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.  

[Paul_vd_Dool]

Hi Michelle,

I totally agree. It's a step in the right direction but not perfect.

But Shopify is working on a proper solution. They've recently (1,5 weeks ago) asked me to review some code documentation for a merge functionality. It seems you'll be able to merge two accounts. From the current state of the documentation it does not seem you'll be able to decide which information from which account you want to keep. But rather you choose a main account which the other account will be merged into. If the second account has information that the main account does not, like a phone number, that information will be transferred to the main account.

I have not idea when Shopify plans to release this though. It's still in a very early stage. I expect it will be months still.

[PaulNewton]

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@Paul_vd_Dool wrote:

 From the current state of the documentation it does not seem you'll be able to decide which information from which account you want to keep...  If the second account has information that the main account does not, like a phone number, that information will be transferred to the main account

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Oof hopefully that's implemented as matching content an not purely overwriting indexes so things like additional shipping addresses are appended and not impurely pure 1:1 overwrites.

So two accounts one has 2 unique shipping address another has 3 unique address the merge should end up with 5 addresses not 3.

[320hss]

HAHA what a JoKE they still have not implemented this....just gotta laugh. 

[evanhill]

Yikes. I think I'm going to Twitter with an @tobi tag for a Hail Mary. This has to be a big problem ... don't get me started on inbox 

[Paul_vd_Dool]

You can save yourself the trouble @evanhill. They're already working on it.
Last I heard they were in a draft phase, thinking about how to solve this correctly. Next up would be to start development on the first version of the solution.

[Dave-Joelles]

So, this showed up in my admin under a customer profile today (see attachment)... however look at the note: can't be merged because of a credit card? Then another account said "...has a gift card and can't be merged." 

Back to the drawing board...

[Paul_vd_Dool]

Oh wow, they're already rolling it out gradually it seems.
It's coming folks!

[bruce1976]

Hi @Paul_vd_Dool I just found your app, nice and easy- why wait for Shopify to be honest. Great job!, well done!

[Paul_vd_Dool]

Thanks for the compliment Bruce 🙂

I'm glad to hear that it's of use for those that don't yet have access to the native Shopify merge functionality. Shopify seems to be gradually rolling out this new feature.

I'm hoping to also add the same functionality to Doppelganger (plus more) but my contacts at Shopify seem to be ghosting me these last 2 weeks.

With "plus more" I'm referring to the fact the native functionality only allows you to merge two accounts at a time. With Doppelganger, I want to allow you to merge more than two accounts in one go. But most importantly, with the native Shopify feature, you still need to know which accounts are duplicates. I'm already hard at work to add discover features to Doppelganger that help you identify duplicate accounts. This will hopefully not make Doppelganger entirely obsolete once the native merge feature is fully rolled out.

Update

Over the weekend I must have also gotten access to the native feature on my dev stores. But it seems pretty limited to me.
You can't merge an account as soon as the customer has
1. a credit card
2. an account (a login etc.)
3. metafields (my app adds a metafield to the customer account but there are perhaps plenty of other apps that also add metafields to the customer account)

Perhaps there are more blockers in the native functionality but these are the ones I was able to find in my limited set of fake customers on my dev store.

[badnicolez]

Even better, what if they just made it possible to move orders to different accounts instead of having to merge them? Then we could just move the orders and delete the empty account. Seems like that might be a quicker and easier solution as well for the developers.

[Paul_vd_Dool]

Hi Nicole,

That's currently possible. Follow these steps.

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

There are some downsides to this though. First, it can be quite cumbersome as you'll need to do this for all orders that are made on duplicate accounts. Second, it doesn't combine the customer timeline. Some information will get lost.

[MichelPlante]

Paul, I'm sorry and I understand you have an app to push, but THIS is not the solution, the downsides you mention (especially the 2nd one) which is basicclay the most annoying effect of having same peole under different account, just make it an undesirable solution. What we need ia real Merge accounts like the one in Klavio (exemple) Sorry :my 2 cents'  ...

[Tough_Traveler]

Just to point out, the solution Paul took the time to explain actually makes his app less necessary, not more. So, helping people out by giving them the only current solution to the problem is not pushing his app (except by making the rest of us think of him as knowledgeable and helpful).

Yes, Shopify should be able to do a true merge. But for now, this is the best way to accomplish unifying orders in one account.

[ShiftSetGo]

FYI, I was just messing around and am now able to delete duplicate accounts. For the last few months we've been able to change the customer tied to an order. But, even if I removed all orders from a duplicate profile, there was still other data about the order that was associated with that profile so that it could not be deleted. Not sure when this changed but it has to be recent. You can now delete profiles with 0 orders, even if there was at one point order data tied to that profile. One step closer I guess.

[Dave-Joelles]

I just discovered the same thing. Makes it somewhat easier but doesn't solve wrong info being entered and another customer being created. Baby steps!

[Biordi]

You want to know HOW we have tons of profiles for 1 Customer? Shopify does not allow edits the Customer data after the sale is made. So SHOPIFY HAS CREATED THIS PROBLEM!

PROBLEM: If I try to update the Order with the Customer's email. Shopify's response is that email is already taken. 

SOLUTION: Have your programmers update the software to ask "would you like to update the customer to this one?"

[SpencerCran]

Agreed. We need this. 

Duplicates are created most commonly for us when:

1) Staff enter the wrong customer information

2) People purchase online with a phone number, then come into the store and purchase using an email address. Or purchase online with an email address one time and phone number another.

3) A significant other does not realize their household has a customer account already.

[AllieRae]

OR if they use multiple credit cards as well! 

[Lawson_Thalmann]

@SpencerCran Good point on the household issue. This should be talked about more in retail. If the husband shops and creates an account and then the wife later shops and creates another account, we think we just acquired a new customer when really this is the same household with joint buying decisions. 

[Lawson_Thalmann]

At this point, it's all been said, but to pile on, it's a massive thorn in our side daily. Many customers' experiences suffer daily because of this. We lose competitiveness with other businesses using software that can do this. Our customer metrics aren't trustable to make decisions off of due to this. It's not a sustainable way to run a customer-centric business. Especially with Shopify's perceived advantage over Amazon of owning the customer relationship, this puts a hug wedge in that in practice. 

[gospaorg]

This is very much needed.

[ScotBell]

HOW IT HAPPENS

Customers forget a password, or that they have an account, and create a new acct. 

But they then either make a typo (yafoo.com instead of yahoo.com is one from this morning) or they skip an email address as they cannot create an acct (because it already exists).

IMPACT:

Customer frustration, as they cannot easily get into their account, and make typos or skip an email address.

Bad impression of us, as they don't get an email confirmation from the order.

Bad impression of us as they don't save the time they thought they would with the digital item. 

Extra effort on a busy customer's time, as they need to contact us

Extra  time by us spent on backward efforts instead of forward productive efforts, as we have to investigate / fix. We typically edit the earlier record by adding the prefix old- to their email.

Our "Yafoo" customer had a nice $75 download order which we fulfilled last night (after hours) but then this morning saw the bounce. 

-Scot

[landerson]

We have been asking for the ability to merge duplicate customers (usually for email typos) for over 5 years. It does not make any sense that the software folks could not have accomplished this by now. 

[Tough_Traveler]

I wonder if this is a new feature that has only been rolled out for some Shopify users?  Our customers do not have a Merge button anyplace on their record.

[begreen]

Sounds like a misunderstanding. We do not have a merge button! But we really need one! 😊

[Vernon_Brown]

Agreed! This seems like a very logical and useful aspect for business management. For as long as Shopify has been around, as big as they are, and for how many years it has specifically been asked for, it amazes me this still does not even seem to be on the list of things being worked on. 

[ScoutsOut]

No merging still

[eatpye]

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

[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. 

[KristyCRA]

Yes, the ability to merge would be very helpful. We have customers that input themselves with and without company names or with variations or use old email addresses and can't find all their orders. We would love to be able to help them simplify things.

[jcwords]

Please create a way to merge customers. It is needed. 

How duplicates happen:

I have a large customer base of people who have placed online orders. I also do a number of conferences each year, and sales that are run though the POS app often end up under the name that is on the customer's credit card. For example, I have Jane L Doe who just bought books at a conference. All her conference purchases are listed under Jane Lee Doe. This makes it hard to locate all her transactions and keep her information uniformly updated.

[makers18]

We run into the same issue with our customers and tracking them.  The worst, is if they make an error in their email address, we are not able to change it, because it says the correct email address already exists and doesn't link them.  It seems like a basic function that Shopify is ignoring.  I don't understand why this would not be a priority.  😞