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.  

[AlexanderKunz]

@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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

[Tough_Traveler]

@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]

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]

@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.

[Tremis]

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]

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]

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.

[kristasands]

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]

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]

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.

[evanhill]

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

[MBowland]

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]

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]

@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

[PatchPat]

ETA: Pretty sure I messed up my comment in this forum tho. Haha. In case it's not appearing as a reply, what's working for me is what Paul_vd_Dool  suggested.

This is working for me! It would still be WAY better to be able to just select every duplicate account and have a single action that allows you to bulk merge them (or even one at a time would be a time saver) into an existing account of your choosing.

But in the meantime, especially because I am such small potatoes, doing it manually like this is definitely a workaround that will help me. Thank you!

[PapaOutang]

It worked perfectly, Thanks for taking the time to help : )

[edcorusa]

A few issues with this. First, I do not have three dots I have an "X", not that big a deal. But the main issue is that it does not transfer the Timeline posts. So, if you have any Timeline posts, like when an order was created and such for the customer, you lose it. This is a work around, but not a fix of the problem at hand. This does not truly merge customer accounts.

[PatchPat]

Agreed on all counts. It worked for me, but as a workaround. I was able to consolidate the customer's complete order history into one account by manually changing the customer associated with each order and archiving/disabling the duplicates once they had 0 orders associated.

Timeline comments and auto entries for invoice, shipping, etc were not transferred. I lost that as well as the earliest "customer since" info, which was associated with one of the duplicate accounts that the customer is no longer using. I definitely want a true merging functionality and think it should be a priority for Shopify to make this feature available and accessible.

[Paul_vd_Dool]

They're currently working on a "true" solution.

At the start of June I got asked to be a part of a beta program for a "Customer Profile Merge" feature. I'm still waiting to hear more about it. I believe they are still working out some kinks.

[NatalieCreamCo]

We see this happening when people check out on their phones and use a separate email from their core account. Would really like to see this feature prioritized.

[badnicolez]

We desperately need the ability to merge customer accounts or at least have two accounts have the same email address. Would it be easier and quicker for you to fix that functionality?

When a customer enters an email address with an error in it, it creates a new account and we have literally no way to fix this issue. It negatively affects the customer because of our rewards program being linked to the amount they spend with us. We also have customers create new accounts instead of updating their original account with the new email address. 

[CVT]

I like this suggestion a lot. Unlike most of the folks on this thread, I do not think adding this function will be easy. I think it's necessary but seems like a much better first step is reducing the creation of duplicate records. Thanks Badnicolez!

[osm123]

It actually is fairly simple but it would require having companies in shopify then multiple names orn emails can be associated with the same account. Thing is they only have this in the plus which costs $2,000 a month. Even me $50 a month crm has this functionaliy. 

[MichelPlante]

Abosolutelly. A simple CRM like Pipedrive has this function, you have the 2 accounts side by side, check the info you want to keep, then [ MERGE ] ...