Excel “swallows” the first digit of the phone number. If you opened the file in Excel and saved it, it can convert 0501234567 to 501234567 because it thinks it is a number and not text. The fix: before saving, set the phone column to Text, or edit the file in Google Sheets, in Numbers, or in a plain text editor.
- Phone number prefix. Don’t write a + at the start of the number. Don’t leave a local 0 (050… should be 50… with a country_code of IL).
- Country code not in ISO format. The field requires two English letters. Israel is IL, not 972 and not IS.
- An Excel file instead of CSV. Mumble reads CSV only. Save the file as CSV (UTF-8) and not as XLSX.
The import process
- Choosing the file. On the import new customers screen, click “Choose file” and select the CSV you prepared.
- Preview and column mapping. Mumble will show the first rows from the file and indicate which column in the file goes to which field in Mumble. If you used the column names from the sample file, the mapping will happen automatically. Otherwise, drag each column manually to the matching field.
- Validation. Before final confirmation, Mumble checks that every customer has a valid phone number, that required fields are filled in, and that the file structure is sound. If there are errors, a specific list of the problematic rows will appear with the reason.
- Confirm and upload. After validation passes, click confirm. Mumble will start adding the customers. For large files (thousands of rows), this can take a few minutes.
- Completion. When it finishes, a success message appears with the number of customers added, and the number of customers skipped (if there were duplicates or errors that were not blocked in advance). The customers appear immediately on the “Customers” tab.
Troubleshooting common issues
“Invalid phone number”
Cause: most of the time, the phone number is written with a + at the start, with a local 0, or with spaces and dashes. Fix: make sure the number is written as digits only, with no local 0, and that the country_code appears in a separate column. Example: phone = 501234567, country_code = IL.
“Country code not recognized”
Cause: the country_code column has a value that does not match the ISO format. Fix: use the two-letter ISO Alpha-2 code. Israel is IL, the United States US, the United Kingdom GB, Italy IT. If the file came from a source that uses the full name (“Israel”), you need to convert the column to a code.
Some rows were uploaded and others were not
Cause: usually, the skipped rows are duplicates of customers who already exist in the system by phone number. Fix: check whether the skipped customers really already exist in Mumble. If you wanted to update their details, export the existing customers, edit, and re-import through this flow.
Hebrew characters appear as gibberish
Cause: the file was saved in an encoding other than UTF-8 (usually Windows-1255 or ANSI). Fix: open the file in Google Sheets, or in an editor like Notepad++, and re-save it in UTF-8 encoding. In Excel, use “Save As” with the “CSV UTF-8” option.
“Cannot add more custom fields”
Cause: the file contains new columns that create custom fields, and there are already 15 fields in the account. Fix: go to the custom fields tab, delete unused fields, and try again. Or, remove from the file the columns that do not necessarily need to become a field.
Related articles
- Sending your first campaign in Mumble
- How to create a WhatsApp message template
- Managing agents and teams in Mumble
- General account settings in Mumble
- A tool for preparing a customer import file
The bottom line
The fastest way to import customers is to download the sample file, fill it in with phone as digits only and country_code in ISO format, and import it back through Customers, +, Import new customers. Mumble handles the rest on its own.