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.
Itâs easy to know why, there are over 1 million stores using that platform.
Deep technical issues do not resolve easily in that situation vs the risk management of deploying a flawed new system to production.
Then thereâs the lack of merchant pressure itself, this threads commenters donât register as statistically significant when thereâs 1-2,000,000+ stores. (not counting an assumption that private support requests are MUCH higher).
Merchants should choose to be proactive in managing business processes like this and avoid the trap of a type of omission bias. I.e. Donât choose to be passive doing nothing now in the hopes of a wishful tomorrow instead of taking concrete action today.
Yes keep occasional pressure on support but donât assume a fix will come anytime soon or even when convenient. Manage the problem and operate as if it will never come by pursuing any available techniques to soften the situation until an actual fix arrives.
But they can a least inform us why. If you and so many other outsiders know about this inside working of shopify, then surely itâs no secret to at least inform us all that itâs impossible instead of wasting our time and supports time. Really that makes no sense. If what you say is true, then any responsible company would say sorry we cannot do that or the whole system would blow up. Or we cannot do that because of this legal reason. Or we cannot do that because its connected to Jimâs auto-lung and he will die if we do.
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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
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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.
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Wow, @PaulNewton did you really call this group of your customers, expressing frustration and pain points due to your platform, âstatistically insignificantâ? Nearly every individual customer you have, sir, is statistically insignificant. Giving this as a reason for not responding to the needs of these customers is on par with giving them all a big âf you.â
Your follow-up PSA giving advice to business owners to not rely on wishful thinking is not bad advice. But read the room, man. Get off your soapbox and tell folks what you CAN do for them, rather than chastising them for raising a concern.
Folks, I think what Paul meant to say is: âSorry everyone. We hear you and know this issue impacts your businesses. However, this is a very complex issue that we are not able to prioritize at this time. It will be a long time before it will be addressed, if ever. We suggest you find alternative methods to manage this issue based on the needs of your unique businesses.â
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Sorry @PaulNewton â I thought that your role of Shopify Partner was equivalent to Shopify Staff. I thought you were responding on behalf of Shopify. My bad.
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.
âI 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?â
Iâm 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
Make sure you hit up both the Email and Chat support to voice your concern.
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I just saw this post, tried it out, and IT WORKED! Mind blown. Totally tedious, but Iâve only been in business for 6 months so doable, for me.
Maybe it means theyâre getting closer to actually allowing merging, too?!
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 canât 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 doesnât have a release date. This is why our development team canât 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 isnât 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.
Shay,
Over 30,000 Shopify users are frustrated with this problem and requesting
change. It is baffling that doesnât constitute a bump up on the
priority list. Saying that 30,000 peopleâs joint problem with your platform
doesnât have any priority is infuriating.
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@ShayO another +1 from our end.
Itâs utterly frustrating to lose customer insight because people re-created accounts under different email addresses.
Customer Service canât operate properly because we need to search under several accounts for orders when the calling customers donât have their order ID at hand.
Transparency lacks
Customers canât self-service as they donât 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
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I felt a need to update everyone given the frustration we are all experiencing with this problem. I just had the opportunity to speak with a number of folks at Shopify (senior management, dev team, etc). The good news is the team at Shopify has listened and is working on this issue. Based on my conversation this will more than likely be a phased approach over the course of this year leading into an ideal future state. Here is what I see happening:
Phase 1 - fix the account login issue which will eliminate the creation of duplicate accounts.
Phase 2 - Implement a capability to merge accounts on the Shopify platform.
Phase 2a - I am hoping they will also improve API integration to allow external solutions like HubSpot and others to be able to also perform merge-operations. After all, I donât think any of us want to have to provide access to numerous platforms that our employees interact with.
Phase 3 - Shopify moves to a customer self-service capability that will notify customers of potential duplicate accounts and allow them to perform merge operations. We had the opportunity to speak about numerous scenarios on how this would work and I feel the Dev teams have a strong grasp on the problem and outcomes.
Please keep in mind this is my personal interpretation of the conversation and given the tasks at hand, the order and timing of features may vary. Overall I am personally happy that the Shopify team is taking this issue very seriously and making it a priority for all of usâŚ
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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.
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Hi!
I was actually reached out to by someone from Shopify who is working on POS
âbiggest issues.â
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.
@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?
Thank you. That is very different that the message left by the Shopify rep (Shay) on this thread a few days ago. She basically said it was not important enough for them to focus on and that there was no one currently working on it. I am hoping you spoke with the right people and there is, in fact, a solution coming and currently being worked on.
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Hi @makers18 Yes - this is a Shopify rep leaving a response but quite frankly I would just ignore it. I spoke with three folks that are directly responsible for addressing the issue; the Co-founder, the Chief of Staff, and the Product Director.
I am confident that Shopify is taking this issue seriously and will prioritize addressing the issue. My discussion was with the dev team directly and they have already proposed a number of solutions to which I had the opportunity to provide feedback. The direction is set, it is just a matter of timing and Shopify expressed to me the sense of urgency to address the issue.
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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 donât 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 donât know when/if the feature is being worked on or itâs level of priority. I just wanted to let you know that projects like this donât 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.
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