Merge Customers

[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.  

[Kevin_Hartman]

Sadly this has never been a feature.  I have been requesting this for 11 years now, so dont get your hopes up.  Techs will enlighten you to the joys of exporting an excel file to alter on your own and then delete all your customer info and reupload the fixed excel file.... yeah like I would ever risk doing something that stupid and then again when it's time to clean up once more... no thanks. 

[Rich_Hamilton]

I have talked to a independent developer who is going to try and create a custom app to address this...it remains to be seen if that will come to fruition or not though. I feel pretty confident Shopify will do nothing about it. Pretty disappointing really.

[makers18]

Oh wow. That is horrible. I don’t understand why it isn’t a basic feature.

[makers18]

Not a word unfortunately.

[makers18]

Agree. It is really something that should be a basic function. Even if we had to do it manually, I wouldn’t mind.

[george_d]

I would love to hear the result of that conversation. I would happily buy that extension. It’s ridiculous that we don’t have that feature directly from Shopify. I have requested it a few times from techs and supervisors.
Just one of the reasons I wish I would have gone with a different platform years ago.

[LaFlamencadeBgn]

I need this function too.

[mnearents]

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.

[eatpye]

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

[eatpye]

Did you see where someone mentioned that they had a merge option?

[JFlores001]

This feature is definitely needed!

I think some customer duplicates are made when a customer uses a different credit card, though not sure about this exactly. I'm sure it's also happening when a customer is orders online and then comes in-store to buy stuff.

One of the things that happens and is frustrating for both us and customers is when they're shopping in-store and want a receipt sent to an email address or phone #, but Shopify has six duplicate accounts for this customer (and only one has the correct email), and so their email address or phone # doesn't show up in the field, making this customer have to re-enter their information every time. This can be time consuming for us if we're trying to be quick with sales.

On the admin side, I haven't been able to enter the email address for the other duplicate accounts, so there's no real way for me to fix this issue without deleting accounts.

[Flightmasterone]

Yes, this is very much needed!

[JAndersonCT]

Agreed, I had to tell a customer today that I didnt have the ability to merge her account.  It was rather embarrassing.  

[michellegoo]

What was the solution?  I did not see that!

[Kevin_Hartman]

So far Shopify has not come up with a solution.    When I first asked this question 11 years ago, their stock was worth $25 per share, its currently at $1392 per share, so it's not like they can't afford to hire the right person to implement this basic request. 

[michellegoo]

I did not see the solution? Can you please repost or send me a link? Thanks!

[Kevin_Hartman]

There is no solution. 

[Kevin_Hartman]

Hello Rae,

Can you tell us if this feature is even being discussed at Shopify?  Or is this a pipe dream we should all just wake up from? 

[michellegoo]

Sadly, it appears to be a pipe dream...

[mnearents]

An acceptable solution if merging customer accounts isn't possible would be to allow us to move orders between customers so that we can delete the old customer account. That would work for me as I would simply associate all the orders in account 1 with account 2, and then I could delete account 1. 

A full customer merge would obviously be better.