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.  

[makers18]

Not a word unfortunately.

[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.

[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.

[PrecedenceDev]

I was just checking a client's service who has us as a customer. It seems that my initial personal orders linked/saved my Paypal email address (which, by the way, is extremely NOT ok) and then one order I made was a quick "oops I forgot these items" and that order did not save an email address at all, so for my personal account with them there are three customer records. I have tried to update all customers to the same email address, but this does not work either.

Then a new employee has been ordering from the business with her own email address instead of the business email address for business purchases, so if we'd made previous business purchases, this also would have created a new account that our business would have wanted to merge.

I hope this helps you resolve the issue and understand the requirement to be able to merge customers.

Editing existing customers does not "ensure that new orders are placed under the active account only" when there is ability to create MORE records.

Even the ability to allocate an order to another customer would sort some of these troubles.

JS

[hacketyapps]

We've also been dealing with this issue for our app Engagely. That's why we started on building a prototype to try and fix this issue. The biggest issue with our solution is how to transfer loyalty points or other app related data.

We'll update this thread once we have an mvp that merchants can try out.

[CrissChaney]

I would also like to have the ability to merge customer accounts- for us the problem is, if a customer puts in the wrong email address when ordering online, they don't receive their email notifications, but if they are a repeat customer- I can't put their correct email address in so that they can receive their order notifications, because it won't let me have two different customer accounts with the same email address, but then it won't let me merge the accounts- so now we're stuck going in circles....

[mnearents]

I wonder if someone could develop an app that allows you to associate
customer accounts together artificially. So that when an order
confirmation goes out, for example, the app could see whether there’s an
associated “parent” account and send a notification there too. Or when
you’re viewing orders, you could view them across the associated
accounts.  Obviously I don’t want to pay for another app, but it could
be a temporary solution. It would be doubly cool if someone developed it
as an open source app we could all self-host, thus preventing shopify
from making money on a public app. 

But also if we just keep responding to this thread it shows that it’s a
feature that needs consideration. That is if their UX designers follow
these threads. 

[CDRess]

Honestly, how is this not a feature? I have worked with several email, shipping, and POS systems in the past and I cannot think of one that didn't have this functionality. It is desperately needed for creating an accurate customer profile. Please consider implementing this ASAP.

[AlexanderKunz]

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]

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]

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.

[Lawson_Thalmann]

@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]

@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.

[Lawson_Thalmann]

@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]

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.

[claysaggus]

Still no update for this feature?

[Steven_Forrest]

@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]

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]

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]

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]

We have this exact same problem right now.  

[SSS-100]

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]

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]

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]

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

[CDRess]

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]

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. 

[twls]

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]

@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]

@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]

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. 

[AllieRae]

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]

@AllieRae Exactly.