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Re: Merge Customers

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Can we merge duplicate customer accounts on our sales platform?

makers18
Excursionist
21 0 215

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.  

 

 

Accepted Solution (1)

ekeshen
Shopify Staff (Retired)
12 8 10

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:

  1. Search for a duplicate customer in the Customers page of your Shopify admin
  2. Click on the customer’s name and review their customer profile data to identify what data needs to be kept or removed. 
  3. Click into one of the duplicate profiles 
  4. On the bottom right of the profile you will see a heading called, Customer Data
  5. Click the button in that section that says Merge customer
  6. Search for the customer profile you intend to merge. 
  7. Complete the merge steps. 

 

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.

View solution in original post

Replies 415 (415)
AlexanderKunz
Tourist
9 0 20

Hi Rae (Shopify),

I had brought this issue up a few years ago with the Dev team on what's causing the issue but it doesn't seem to be a priority with Shopify.  One of my Board Members is a co-founder of Shopify (no longer involved).  This issue is caused by a process flaw/bug in Shopify.  What I mean by that is that the issue is the result of the "optional account" setting.  The recommendation is to disable that feature but we have done a lot of testing and mandatory accounts result in a significant downturn in conversions.

The issue is that even though Shopify says "optional accounts" this is not in fact true.  The account is created by its just not active (no password).  What happens is the customer gets an email to activate their account (one email from Shopify).  We additionally send 3 others but the reality is that customers do not hit the activate button which results in a fatal flaw.  The next time the customer attempts to log in using their email, the system tells them they do not have an account.  When they attempt a password reset, they are told they do not have an account.  When they try and set up a new account and use the same email address, the system tells them the account exists (yet that cannot access it).  So, naturally, the customer either leaves and orders on another channel or uses another email address.  We have over 3600 customers with multiple duplicate accounts because of this issue.  If Shopify can fix this one issue, the duplicate accounts would be a moot point.  The account should be automatically enabled with a random strong password.  If the customer never wants to log in again then it doesn't matter.  If they do, they simply just need to request a password change.  This is a process flaw because it results in cart abandonment (untraceable on the Shopify customer side because the customer cannot log in) but in reality, we performed AB testing and baseline with "accounts mandatory".   When then turned back on accounts optional and the impact was obvious.

sspooner
Shopify Partner
3 0 3

I truly agree- we need something that can merge customers. other POS systems we have had  - had this feature and I know many other businesses would agree with me! Pleaseeeee!!! 

Paul_vd_Dool
Shopify Partner
112 6 99

Hi everybody,

I'm the developer @Rich_Hamilton had been speaking with a few months ago.

I've been developing an app that I hope will help with this issue and it's been published just a few weeks ago.

https://apps.shopify.com/doppelganger-app

It doesn't allow you to actually merge accounts but rather link them together. You then get an overview page with all the combined information. Including a list of all orders.

It's still an early version and I'm working hard on adding new features. Like the option to show a list of all orders from all linked accounts on the order history page of the customer. In the storefront. And I'd love to expand to the Shopify POS as well at some point.

I'd love for you all to try it out and to let me know what you think. Feature requests and other questions are most welcome.

Doppelganger - Managing duplicate user accounts
Lawson_Thalmann
Shopify Partner
82 0 67

@Paul_vd_Dool Thank you very much for your efforts with this! I downloaded it and am playing around with it. However, I'm confused what it actually does. You said "You then get an overview page with all the combined information." Where would I find that once I've linked them together? I tried linking my 5 accounts together and nothing seemed to change except that it added a tag to the "main-account". 

Paul_vd_Dool
Shopify Partner
112 6 99

@Lawson_ThalmannIf you click on one of them you would go to their respective detail page.

But you saying this indicates to me that I can make that more clear. I'll make a note of it.

As to your question, what it does. At the moment it doesn't do much more than that, but I'm working on new features. If you have any input on that, features that would make it more usable or valuable to you, I'd love to hear it. I can't promise everything is possible, but I'm certainly willing to look into it.

Doppelganger - Managing duplicate user accounts
Lawson_Thalmann
Shopify Partner
82 0 67

@Paul_vd_Dool Ah, I see now. Cool! 

You mentioned it already, but the ability for the customer to see it in their account would be great. An extension of that is for them to consolidate their rewards points which would be based on a separate app. We're onboarding to Yotpo. I guess they have a partnership to become even more integrated with Shopify, so potentially it's easier in the future to push that data to Yotpo. You would basically zero out the duplicate accounts and add those amounts to the "main account". 

In the meantime, I see that a tag gets placed on the main account, but not the "non main". Maybe you could place a tag there. We use ShopifyPOS too, so something where we can communicate to the cashiers "use this account and not this one" somehow. Unfortunately, you don't see tags. You'd have to maybe mess with the name itself like putting a * in front. 

Just spitballing some more maybe if they log in to the duplicate account, show a notice that this is not the main account so they don't place more orders there and an option to switch the main account if they want. 

Another element is being able to calculate things like CLTV. If we could place some other type of identifier on the customer so as to delineate one "household" or "group" of customers from another. One could be called the "Smith Residence", so then another app that calculates CLTV would be able to grab all those orders over time to feed it's formula. 

I know none of that is easy so I appreciate any efforts you're able to make! 

Paul_vd_Dool
Shopify Partner
112 6 99

This is some great input @Lawson_Thalmann! Thank you so much.

The Shopify POS is definitely something I want to extend to. I haven't done anything with the POS before so I can't really say what solution I might be able to provide but I'll keep your suggestion in mind.

Loyalty points is something that is on my list to look into. As you might already suspect it might be a difficult topic as apps, any app by independent developers really, are often walled off and probably difficult to communicate with. But I'll know more once I'll look into it.

I am making Doppelganger quite transparent myself, so even though I will likely not be able to communicate with other apps myself, I am making it possible for other apps to read which accounts are linked together.

The same argument goes for apps calculating stuff like CLTV.

That CLTV stuff is very interesting though. I have no experience as a merchant, so metrics like that are new to me. I could see Doppelganger having those formulas itself while tracking orders across accounts. But it would not be on the very top of my to do list.

What I can do something about is the customer tags on the detail page. I reckoned that it would be a bit redundant to also show the tag for duplicate accounts as the label above the list reads "Linked customers". But it couldn't hurt being more clear.

Doppelganger - Managing duplicate user accounts
claysaggus
Visitor
2 0 0

Still no update for this feature?

Steven_Forrest
Visitor
2 0 3

@Rae After some searching, it seems that people have been asking for this since 2016. It's almost 2022. 😞 Any plans to make this a reality? I have a customer that had a typo in their email address when they placed their order and it would be great to combine the two accounts so all their orders are in one place.

yumshi
Visitor
1 0 2

I’ve just had the exact same problem. A customer ordered with an email address. Then ordered again with the same email but with a typo. They didn’t receive confirmation so contacted us. Now I can’t change the email as they are now two different customers on the system.

CDRess
Shopify Partner
31 0 27
I also have multiple customers when the new person uses different methods
of payment. They don't understand why they have to give me their email
address or phone with EVERY transaction because isn't in the system when
they pay with a new credit card, or use a different email. Not a good
customer experience. Not to mention that they also get multiple marketing
emails that way *and if you're paying per email, it's costing business
owners to send duplicates, too.

It's impossible to see true customer data with multiple "accounts".

All very frustrating.
Rich_Hamilton
Excursionist
21 0 113

Multiple times - every single week - I get emails from customers with duplicate accounts, that I currently have no way of helping with a lasting change due to the Shopify limitations. All I can do is manually hunt down orders and send them links, which costs me in labor and takes away from other work I need to be doing. Reflects very poorly on the Shopify platform.

Derek78756
Tourist
7 0 12

We have this exact same problem right now.  

SSS-100
Visitor
1 0 2

Merging customers would be very useful. I don’t understand why such a basic thing would be so difficult to do. All of the reasons have been listed multiple times on this thread. 

makers18
Excursionist
21 0 215

Hello!  Is there any update on the progress of this important feature?  Our database continues to grow and become an absolute mess when people do multiple orders or key in the wrong letter or number.  Please say someone has a solution coming soon.  There are enough people who are expressing their frustration with the lack of us being able to organize our customers and even recognize who our best customers even are.  This should be a very basic function of an e-commerce platform (Especially, one of the largest in the world).  

 

Misty 

Michael_Bennet1
Tourist
4 0 5

Hi Rae,

 

Just wanted to include this recent example of why so many Shopify stores are needing to be able to merge customer accounts.  This is an email directly from a customer.  

 

"I just created a new account because my email provider has changed from Shaw to Telus. Unfortunately I cannot see all of my previous orders because there is a message saying that my password is not secure and that I will receive an email to  xxxxxx.shaw.ca. I cannot access that email anymore. Is there a way for you to link my previous orders to my current account?"

 

I'm hoping that I can change his original account to have his new email and he will only lose this most recent order from his order history (and not mess up his login info). 

 

Thanks very much.  Please let me know if I can assist with any clarification or more info.

 

-Michael

Kevin_Hartman
Excursionist
22 0 45

Make sure you hit up both the Email and Chat support to voice your concern. 

CDRess
Shopify Partner
31 0 27

I just saw this post, tried it out, and IT WORKED! Mind blown. Totally tedious, but I've only been in business for 6 months so doable, for me. 

Maybe it means they're getting closer to actually allowing merging, too?!

https://community.shopify.com/c/shopify-discussions/merge-achieve-delete-duplicate-customer-accounts...

Shay
Shopify Staff (Retired)
3110 472 649

Hi everyone!

 

Thank you so much for continuing to share your feedback on this topic with us here in the community forums. This thread has been kept alive for a long time in hopes for this change to roll out. I want to assure you all that this community topic has been included in our personal feedback to the developers on the discussion of merging customers and is definitely being noted. Your thoughts and the impact the lack of this feature is creating is being heard.

 

I can't provide a confirmation of if/when this feature may become available, but I can provide some insight into why for you.

 

As Shopify has grown exponentially over just a few short years our developers are required to pivot and work on varying projects continually. Different things have different levels of importance, and ensuring that existing platform issues, bugs or planned/announced roll outs are done are definitely going to be top of that pile. They will generally take priority over continued development of an unmentioned feature that doesn't have a release date. This is why our development team can't provide concrete dates for things, project priority changes, even on a daily basis, so that timelines are constantly being moved around for different things. If we were to provide some kind of solid date then we need to be able to hold ourselves to that, and that isn't always possible. 

 

Hopefully this is a feature we can add to the platform, sooner rather than later. In the meantime, please continue sharing your feedback here, with our live support, partner teams and any where else to help increase the priority of this topic. 

Shay | Social Care @ Shopify 
 - Was my reply helpful? Click Like to let me know! 
 - Was your question answered? Mark it as an Accepted Solution
 - To learn more visit the Shopify Help Center or the Shopify Blog

twls
Visitor
2 0 6
Shay,
Over 30,000 Shopify users are frustrated with this problem and requesting
change. It is baffling that doesn't constitute a bump up on the
priority list. Saying that 30,000 people's joint problem with your platform
doesn't have any priority is infuriating.
FabianPG
Tourist
6 0 18

@ShayO  another +1 from our end.

 

It's utterly frustrating to lose customer insight because people re-created accounts under different email addresses. 

 

Customer Service can't operate properly because we need to search under several accounts for orders when the calling customers don't have their order ID at hand.

 

Transparency lacks

 

Customers can't self-service as they don't see all orders.

 

This is really needed - and almost 260 posts on 26 pages in this thread across almost 2 years now should really be enough for Shopify to finally get going on this.

 

Thank you & Best Regards

Fabian

makers18
Excursionist
21 0 215

@Shay While we appreciate you letting us know that this is low on the importance pole, and being honest that there is not a solution coming anytime soon, this is very frustrating.  

As time continues to go by, Shopify users are all losing money and marketing opportunities due to this feature not being available to us.  It is clear that it is needed based on the number of comments and likes on the post.  

 

What can we do to get this moved up, so there is more attention and action?  

Shay
Shopify Staff (Retired)
3110 472 649

Hi @makers18,

 

I apologize if my previous message gave you the sense that this feature itself is not considered important. I am not part of the development team directly that would be working on features like this and I don't have direct insight into the timeframe of when something like this could be developed. 

 

Since we have no public facing updates on this topic, I don't know when/if the feature is being worked on or it's level of priority. I just wanted to let you know that projects like this don't have the same priority normally as features that effect platform stability or other announced developments. 

 

It sounds like @AlexanderKunz has an inside track on the potential of this feature though. Thank you Alexander for letting our merchants know of the developments you have been made aware of. 

Shay | Social Care @ Shopify 
 - Was my reply helpful? Click Like to let me know! 
 - Was your question answered? Mark it as an Accepted Solution
 - To learn more visit the Shopify Help Center or the Shopify Blog

AllieRae
Tourist
8 0 18
This affects functionality and should have high priority. Your a several billion dollar company.

Hire more engineers if they’re going to keep putting basic POS features on the back burner.
makers18
Excursionist
21 0 215

@AllieRae Exactly.

AlexanderKunz
Tourist
9 0 20

@Shay No problem Shay and totally understand your message.  I hope I didn't sound disrespectful by asking folks to ignore the response.  I was simply attempting to eliminate frustration by giving everyone an accurate update of the discussion I have already had with the internal teams.

 

Having said that given your role as the face of the company as it relates to your customers, I'm going to suggest to the folks I'm speaking with to be more inclusive of those responding to customers by providing some reasonable updates and timelines to address customer concerns.  It doesn't make sense that you should have to respond to customer comments yet be operating in a black box.  In my personal opinion, this will just cause more customer frustration.

AllieRae
Tourist
8 0 18
Hi!

I was actually reached out to by someone from Shopify who is working on POS
"biggest issues."

I responded to set up a call right away and she was already booked! Crazy!

I was able to send all of my feedback via email. Hopefully there will be a
solution in the next few months.

BenedictIZ
Visitor
1 0 6

A merge customer function would be extremely useful because sometimes repeat customers purchase again, and they enter the wrong email via a small typo - like leaving out a letter.

 

As a result, the store creates an entirely new customer, and the new customer's email cannot be edited to the actual customer email, because that email is already taken.

 

Furthermore, the customer will not receive updates via email etc because they entered it wrong. 

 

Sure, that is the customer's responsibility, but everyone is human, and once the typo occurs, it is a mess for the business as well.

 

All of the customer service apps allow it i.e. Gorgias and Zendesk - so why doesn't Shopify?

abrarose
Visitor
1 0 1

I would like to know if there are any updates. I recently ordered something through our site and because of ShopPay from something else, it created a whole new account, despite already having one. I wasn't asked to sign in to my shopify account prior to completing the auto shopify checkout.

PBCo
Visitor
1 0 1

Would love to see this feature implemented! This is the first time I've used a POS that does't allow client profile merging. I'm in shock that this isn't possible. I have customers with 3 different profiles, we only sell online, and we've only been selling for 5 months. This is going to be a messy situation very soon! It would be great to have all client info in one place.

Marianafd79
Shopify Partner
2 0 1

The problem here is that if a customer creates 2 or 3 accounts with different emails, and they want to join them all under the same email, when you try to edit and set the same email Shopify gives you the error "Email has already been taken" 😞 

aubrey31
Visitor
1 0 0

Hey Rae, 

 

I am also running into this issue when a customer accidentally inputs the wrong email at checkout or a different email than previously used. Are there any updates on merging customers as it's been two years since this post?

Kevin_Hartman
Excursionist
22 0 45

Since the development team does not look at this forum, it's recommended you hit up their support via both Email and Chat to voice your complaint.  Thanks!

TPMRB
Visitor
1 0 1

your reply is not helpful @Rae 
there are 15 pages !! of users requesting a very basic feature. The multiple reasons are explained detailed. There is no need for additional info. Shopify needs to implement this. now!

chubbell
Excursionist
12 0 11

HI Rae,

 

I have been asking about this for years but what I haven't seen in this particular thread is that everytime a customer uses a different credit card number (so if fraud same card but new number or just a new card) it thinks its a new customer and you can't save the email. so now the card they are using can't be associated to their email bc it is associated to an old card/customer. 

Kevin_Hartman
Excursionist
22 0 45

Shopify's stock is down 8.5% today. We should all buy some, then go to the stock holders meeting and makes some demands. 

Kevin_Hartman
Excursionist
22 0 45

Actually it's down 65% for the year... ouch!

Tough_Traveler
Excursionist
25 0 72

@Kevin_Hartman @MichelPlante It is now possible to merge accounts and correct wrong email addresses.  It is not perfect, but it is possible.  I don't want to keep re-writing the directions, but you can see my explanation above.

ShiftSetGo
Tourist
11 0 12

I know how to remove a customer from an order and add the correct customer, but is there another step to be able to get rid of the bad customer profile? I've tried to delete the customer profile after removing all orders from it, but Shopify doesn't allow it stating there are orders associated with the profile (even though I moved them to the correct profile). Maybe I'm missing something, I don't see a merge option in any sense.

Paul_vd_Dool
Shopify Partner
112 6 99

@ShiftSetGoI'm certain it worked like that short after Shopify added it in January but it didn't work like that anymore since February. I've reported it as a bug with Shopify but I haven't heard anything back yet.

If you look at the complete customer list it will show the number of orders. If you move all orders away from an account, it will still show the previous order amount. And on the customer timeline it will also show the orders still. That's probably the reference it still has to the order and therefor you can't remove the customer.

Doppelganger - Managing duplicate user accounts
Tremis
Visitor
1 0 2

I remember leaving Square to come to shopify because there were basic functions that they left go unattended for years. Yet somehow they have had the ability to merge duplicates since day 1. I can see me leaving shopify for the same reason.

TastyTiger
Visitor
2 0 4

It's been a couple of years, have your devs fixed this issue yet? It is a serious problem for us as well and frankly I'm tired of having to spend so much time on "working around" it. 

happyhounds
Tourist
5 0 7

At the very least, would it be possible to add how many purchases a customer has made next to their name when we call them up on the POS? For example, if a person has six duplicate accounts (which is now the reality with tapping credit cards), if there was a number of orders next to the name (John Smith (40 orders)), we would no longer need to hunt for their correct order. As it stands, we have to open each account while the customer stands there just to be sure we are putting their order under the correct account.  It is quite frustrating for both of us. In my area, people loathe giving out their email address to yet another store so we don't often have them for accounts.

Living it up in the last best place.
kristasands
Visitor
2 0 0

Hi Rae,

 

Any updates on merging customers in Shopify?  From our end it looks like our customers have created multiple log ins and not purchasing in person. 

 

Thanks, Krista

RequiemSalvage
Visitor
1 0 0

18 months later and still no way to merge customers. PLEASE help get this on the dev list. I’m judging from your questions about it to previous user, it isn’t on the list. How does a duplicate get made? Shopify makes the duplicate if a returning customer without an account makes a modification to their information on the shopping cart. Super annoying as we push shopping cart links (draft orders prepopulated with customer’s previous information) to customers all the time and there are 3/4/5/6 versions of them all with one order so you can’t delete. Only workaround I see is forcing the customer to make an account which we view as an obnoxious additional step. 

Paul_vd_Dool
Shopify Partner
112 6 99

Hi @RequiemSalvage,

 

Perhaps you could look into moving orders from one account to another.
If you're on an order detail page, near the customer name there is a three-dot icon. Clicking this will give you the option to "Remove customer". After doing that, the customer name will change into an input box where you can search for the account you want to move that order to.

 

As I said earlier in this thread, Shopify is working on it but this is not something you want to do half-assed as there are a lot of dependencies you need to take into account.

 

And sorry for the shameless plug, but I've built an app with which I aim to help deal with duplicate accounts.

Recently, I added a feature that automates the steps of changing the customer on an order as much as possible. Shopify doesn't give me enough access to automate all of it just yet so there is still some manual work.

I'm currently working on updates to the app that will make it easier to find and keep track of duplicate accounts.

Check it out if you want, it's called Doppelganger and comes with a 7 day free trial so you can try it out.

Doppelganger - Managing duplicate user accounts
evanhill
Tourist
5 0 1

And herein lies the problem and why we will be waiting ... The game of gaps being filled by Developer apps

MBowland
Excursionist
15 0 7

Merging is a necessary function of any customer database.  There are many ways a customer ends up duplicated.  An example:  Rose Thorn purchases online.  She sets up her account as R (first name field) and Thorn (last name field).  She then makes a purchase in store and we search the name Rose and nothing comes up so we re-enter her again.  Now I have some orders under one account and some under another.  Would be nice to be able to fix that.

PapaOutang
Visitor
2 0 1

As an example:

1. a customer made a mistake in his email during his second order. Thus a new (duplicate) customer account was created (hence not linking the new order with the previous one, treating it as a new customer who was making his first order).

2. Editing the email to correct it (and thus making it the same email as the one used in the previous order) does not re-establish the link between the two "customers" who are in fact the same person. 

=> Expected Shopify behaviour would be that correcting the email should "re-connect" the purchase history of both "customers".

Paul_vd_Dool
Shopify Partner
112 6 99

@PapaOutang, I recommend looking into changing the customer on the order.

 

1. Click on the 3 dots in the top right corner above the customer name

2. Click "Remove customer"

3. Confirm you want to remove the customer

4. Where the customer name was there is now an input field

5. Find the correct customer account

6. The order is now linked to the chosen customer account

7. Be sure to also update the email address and/or phone number on contact information section of the order

8. You can choose to remove the other customer account as soon as it has no orders associated to it anymore

Doppelganger - Managing duplicate user accounts