Shopify Inbox

The recent Shopify Inbox update has made chat significantly worse for our small business, and I’m hoping Shopify takes the merchant feedback seriously. We’re a small, family-owned store, and the owners personally answer customer chats. Live chat is an important part of how we help people before they purchase, so being able to understand who we’re talking to and keep a conversation together matters a lot. Before this update, a visitor could give us their first name before starting a conversation, optionally leave an email address so we could reply if they left the site, and we could see useful context such as their location, cart, and customer/order information when available. Since the update, we’ve run into several major problems: 1. Visitors who don’t sign into Shop come through as “Shopify Visitor” with virtually no useful identity or context. 2. We no longer get a first name before chat, which makes multiple conversations much harder to keep organized. 3. We lose useful information such as location and cart contents unless the customer signs into Shop. 4. Customers seem to get dropped from conversations constantly. If they close the chat window or leave the site, they often appear to go offline and then come back in a new conversation/thread. 5. Because those conversations are being separated, a returning customer may think they are continuing the conversation we were already having, while on our end they can look like a completely different anonymous visitor. 6. Even when a visitor does sign in, we have experienced cases where their previous purchases from our store still are not visible to us in Inbox. 7. The result is that we can spend part of a conversation trying to figure out whether this is the same person we were just helping, what they were considering buying, or whether they have already purchased from us. 8. Requiring someone to create or sign into a Shop account just to provide basic identity and shopping context adds unnecessary friction for customers who simply want to ask a question before making a purchase. This is not just a cosmetic change to the chat widget. It has materially reduced the information available to merchants and made conversation continuity much less reliable. The previous system worked extremely well for a small business like ours: collect a first name, make email optional, preserve the visitor’s conversation, show us their shopping context, and allow us to help them without forcing them to create an account. I understand Shopify’s desire to improve verified customer identity and security, but merchants should have the option to choose the previous, lower-friction experience. Please restore the ability to collect a visitor’s first name with optional email, maintain continuity for returning visitors, and give merchants access to the cart, location, and customer/order context we previously had. Shopify Inbox used to be one of the most useful tools we had for providing personal customer service. This update has made that considerably harder.

How could you mess up this app so badly? Customer need to create an account now in order to ask simple questions?

The new upgrade is extremely frustrating. Why are you forcing customers to sign in just to get an answer? This is a huge turn-off and adds an unnecessary barrier to what should be a simple customer service interaction. There is also no back button, so once a customer has viewed one Instant Answer, they cannot return to the previous options without refreshing the entire website. Realistically, at that point many customers will simply leave the site. This is a significant step backwards in terms of usability.

The app’s usefulness was greatly diminished when they stopped gathering emails. Visitors chatting with us are now not getting responses because we have no way of following up. Not everyone wants to login to chat, either. We’ll have to find a different solution.

I am forced to delete this app and switch to another one. The latest update makes communicating with clients very difficult.

franchement surtout après l'intégration du IA c'est génial !!!!

Hello, I would like to report an issue with the Shopify Inbox chat widget that started occurring after the latest app update. Issue Description: Device / Orientation: Mobile smartphones in portrait orientation. Behavior: When clicking the chat bubble icon to open the chat, the chat window does not open, and the chat bubble icon completely disappears from the screen. Theme: Taiga. Additional Details: The widget functions correctly on desktop, tablets, and smartphones in landscape mode. The issue appears to be related to how the iframe container height and responsive breakpoints are handled on mobile portrait view. Please forward this report to the Inbox development team so a patch or fix can be released.

I love the fact when the customer respond a response is already typed in the reply

the last update is huge mistake Shopify need to fix it ASAP

Very Disappointing Update – Not User Friendly The latest Shopify Inbox update is a major step backward. It feels completely unintuitive and has removed the basic navigation and menu options that made the app useful. There is no proper navigation, no easy menu for finding instant answers, and basic functionalities are unnecessarily difficult to access. It feels like the development team has focused too much on AI and forgotten the fundamental needs of users. AI should enhance the user experience, not replace basic navigation and essential functionalities. Users shouldn't have to struggle, log in, or depend entirely on AI just to find simple answers or access common features. Honestly, I don't see much value in using the app in its current form. This update is frustrating, confusing, and a significant downgrade from the previous experience.

Agent is limited; even if we give it info, it keeps responding as if it is clueless.