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.  

[michellegoo]

This is the email we sent:

Dear Mr. Lutke,

Our store uses Shopify and we are having concerns regarding the ability to merge customers in our data base.  I have contacted Shopify Support several times to address these concerns and each time I am told there is currently no way to fix this.  I've also been told they would bring this issue to the developers to see if anything could be done about the issue.  There has been no follow up regarding this issue.  I went to the Shopify Community page and looked it up there.  It seems this has been an issue with a large number of Shopify users since at least 2017 (that's as far back as I scrolled).  Below are some details about the issue as it applies to our store.

• We have an online and POS presence.  When customers use a different email address online and/or in store, they have 2 different accounts.
  
• If a customer checks out at POS and staff forgets to put in the customer's name and the customer uses a different credit card at check out, it comes up as Visa Cardholder, thus creating a different customer account.  
• When we try to go back and edit the profile, it lets us put the customer's name in, but when we put in the email address, it says that email is already in use so we cannot add that purchase to the customers profile - thus creating two different customer accounts.
• If a name is misspelled on the customer profile, when the customer comes in and staff is looking it up, they end up creating a new profile with the correct spelling, not knowing there is already an existing account.  When we go back to correct the old spelling, we are unable to merge the files due to the 'email already in use' issue.

This is a problem for our store because:

• It makes it difficult to accurately gauge spending thresholds and loyalty rewards for customers (with more than one account).
• It makes it tedious when customers have returns without receipts because we have to look up their receipts under all of their profiles.
• It gives an inaccurate count for number of customers when doing emails and it duplicates emails when a customer has 2 different emails on their accounts.  
  

I personally, am willing to go through every duplicate account in our customer base and edit the names myself to merge the accounts - but while incredibly tedious, it is not even an option within Shopify the way it is currently set up due to the 'email already in use' error. If there could be a way to merge customer accounts without losing any of the purchasing history (from both email accounts), that would be ideal and would get rid of all the issues listed above.

I appreciate your time in reading this letter and thank you for your attention to this matter.

This is the response I got:

Hi Michelle,

My name is Mark and I am a Support Lead at Shopify. I am following up on your email to Tobi regarding merging customer accounts.

I appreciate you so clearly outlining the issues this is causing you and I recognise the difficulties that this feature limitation can have on your business. I also admire your willingness to fix the duplicate accounts manually.

It is never our intention to create more work or challenges for our merchants, and it is conversations like this that have helped shape Shopify into what it is today. We take your feedback seriously and I have already spoken to our developers about looking into this issue for the future.

While I cannot promise this gets fixed soon, we will be investigating it and you can see updates on Shopify Announcements or Shopify News.

Moving forward, I'd recommend looking over the email Michelle sent you yesterday in ticket #24949531 for possible workarounds.

Please let me know if you have any further questions, and I am happy to assist.

Warm regards,

Mark
Shopify Support Lead

***The workarounds he is referring to include tagging every duplicate account so we can weed them out that way.  At this point, that does not seem like a feasible workaround for our issues.  I would encourage everyone who is having issues to open new tickets and write emails.  This needs to be addressed and seems to be sitting on the back burner for some reason.

[Rich_Hamilton]

Would very much like to hear the final response as well. This should be core functionality with Shopify, and should have been addressed before everything else they have been doing these last few years. If we can't satisfactorily manage our existing customers, keeping them will be a challenge...and people have very little patience with these type of issues in the digital age. "I'm sorry, I can't merge your 2 (or 3) customer accounts because our software vendor doesn't see it as a priority and turns a def ear to our requests..." - "no, you can't change your own email on your account (like most other stores on the web)...I have to do that for you, sorry"... etc, etc...

[BbopnBarb]

Agreed.  We definitely need this feature.  All of the reasons previously stated apply to our business as well. 

1.  Customers use different email addresses during in-store or online.

2.  Significant others purchase for the other using a different email address.

[Lauren_Fennema]

Hi! Any update on this feature?

I know Shopify plans to roll out a bunch of new functionality - hoping this has been prioritized. Would be super helpful for Shopify to help:  

1. Scan a set of data points to identify potential customers to merge (first name, last name, ship to address) 

2. Produce a list of customer records that could be the merged

3. Allow us to auto-merge or select records and merge. 

Currently we have a ton of repeat customers showing up as "new" due to: 

- originally checked out with email, then checked out again with mobile #

- mis-spelled email

- checked out using a nickname or abbreviated name (i.e. Ginni vs Virginia, Jenn vs Jennifer)

- checked out without email on our POS, then checked out with an email on web

As everyone has outlined, it is extremely time consuming to understand new vs repeat customers, not to mention a hit to our business. Retention is the key to ecommerce success and identifying repeat customers is Ecommerce 101. This is the kind of functionality I would expect to be native to Shopify, not pushed to apps or other paid services. 

I love all the perks and partnerships (i.e. marketing tools, facebook stores, plugins, etc) but would also love to see Shopify prioritize basic native functionality like merging or managing crucial data points like repeat customers. 

[makers18]

There has been no progress at all, or at least no communication from Shopify.  It is obviously a major issue for the businesses, but Shopify has not addressed or made this a priority.  Very disappointing as a business owner trying to grow our online business.  

[joshdane]

We are also looking for merge customer functionality. 

Or at least Shopify natively notifying us someone is a repeat customer. 

[abielski]

This is a much needed feature indeed. At our store, a customer signed up once with her email address and second time with their phone number, and now there are two customer accounts for her.

[Kevin_Hartman]

When will shopify at least start to address this issue?  I brought this up 11 years ago and still nothing.    How hard can it be?  Your work arounds only cause more work, very inefficient. 

[mkmnails]

Please please please update this!

[jenniferj1]

For us it happens on point of sale A LOT. If a customer is not added to the cart BEFORE they use a credit card - it defaults to the name of the person on the credit card. Not just "no customer" so I can add one later... it literally sets up a brand new customer with just the first and last name of the card. Either get rid of auto-generating a customer from a credit card or let me merge customers!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have multiple businesses that send runners each with their own card but I KNOW the purchases are for a single business. I can change the name to match but I can't re-use the businesses email or phone number. I've only been using point of sale for 5 weeks and I already have over 15 customers for a single business. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO TRACK ANYTHING!?!?!! And since I can't re-use email or phone addresses I can't even put in a phone number to pull them all up. I have to make sure each has the name typed in the same.

So for point of sale - it's not even an archived vs. active thing. It is literally creating new customers with each credit card purchase!!

Yes, I know I could just "make sure to add the customer to the cart first" but that is not a realistic solution. Things happen. I have a line of people waiting to check out. The courier doesn't know which store sent them, or my employee forgets. We need to be able to merge customers.

PS- I can't enter a company name unless I have a physical address associated with it even if it is a business not a person making the purchase.....Company name should be a basic info field and not require an address to enter. Especially with POS. I have runners come in and say this is for "Business B" and I have to put "Business B" in the last name field so it will pull it up for employees... Or they have to look it up on a hard copy list (in 2021!)... not everyone knows the first and last name of a business owner or sales manager..... uuuugggggghhhhhhh

[Lindsay_Sevigny]

We would love this to be a feature.  We have many customers who have several customer profiles, because they either use different credit cards in-store and don't provide an email, or different email addresses online.  For example we have one customer who has 4 profiles, because she shops in-store and online.  She has used 2 different email addresses online, and has also used 2 different credit cards in-store, which has created 2 different profiles. 

The ability to merge her profiles (and all of the other customer duplicates we have) into one would make it easier to track her purchases, look up her purchases if she needs to exchange and forget her receipt, and for rewards program usage.  

Am I making things up, or did this used to be a feature years ago?

[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]

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.

[Lawson_Thalmann]

@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... 

[petgrocer]

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.

[Kevin_Hartman]

I am about ready to buy some shopify stock so I can go to the share holder meeting and address this issue there. 

[JaneSt]

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!

[george_d]

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.

[VVBKBH]

@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.

[Paul_vd_Dool]

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.

[Rich_Hamilton]

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.

[Lawson_Thalmann]

@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. 

[jjansen]

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.

[jjansen]

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.

[AlexanderKunz]

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:

Here is a summary of the issue.  The thread is about merging customer data but the root cause is how accounts are handled in Shopify which is what is causing the account duplicates.

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.

The issue can easily be fixed by eliminating the activation emails and just assigning a random strong password to all accounts and that way if someone attempts a password reset, it works and they do not go down the path of uncertainty.

On our side over 30% of our customers have left Shopify to purchase our products on an alternate platform, ie. Amazon.  We also have well over 4000 duplicate users, some of which have 3-4 accounts each.

[2faroffroad2]

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. 

[Paul_vd_Dool]

@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?

[PaulNewton]

---

@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. 

[AlexanderKunz]

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.

[AlexanderKunz]

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.

[PaulNewton]

---

@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.

[MMMerch]

@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!

[Paul_vd_Dool]

@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.