Shopify Inbox

1. The update introducing the so-called AI features is terrible; the AI ​​itself is highly ineffective and frequently gives irrelevant answers, so I’ve disabled it entirely.
2. Since customers no longer need to provide their email addresses, it is impossible to distinguish between new and returning clients, and replies cannot be delivered to their inboxes, resulting in reduced engagement.
3. For customers who don't provide an email, the product SKU is no longer visible, making it unclear exactly which product they are inquiring about.
4. If a customer makes multiple inquiries during a single browsing session, the conversations are split into separate chat windows rather than being consolidated into one.

Summary: Recent updates have been increasingly poor compared to the previous version; if things don't improve, we will be forced to purchase third-party chat plugins.

One more thing: for aesthetic reasons, the quick FAQ is basically no longer visible. Previously, many questions could be answered by the FAQ.

Shopify Inbox previously required visitors to provide their name and email address (for follow-up purposes) before sending a message; it now allows anonymous chats, though messages cannot be delivered to the customer if they leave the conversation.

It’s not as user-friendly as before, and I don’t like the new design. I hope you can bring back the previous version.

I can't open the chat box, it keeps showing 'Error occurred' 'Please try again'

最近的更新一以后非常得不好用，为什么要这样子？

The newly added feature that forces customers to register with an email address and receive a verification code is really bad.

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.

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.

The latest app update is disappointing; tapping the phone makes the speech bubble disappear without opening the messaging feature. The speech bubble and other icons are very small, and the chat graphics are unclear due to the color choices. I'll have to disable it...