Can we merge duplicate customer accounts on our sales platform?

[makers18]

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.  

[edcorusa]

Yes, it would be very helpful to merge customer data. I have been using Shopify for just over six months and it seems they are not willing to correct issues or add features their customers want or need.

[BrandyFS]

I'm still trying to delete the duplicate customer file on mine. I changed all his orders to the correct account, but it still shows he has 8 past orders on the incorrect account even though I click on the file and it says the customer has no orders. Therefore, the incorrect file will not delete. It is super frustrating and I have to hope he doesn't use the wrong file to order again next month. 

[flagsaflying]

We would also love to see this feature added to eliminate duplicate accounts. I know there are ways to move orders however you can't then delete the one account that you've moved the order off of so it stinks either way as you still have a duplicate and it's likely that the wrong account could be used again in the future. 

[herhappyplace]

How many years is this issue going to go on? It seems it should be an easy fix. It is very common in other systems. There is no sure way to stop it from happening when you have online and in store complicated with new staff. It is super frustrating!!!

[NorthArrow]

@Shopify C'mon guys, this should be a basic feature. 

[JAYTAY]

@Shopify Please can you tell us when this is going to be fixed or implemented? We have thousands of customers that need to be merged. This doesn't make the customer experience very helpful for ecomm owners. 

[jeffbryght]

Adding our voice to this too.  This is desperately needed as it significantly impacts our customer experience and is a huge burden on our customer support efforts.

[tkshajanes]

This is still needed BADLY!!!  Please help get this fixed, it seems so simple.

[FionaDillon]

Are there any updates from Shopify on this?

This happens for us when a customer updates or changes their email address. They email us asking us to update their account email address but both emails (old and new) have orders placed on them so we can't merge the accounts. 

We can merge profiles/email addresses on Klaviyo, it would be so helpful and great for customers if we could do this on Shopify too - it's really frustrating for customers. 

[Paul_vd_Dool]

Shopify is busy on a solution.

A few weeks ago I got asked if I would like to join a beta program for the "Customer Profile Merge" feature. I still have to get more info though.

It's coming.

[CDRess]

That sounds promising!

[BrandyFS]

Thank goodness. I have yet another customer asking me to help them merge their logins. I hope it comes soon!

[PaulNewton]

If you look around at the recent releases notice there is now going to be B2B customer accounts and all that implies,  so yeah there is movement just no timelines or public details.

So merchants should still pursue solutions that are available now that fit their situation.

[LeFoCo]

"So merchants should still pursue solutions that are available now that fit their situation."

Please, let us know what is now available to do this.

[LeFoCo]

Paul,  

That's awesome!  If you have a mailing list for when your Doppelganger upcoming features are released, please add me to it.

~Steve

[evanhill]

No brainer value add for all Shopify customers. I don't see any downside or complications from adding the feature. It's a pain point that needs fixing 

[CandiGraves13]

Replying as this is a needed service for our company as well.  I'm unsure how it's happening.  It's possible customers forget their email login and simply create a new account, sometimes they forget to login to complete their purchases.  This feature is needed.

[Steven_Holowien]

I vote for needing a merge function as well.  Desperately needed indeed.

[denisezucco]

How has this still not happened?  This thread started in 2020.  That is 2 years ago and there have been over 25K views of this issue.

[MudandHoneyCF]

Exactly!! Two years of asking for a simple feature!!

[PaulNewton]

 This thread started in 2020.  That is 2 years ago and 

---

Yup, issues older than that this is just the biggest collection.

 there have been over 25K views of this issue.

---

For perspective about features remember shopify is hosts millions of stores.

25k "views" is not a petition , it's barely a blip .

Always make direct feature requests to shopify support, then loudly and clearly let other merchants know you have and that they should too.

[JAYTAY]

Ok "genius"....as if it that hasn't been done already...by many of us.  

[ilupo]

Yes this would be extremely useful! 

[FlirtyPineapple]

Merging profiles is imperative for retaining customer loyalty. What's the point of showing how many orders someone has made when they may have different profiles? 

For us, it happens most when a customer enters their information incorrectly. Of course, I can revise it on that order, but now the customers profile is inaccurate for the number of orders they made. It may seem small, but when building customer loyalty, it is extremely imperative.

[Cathyem]

Sometimes customers make a new account or checkout as a guest because they might have forgotten their login info etc. This is a huge pain when people are collecting points on our loyalty scheme.  Merging customers is a must!

[aahlswede]

We also experience this problem. 

[dreamglow]

This should be a HIGH priority for Shopify!!!

[Tough_Traveler]

It is now possible to remove customers from orders and replace them with
the correct customer. This mostly does what merging would do.

[Biordi]

Can you show me how to remove a customer from an order?

[Biordi]

Forget it! I just figured it out. Yay!

[Katdrawdy]

So many duplicate customers!  For all the reasons already mentioned here but now that we are using Shopify payments, it seems like Shopify is automatically adding a new customer EACH TIME they use a credit card with a name attached!  For instance "Ms Smith" creates an account & becomes a customer. Then she shops in-store with a credit card that has her name on it and another "Ms Smith" is automatically created by Shopify.  Ms Smith comes in a week later and uses that same credit card and yet ANOTHER customer account is created....and on and on until poor Ms Smith has a zillion accounts, one for each time she shops.  ugh! 

[David321]

The only thing I can think of is that this exact scenario creates "tens of millions of customers" using Shopify businesses.  Sounds like a great marketing tool to increase their share price.

[khard]

Shopify just launched the new Merge Customer feature!

https://changelog.shopify.com/posts/merge-customer-profiles

[AllStitch]

so far it seems worthless. I can only merge 2 customers without any orders placed

see issues like

Customer has a credit card and can’t be merged.

[Katdrawdy]

Wait. What?  So if the customer is an actual customer (has ever placed an order), they can't be merged?  But this is precisely HOW duplicates are created (when they shop and use overlapping attributes).  Also, how can we " identify duplicated customer profiles" when there is no way to sort by name, email, phone, etc.?

[khard]

Yes, I ran into a lot of these issues as well. And was unable to find
supporting docs that really elaborated on the feature.

[chubbell]

Yep ditto this is USELESS!!

[Shay]

Hi everyone! As you have seen, there is now a customer merge feature (yay!). I have been reviewing your comments here about the functionality of the feature and wanted to clarify a few things and ensure I am accurately collecting your feedback on this. 

Some of you have mentioned an issue when trying to merge customer accounts with credit card details attached to them. Our developers are working on resolving that issue and it will not be a permanent blocker.

Officially, these are the hard blockers for merging customer profiles:

• Profiles can't be merged in the following cases:
  • either of the customer profiles to be merged has an account (An account is when they fully register on your store, allowing them to sign in and see their order history, etc. Different from the default customer profile created)
  • either of the customer profiles has a subscription contract
  • either of the customer profiles is a B2B customer contact
  • either of the customer profiles has active gift cards
  • either of the customer profiles has discounts applied
  • either of the customer profiles has metafields applied
  • a customer profile merge is in progress
  • a customer data request is in progress
  • a customer data redaction request is in progress

@Katdrawdy you mentioned not being able to filter or sort your customer profiles by name, email address or phone number to find duplicate profiles. Customer accounts cannot have the same email address and if a customer checks out using a different phone number but the same email address then the phone number is added to the "Addresses" section, along with the address entered during that checkout. To find duplicates by sorting for phone numbers used across multiple addresses, etc, I would export the customer list to a CSV file and open it in a spreadsheet app to do more advanced sorting. You can also use your analytic reports to review customer account data and creation. The customer reports may be a good fit for what you want to do. 

[JAYTAY]

This CAN'T List makes no sense. Basically if you have a customer that has never made a purchase is the only time you can merge the customers. It's still a useless functionality without the ability to merge accounts. 

[Will_Cervarich]

I don't think that's what @Shay is saying. @Shay , can you state for the record: if we have two customer profiles who've both made purchases and aren't otherwise blocked by any criterium on your list, should we be able to merge them?

[JAYTAY]

Read the can't list. I cannot merge 100% of the duplicate customers in our database because at least one of those criteria exist. If you have loyalty programs good luck using this merge function. It's USELESS for us. 

[Will_Cervarich]

Thanks, @Shay . Regarding the first hard blocker, if we clicked "Disable Account" in both of the profiles, would that allow us to merge them? And then we can just send an account invite email after the merge for them to reactivate their account and choose a new password?

Are there any other workarounds for any of these blockers that we should know about?

Also, what do you mean by "either of the customer profiles has discounts applied" ? I'm sure you couldn't mean if either of the profiles has orders that include discounts, but I'm not aware of any other functionality you could be referring to (maybe it's a Plus+ feature?)

[Shay]

Hi @Will_Cervarich, great questions!

For the accounts question, disabling the account does not unlock the merge feature. The account, while no longer connected to that profile still exists and the customer could reactivate the account at any time using the same email address. I believe this is the only permanent blocker at this time, whereas the other ones can be temporarily removed and re-added (metafields) or their gift cards, etc, can be used up. You could also cancel gift cards and reissue their remaining amount through the correct account if you wanted to clean that up sooner. 

The discounts on customer profiles is most likely referring to wholesale account discounts, which is a PLUS feature. 

In regards to: if we have two customer profiles who've both made purchases and aren't otherwise blocked by any criterium on your list, should we be able to merge them?

Yes, you should be able to merge those two accounts. The current issue with merging customer accounts with credit cards on file might cause this to not work at the moment, but that issue will be resolved ASAP. 

[Paul_vd_Dool]

Hi @Shay,

I just want to check if I understand this correctly.

If I have a customer that has a fully registered account with orders and they have also checked out as a guest once, creating another (non-fully registered) account. Because one of the two accounts is fully registered, they can't be merged?

If both accounts are fully registered I can understand, but in this situation, the customer made a mistake and we're trying to rectify that by merging the two accounts.

[Katdrawdy]

For me, the most common way customers are inadvertently being duplicated is when someone with an account decides to checkout as a guest.  So, I have a lot of customers with an active account plus one or more default customer profiles. If I'm reading this right, once the credit card issue is fixed, I'll be able to merge those?

[Shay]

Hey @Paul_vd_Dool, I completely understand your logic when approaching this topic and that is feedback I will share with our developers for further consideration.

@Katdrawdy As it stands, if even one of the two profiles attempting to be merged has a fully registered account on your store, you will not be able to merge the profiles together. Profiles with a registered account cannot be merged at this time. 

[PaulNewton]

Gonna end up needing a flowchart to understand all this.

So currently profile-merging is more of a mitigation tool to catch a duplicate account before at least one registration happens in the any of duplicates. 

Basically first time customers / new-repeat customers .

Still better than nothing but that seems a very narrow window.

@Paul_vd_Dool Seems there's a need for tools that alert a merchant when that window is open.

The registration blocker is perhaps related tangentially to the upcoming new-customers feature.

Would the window even be wider if hypothetically there was a setting to require approving customer accounts 🤔?

note to self: the Flow app cannot operate on multiple accounts to try and send an alert email .

[Dan_Knowlson]

so basically the merge feature is useless for the use cases where it would actually be needed

Way to go Shopify, sterling effort!

[edcorusa]

I have to agree. This solution is not a step forward for to the side. The idea of merging accounts is to help us as the sell to keep track of account that are made by mistake and to help the customer who made an account by mistake and placed an order, but can not see his order history. In our case, we have had a company that has placed a number of orders from one purchaser, but then that purchaser leaves and a new purchaser creates an account or a customer forgot they had an account and creates a new one and places an order. The clauses for not being able to merge two accounts means that you have to catch the two accounts before they have placed an order is impossible unless you pay someone to sit and start at the customer list 24/7. This is not a step forward.

[Rahamy13]

Essentially what they have done is created an initial frame work and then pushed it out as an "open beta" to make everyone work through all the issues... this should not have been released as a "solution" as it fixes nothing we have been pointing out for YEARS. Additionally, they made no effort to bring testers on and review things...I've contacted Shopify numerous times about this, I've work with Partners who were also attempting to work with them and communication was nill. On top of it, most of the threads pertaining to this have been marked as "Solved" but they haven't been. Absolutely pathetic performance Shopify... for a company your size with the resource you have at your disposal you can do much better, if you choose to.