Linking Shopify customers

When someone calls or texts, Callify looks their number up in your Shopify customers and shows you who they are when you open the call or the thread.

Turning it on

Callify only reads your customers if you let it. In Settings → Customer access, press Allow customer access and approve Shopify’s prompt. The badge next to it shows Access granted or Not granted.

Until you do, the card beside a call or thread shows just the phone number and “Customer names are redacted from transcripts.” — no matching, and no linking by hand. Remove access turns it off again.

What you see

Where a number matches a customer, you get a card alongside the conversation with:

• Their name, linking to their customer page in your Shopify admin
• How many orders they’ve placed, linking to those orders
• Contact information — the number they called or texted from
• Total lifetime spent

It appears on a call’s detail page and beside a message thread — so you know whether you’re talking to a first-time buyer or someone who’s spent thousands with you. The Messages and Calls lists show phone numbers only.

How the matching works

By phone number. If the number that called matches the phone number on a Shopify customer record, they’re linked automatically. Once customer access is on, there’s nothing else to set up.

It’s right almost always. It’s wrong when:

• The customer is texting from a second phone — a work mobile, a partner’s.
• They’ve never given you their number, so there’s nothing to match.
• The number on their Shopify record is out of date.

Linking someone by hand

In a message thread with no customer showing, press Link a customer:

1. Search by name, email or phone number.
2. Pick the right person from the results.

Linking by hand is only available in message threads. A call’s detail page always shows the phone-number match.

That link sticks. The thread stays attached to that customer even though the phone number wouldn’t have matched them.

Once a customer is showing, the ⋯ menu on the card has Change customer, which swaps them for someone else, and Remove customer, which detaches them — and it stays detached; Callify won’t quietly re-link the same person on the next page load.

“Customer name hidden”

If you see:

Customer name hidden — This number belongs to a customer, but showing their name needs protected customer data access.

…then Callify has matched the number, but doesn’t have Shopify’s permission to show you the name.

Shopify treats customer names, emails and addresses as protected customer data, and an app needs explicit approval to display them. Until Callify has it for your store, matched customers show without names.

Everything else keeps working — the match is still made, the thread is still linked, order count and lifetime spend still show. It’s the name that’s withheld. In Link a customer search results you’ll see Names hidden instead, with each match listed as Shopify customer.

This is a Shopify-level permission rather than a Callify setting — separate from Customer access, which you control; see privacy and your data for the detail.

Using the context well

The card is there so you can answer better, not just faster:

• Someone with 12 orders asking about a delayed delivery is worth more patience than the ticket implies.
• A first-time caller with no orders is a sales question, not a support one.
• Their last order is usually what they’re calling about. Check it before you answer.