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Has there been any updates or progress on the ability to MERGE CUSTOMER ACCOUNTS that are duplicates? We have a ton and we basically began online sales in early March. This is really needed to keep up with past orders and preferences. We also offer rewards for our repeat customers and this system has really made tracking sales difficult.
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This is an accepted solution.
You can now merge customer profiles. Thanks to your advocacy and feedback - you can merge customer profiles to ensure you have the most accurate view of your customers.
Identify duplicated customer profiles with the same name, phone number, email address, or another overlapping attribute then merge customers to make sure you maintain quality customer data.
To merge customer profiles:
Keep in mind, not every customer profile can be merged. There are some limitations for merging profiles that you can review in the Shopify Help Center.
We know this has taken time, and we appreciate your patience. We are excited to be launching this improvement for you today and look forward to hearing your feedback so we can keep improving your experience maintaining customer data in Shopify.
To learn more visit the Shopify Help Center or the Community Blog.
@Rich_Hamilton Let me know if you're able to have a developer build a custom app. Definitely doesn't seem like Shopify is doing anything soon with this...
We need this feature. Shopify is BIG. This isn't a little player with a foothold in the market.
The only changes in the changelog in POS since March of 2021 are them rolling it out to other countries. Imagine the surprise for those countries when they hit these forums and see the challenges and that you can't even do a return because you can't find the customer and their order. I have a feeling that Europe won't stand for this.
Shopify let's get you even with the other players out there in functionality. Please get your devs to work on this, enough with rolling out POS to every country and playing with the edit fields in the admin product page. Real users are begging you for help.
I am about ready to buy some shopify stock so I can go to the share holder meeting and address this issue there.
I just enquired about merging accounts only to be told that we can't. Shopify suggested an app called Doppelganger. We didn't install this, even though it's free, because it would have meant giving all of our customer information - past and future - to an organisation outside Shopify and whom we have no knowledge about. It just seemed too risky to undertake.
I find it hard to believe that people in this thread have been asking for this feature for 5 years and there is still no progress. Very depressing!
All we can do is to constantly bombard their support personnel with request for account merging. I just had an 8 email conversation back and forth with them this week and I expressed my frustration, in no uncertain terms. The only response they repeat are variations of "We understand your frustration. Your feature request has been passed on to developers.". Any requests to escalate the ticket or to get any kind of word whether this feature is even on their road map has been shut down.
I suggest that everyone that reads these posts and wants this feature sends such email to them.
@JaneSt That is probably the whole reason they have't fixed this issue. They may have a deal where Doppelgänger pays Shopify to "solve" the problem. The customer information we gather is very valuable.
I'm sorry but this was a little bit too farfetched not to respond to. Even if there is a slight chance this above reply was just to troll.
I'm the creator of Doppelganger. I've created it less than two months ago in an attempt to not truly solve the issue of duplicate customer accounts (which would be actually merging accounts) but at the very least provide an alternative option.
Even I have to guess the reason why Shopify doesn't allow you to merge duplicate accounts. Questions about this date back till 2013. In the past 8+ years, Shopify Support Staff have only been able to say they'll pass along the request to the dev team or to tell merchants they should file a feature request. Likely because they're not allowed to say it's not possible.
I've read a theory from someone saying it might have to do with the "guest checkout option" and it causing some architectural issues. But I doubt that.
My personal best guess is that it's indeed an architectural issue but then caused by old legacy code that's impossible to change without breaking everything.
But to respond to the initial reply by @JaneSt, I do get her doubts.
I'm a third party that is not affiliated with Shopify. The app requests access to read all customer- and order data. The app can't function without it. The same would go for a lot of other apps in the Shopify App Store.
All I can do is say that I don't store any customer data on a database outside of Shopify for Doppelganger. The app processes customer data, sure, but none of it is visible to me and none of is stored. Could that change in the future? Sure. I might implement a feature that would require me to temporarily store some customer data. But that would then happen securely and only after I exhausted every other option of not actually storing sensitive data. I only store necessary info on the stores that installed the app.
I could be more clear about that in the app listing, but it eventually comes down to trust.
And just to be clear about what I have to gain from building an app like Doppelganger, it's money. The app is still very new and I haven't gotten around to making it a paid app yet. That should come this year. Making it paid allows for me to pay for hosting of the app, pay for a secure database and hopefully make some extra money out of it.
Thanks for your efforts Paul - of course you need to be able to access the account data in order to make the app work.
It's a shame Shopify can't be bothered to fix this glaring issue in their system which is basic customer service and management functionality, but your efforts to provide a solution to at least some of the problems are appreciated. I'll be downloading the app soon, as we have now completed our re-branding efforts.
@Paul_vd_Dool Great explanation. I was going to come to your defense, but you said everything I would have. I appreciate your efforts to build an app for this.
I don't think there's specific deals struck with app developers where they're paid to "solve" the problem. I do think, however, on Shopify's end that they're a little bit comfortable with their ecosystem of app developers that are able to build functionality so that Shopify doesn't have to. They've gotten a little too comfortable. It is a nice symbiotic relationship as folks like Paul can charge for their app because that's how they make a living, so that part is all good. However, this feature is so so fundamental to the operation of the platform. It needs to fundamentally change how the data is stored in Shopify's databases. No app is going to fix that despite their best efforts. This is one Shopify needs to fix.
And, if they're not planning to fix it, they need to just tell us that, so we can make alternative plans for our business and serving our customers, rather than holding out hope for years and years, refreshing the change log weekly.
Unfortunately, apps like Doppleganger are not an actual fix. At best, it's a way to play with the problem enough to feel like you are doing something. After you link the accounts, you still need to manually figure out spends and #s of purchases - frustrating when there is a line in front of you, a royal pain to check every on-line order and do refunds, then you still need to readjust capture rates and everything else in the BOH reports. I wish could say the additional apps are better than nothing, but they aren't.
The only real fix would be from Shopify but they'd rather play with making things pretty than functional. I've about had it, and unless there is an indication that they intend to fix this, I'll be researching alternatives as soon as the holidays are over.
My understanding of the situation is that merging customers is an architectural problem. Because merging customers was not built into the the original structure, adding it now would require dismantling and rebuilding the entire program: as if you built a house then 10 years later you decide to add a pool on the roof. It would have been doable had it been considered at the beginning, but going back to do the retrofit requires altering nearly everything right down to the foundation, and not just the support system, it would include plumbing, electrical wiring, and who knows what else.
The only way to "fix" this is to abandon any idea of merging duplicate accounts, or going to a different platform. It's a dead issue for Shopify.
Hi Jansen,
It is not an architectural problem but a process flaw. It actually has nothing to do with merging customers but rather how customer accounts are handled. See my original thread:
Yep.
Dealt with 2 this week.
Cant log in because.... there is no account with that email.
Cant reset passwords becasue.... there is not an account with that email
Yet....
Cant create an account because.... There is ALREADY an account with that email
WTF...
End result = Customer orders elsewhere.
@AlexanderKunz, your story explains why there are so many people that make orders with multiple email addresses. It makes it very very difficult to get a repeat order from somebody that has already placed an order on an optional account. It's just terrible.
But for me, it does not explain why they can't allow for a merge feature.
To me, it sounds like an architectural problem. The same architectural problem that forces them to have the weird account flow you described.
I suspect they made a choice that did not scale well. And unraveling that mess might topple the whole house of cards.
And it must be major. I mean, they hired 2021 new people in 2021. They were able to completely revamp the way stores are built with their Storefront 2.0, but yet this issue, which is directly costing their customer revenue, they cannot (will not?) solve?
@Paul_vd_Dool wrote:And it must be major. I mean, they hired 2021 new people in 2021. They were able to completely revamp the way stores are built with their Storefront 2.0, but yet this issue,
Store 2.0 was in the works for a LOOOO0NG time and it came very close to shipping the NOSDE section|frame version that had a lot more problems than the JSON architecture does.
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Agreed. This problem has created so many duplicate accounts that many of us have duplicate customer records that need to be merged. Shopify should either directly provide that capability or allow API integrated apps to merge customers. We use HubSpot which has awesome customer data management features, like account merge but the Shopify API does not allow external apps to merge and or delete accounts.
Totally agree Paul. The root cause has created an issue that needs corrective action. If you have not seen the post, I just got off the phone with a number of Shopify team members and they are working on all the problems discussed in this thread.
@jjansen wrote:as if you built a house then 10 years later you decide to add a pool on the roof.
More like basement and the pool needs to be able to either lift all they way to the roof or the front or backyard, and all the stuff like bedrooms, bathrooms, wiring need to completely phase through reality while this happens. And the pool needs to be usable as skateboard park or a court for tennis or basketball. And it should do all this silently with no maintenance needed ever.
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@Paul_vd_Dool Thank for for attempting to address this issue that has yet to have a solution and yet has a myriad of requests for help. I am downloading your app now, as I agree it is beyond frustrating to not be able to merge customers and also would seem a very simple process to have integrated into the system way before now.
Thanks again!
@Lawson_Thalmannthank you. Shopify is actually pretty smart in allowing developers to create apps to extend to the functionality of Shopify. Else they'd need 10x more developers to cater to the needs of 1.7 million merchants. Shopify even gets a slice of the pie. Until recently they would get 20% of what app developers earned, but since this summer they're asking 15% from a small group of developers or agencies that are earning above a certain yearly revenue.
@jjansenI'd love to hear more about what issues you still run into. I've got an item on my to-do list that I called "Reports". It's not at the top of my to-do list but not that far down. I want to expand the detail page Doppelganger already has of the combined customers with more useful information. I'm just not sure yet what that would include and would love some feedback on this. I might be able to help with some of the struggles you're mentioning. Please feel free to reach out at contact@marqueedevelopment.tech or via a personal message on this forum.
@MMMerchThat's great to hear 😃 If you have any feedback at all, I'd love to hear it.
@Paul_vd_Dool wrote:Likely because they're not allowed to say it's not possible.
Shhhh 😉 ,that's a frustration most merchants don't even know they have with shopify. Corporate non-policies of optimism that just create cultural pessimism in the ecosystem, which can be a fine thing.. in other industry platforms.
Not in ecommerce which contains within itself multitudes of other industries making that type of handling toxic to business owners who need actuality regardless of how complicated it is to candy coat a forced reality.
It's why issues like this, or the forums unanswered sections, gets more and more unmanageable as time goes on because peoples feelings have to be kept glossy and brand copacetic.
I've read a theory from someone saying it might have to do with the "guest checkout option" and it causing some architectural issues. But I doubt that.
My personal best guess is that it's indeed an architectural issue but then caused by old legacy code that's impossible to change without breaking everything.
Architectural and procedural with legacy as a force multiplier the longer it goes, is my take. Account merging is a process not something fixed alone by diffing rows of data. For a single small business sure use excel ez gg , anything larger with auditing and here we are.. stuck.
I've created it less than two months ago in an attempt to not truly solve the issue of duplicate customer accounts (which would be actually merging accounts) but at the very least provide an alternative option
Great viewpoint, merchants should use the best tools available for a problem.
I wouldn't bet on any native merging feature in the near feature at least prolly until far after some other key platform features exist; like logging, backup , or undo. Some ancillary fundamental thing that facilitates merging as a process because merging accounts is a super messy thing once money is attached through various means.
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Agreed, I had to tell a customer today that I didnt have the ability to merge her account. It was rather embarrassing.
I need this function too.
This is a feature Shopify desperately needs. The biggest reason for us:
1. Forgot they had an account because of time between purchases, used a different email on subsequent orders.
Second biggest reason:
2. We imported a ton of customers from when we weren't on Shopify. That data was old and by the time we relaunched our shop, so many people had lost access to the old emails and were using new ones, and they couldn't remember having used the old ones.
From a UX perspective, you can never expect customers to remember which email they used for purchases. We have thousands of duplicate accounts with orders on both accounts so that we can't simply delete one of the accounts. It's super important for us to have a single source of truth for each customer.
Yes, this should be a high priority! Just to clarify, it's not an "account" that causes a duplicate customer record and there are many ways
in which it can happen that have already been outlined by other users. In addition to customer loyalty, this is critical for marketing segmentation.
As an example, we use Klaviyo for it robust features and how well it can work with Shopify. Oftentimes, the key functionality is targeting specific email messaging
to customers based on their past behavior such as products purchased, LTV, number of purchases, etc. I could go on and on. For example, I would like to use Klaviyo
to target a segment of customers that used to be frequent purchasers but fell off. If my messaging was asking why they stopped buying from us or offers an incentive to come back, while they are actually still purchasing but with a different email address or phone number, that's a problem. So, now because I see that this would happen a lot,
I am hesitant to proceed with my marketing because I don't know how to filter this out. So, firstly, I need to figure out the best way to merge customer records and Shopify
needs to be able to identify when a customer is creating a duplicate customer record and prompt them to update the old record with the new email or phone number or whatever to prevent
duplicates going forward. That would be slick. The merging part is old tech. I used to merge customers in Magento over a decade ago. Thanks for listening. Caleb
This is an important feature for us. Duplicate accounts are often created when a customer uses more than one email address or changes email addresses, or if they forget a password, they just create a new account.
I would love to see this feature as well!
We recently integrated Shopify with HubSpot. It pulled in all of our Shopify customers and for the first time, I could actually see accounts that HubSpot flagged as possible duplicates. Out of 40k total customer accounts in Shopify, there are 1,500 probable duplicates. That's a lot! Many of these are legitimate secondary email addresses/accounts that people use to differentiate between personal and work accounts, or between different family members. But I would say at least 10% of them are just email address typos. For instance the user typed "@gmil.com" instead of "@gmail.com". Then when they realized they weren't getting any email notifications for their orders, they went back and created another user account with the correct email address. So we probably have at least 150 duplicate accounts that are the result of typos and we don't have a good way to correct those accounts in Shopify.
The ability to surface possible duplicate accounts and provide an option to merge accounts would be incredibly helpful!
Hi,
We have this issue as well. The way it happens with us is we do an in person/ pos sale and the customer chooses to enter their phone number for the receipt. Later the customer signs up for text marketing and a second profile is created. I try to edit the original profile by entering their phone number, this is when I'm met by the error that "the number is already taken". I do not have an email for the customer because they've chosen only to provide their number.
Then when I look in Klaviyo the customer shows up as a new customer, with no purchases, but in shopify they have multiple POS purchases. This becomes an issue when I'm segmenting and trying to email those "without purchases".
Thank you.
It seems like some of our customers have ordered from multiple email addresses. It would be great if we can merge them.
Okay, we're all on the same team here so let's try to come up with a workaround since Shopify isn't helping us any time soon. I have a crazy idea.... Please let me know thoughts people have on whether this would work. This would mainly be for Shopify Plus stores but in theory regular users could create a whole new account....
Thoughts? I have to exhaust all possible workarounds before concluding I need to switch platforms altogether. Would love to stay on Shopify if possible.
No one wants to pay for another subscription from Shopify, and rebuild their entire website, including transferring domain names. Only to have to manually merge customers as they come on board. And redoing and post dating all existing orders it even crazier. I currently have over 100k orders from about 6k customers. And they duplicates will still occur thus you're back to square one. Doing shopify's export>excel>merge>import workaround would be easier, but still stupid.
@Lawson_Thalmann wrote:
- Open a new "store" on your Shopify account. This gives you a clean slate with 0 customers. Thus, no duplicate customers. But, also no orders.
For Plus use expansion stores, or sandbox stores talk the the merchant MSM for that Plus store.
- For
all the duplicate customers, you create ONE account for them in this new store.
For ELIGIBLE customers with duplicate accounts.
Validation & authorization has to be a first class citizen/word in specing this type of stuff for large retailers. Revenue can be lost when accounts vanish that shouldn't when tons of accounts are involved. Wouldn't do this this without validation as a requirement for which accounts are allowed to merge; most likely involving a customers request with dual auth, or accounts-mgr sign-off, etc.
Else a big problem can become if any of that data was ever backfilled/overwrite the source an account is gone and no longer in stuff like funnels, marketing campaigns, purchase behavior. And some other account gets things like purchase behavior from the now attached orders.
(Could also use thetransporterapp or theSyncioapp which you can also transfer products).
Also see the usemechanic app for scripting custom business logic like this.
This would allow the customers to see their whole order history under one customer record rather than 2+
Some of this would be easier if we could just create objects in liquid through json then we could put eligible secondary account data in customers.orders from metafields and skip alot of the reason for needing to merge.
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@Lawson_Thalmann, a potential issue with your idea is the fact that you can't actually reproduce an order to the letter. It will get a different order id and an order date of the time you're creating it. So an order that was actually made last year will now register as if been made recently. I've explored that avenue for my app, thinking I could perhaps replicate orders to an account and delete the original orders and then the customer account that is marked as duplicate. But that messes with metrics and might force you to get really creative with your bookkeeping since revenue from last year will now show as revenue from this year.
Here is the latest I received from Shopify:
Hey Kevin,
Azhar from Shopify Support here, hope you have been well today.
Just quickly reaching out regarding our conversation from earlier, I've just heard back from that technical team regarding your request to get additional information on whether you would be able to merge customers in the future.
The technical team specified that there are currently no public facing documents regarding this request, resultantly we would not be able to divulge any information on when exactly this feature may be introduced. However, we were both able to notice that it is indeed a common request by other merchants, and resultantly it is extremely likely that the design team is looking to implement this in the future.
I know this may not have been the exact answer you were looking for, however currently this is all the information we are able to provide regarding this.
Talking about something and committing to something are two totally different things, and you have a huge amount of your customer asking for the same simple feature.
This makes me feel unconfortable of being one of your customers
Adding my request to the pile of others...
Just got off the phone with a customer who checked out via phone number. He was about to file a chargeback because the order was not showing up under his account. Figured I could just merge so it would show.....
NOPE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Seems simple...
Do you need me to draw up a simple SQL line for you to show your "team"?
Maybe they are not skilled enough to accomplish this. IDK.
We turned off the option to check out with a phone number. It created too many duplicate accounts. Even worse, people who check out with their phone number later want to add their email address to the order so they can get automatic updates, and we can't because the email belongs to the "other" customer.
I once heard the suggestion that Shopify won't do it because of worry over violating customer privacy laws. For example, if I accidentally merge two accounts that shouldn't have been merged, now Customer A is getting Customer B's private information. It's not like credit cards have been stored in the account, but perhaps there is some other privacy concern.
That could be true. But why would they not let us know this? At least it would settle it. But they could also put a disclaimer popup when we do merge customers that would hold us responsible, and I am willing to take on that responsibility.
@Paul_vd_Dool wrote:you can't actually reproduce an order to the letter. It will get a different order id and an order date of the time you're creating it. So an order that was actually made last year will now register as if been made recently.
that messes with metrics and might force you to get really creative with your bookkeeping since revenue from last year will now show as revenue from this year.
Old way was nixed in ~2017
So in a way ,when the default properties aren't reliable after a merge , a current blocker for app/workarounds acceptance is an inability to supplant other properties, like metafields, to get back accurate reporting.
It would still be kludge with created_at not being backdate able, but maybe shows a fundamental feature request sidestepping the core issues that could have more chance to be made than account-merging.
What I mean by using other properties as an alias of another property i.e. created_at swapped for processed_at , order.metafields.account_merge.created_at, etc etc in places like reports/analytics. Like an admin setting.
Note properties like processed_at are not exposed in places like liquid for themes or notifications so yet another alias is needed. More kludge.
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@ all, In case you missed it there is a older sister thread, thatcurrently has some very good shopify replies with info and a bit of internal insight as to why this is such a hard problem that will take time:
Shopify-Gabe: Yes, this feature request goes back to even before 2015 unfortunately, and we currently have a few request tickets in our developer backlog. Good News: The collective status is now "in planning"
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Duplicates happen in different ways. When this happens we have no way to accurately look at a customers lifetime history because we can’t merge accounts.
- duplicates can happen when doing a mass import via a csv file
-duplicates can happen when a customer uses a different credit card
- duplicates happen if the customer has multiple email addresses
- duplicates happen sometime when customers place orders online
This is a basic function of most any other software we use in my other businesses.
Being able to Merge customers would be extremely beneficial for our company as well.
Doesn't matter how duplicates happen, matters that we can MERGE them when it does. 🙂 Seriously, doing the right work is making them mergable. Just removing the barrier when I try to change customer X's info on one of their "extra" accounts could work. It won't allow me to add an email address for that customer if it's "already in use." Remove that baloney from the admin side and we all win.
The duplicates happen when a customer orders and somehow the system didn't catch their email, or when they order with different email addresses, or when they order with just a phone number.
Some of my customers have 3-4 accounts at this point... Of course it's the better customers that I want to treat well but cannot do so in any reasonable fashion.
Time to spend more time on this than whatever you're spending dev time on yet?
Hi Rae,
Any updates regarding merging customers. I just moved to Shopify, and I have added all my old customers and orders in person. Now, a returning customer has made an order and a new account was made. the previous account that I made was with his phone number, and now he used his e-mail, although his phone number is on the shipping information of the order.
When I tried to add his number it says that the number already exists, it would be very great just to have the option of merging either by e-mail or phone number, if any conflict was found.
@Abdalla89 Look above the customer name on the order, and you will see the option to
Remove Customer. Remove him and then click "Add customer" and add the
"original" version of him. You should be able to then delete the duplicate
account and add his email address to the original account.
You can not delete the old customer after you reassign the order, as the database still has ties to it. Additionally, if you sell digital content like we do you must go into that platform (for us it's FetchApp) and also make changes to the order to make its download accessible to the customer. Manageable for a single order, unacceptable for any amount of volume.
This "change of customer" is a band aide at best, and a poor one at that.
Has there been an update to this? We've noticed an uptick when people choose to use PayPal. PayPal seems to override the email they are using to check out - which has made it really frustrating and impossible for customers to maintain their rewards.
Shopify is actively working on a solution. I can't say when we can expect anything.
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