{"id":252864,"date":"2025-10-31T18:32:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T18:32:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/252864\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T18:32:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T18:32:13","slug":"shopify-merchants-left-angry-and-confused-as-company-goes-big-on-ai-support","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/252864\/","title":{"rendered":"Shopify merchants left angry and confused as company goes big on AI support"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shopify merchants are struggling with the firm\u2019s AI-powered support service and are finding it nearly impossible to speak to a human when they need help.<\/p>\n

One merchant who spoke to The Logic described an \u201cendless back and forth\u201d with Shopify\u2019s AI support chatbot as they struggled to get through to a human, despite paying for a service that promises round-the-clock help and a dedicated customer support representative. On Shopify\u2019s support pages and on social media, scores of Shopify merchants have been venting about how difficult it has become to speak to a human as AI takes over.<\/p>\n

Talking Points<\/p>\n

Deep cuts to Shopify\u2019s support team have coincided with an increased use of AI to help with merchant queries. One business reliant on Shopify to sell online said it was \u201castonished\u201d by the drop in the quality of support.
\nAn earlier version of the AI support system had a hardcoded feature that connected disgruntled merchants with a human if they swore at the chatbot<\/p>\n

Speaking to The Logic on condition of anonymity, former Shopify staffers said that the quality of merchant support had been deteriorating for years, adding that an over-reliance on AI was partly to blame. According to one former staffer, an early version of Shopify\u2019s AI support chatbot seemingly made merchants so angry that developers created a feature that connected them to human help faster if they started swearing.<\/p>\n

Shopify declined to answer specific questions about the changes to merchant support, though Ben McConaghy, the company\u2019s director of communications, said its human support staff were \u201cusing AI to get merchants unstuck faster\u201d and claimed \u201csatisfaction and service levels\u201d were \u201csteadily climbing\u201d as a result.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe AI is just not there when it comes to customer support,\u201d said Olivia Sawyer, CEO of Kush Queen, a CBD boutique. Kush Queen pays Shopify tens of thousands of dollars a year for access to 24\/7 help and its own Shopify support person. She said that the level of support from Shopify had fallen sharply in recent months.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just astonished,\u201d Sawyer said. Her team hasn\u2019t heard from their Shopify representative in about two years and all requests for help are now filtered through the firm\u2019s chatbot. Some phone support still exists, she said, but her staff find they can only connect to less experienced workers who struggle to solve their queries.<\/p>\n

Other merchants using Shopify\u2019s technology to sell online face similar issues. Randy Graham, e-commerce manager at Twistedsage Studios, a family-run jewelry business based in South Dakota, said neither he nor his colleagues were able to speak to a human at Shopify despite being locked out of their store after someone allegedly accessed it and changed the banking information. As a result of the impasse, he\u2019s now rebuilding an online storefront on another platform, with staff having to cut their hours to account for lost revenue due to the disruption. \u201cIt caused a lot of grief,\u201d he said of the apparent failure of Shopify\u2019s support service.<\/p>\n

Shopify merchants have grown increasingly frustrated with the quality of service, a former support worker told The Logic. They trace the problem back to 2022 when Shopify laid off<\/a> 10 per cent of its workforce with the service team amongst the hardest hit. The source estimated that hundreds of merchant support staff were laid off at that time, with many more following in smaller batches since.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In May 2023, Shopify laid off<\/a> a further 20 per cent of its staff, including some support workers. Specialized teams felt the brunt of those cuts, the source said, meaning front-line support workers no longer had enough expert assistance to handle more complicated queries from merchants. Shopify has continued to cut staff, with executives telling analysts how AI use helps it keep lower staff numbers.<\/p>\n

One former support worker, who now uses Shopify as a merchant, cited a \u201clack of human support\u201d and having \u201cto self-serve\u201d as major issues with using the company\u2019s technology for e-commerce.<\/p>\n

Sources said Shopify has also outsourced some of its merchant support work to third parties, some outside Canada and the U.S., a process that started well before the introduction of the AI support chatbot but that has ramped up in recent years.<\/p>\n

The use of AI for merchant support was part of an effort called \u201cCode Yellow,\u201d a project launched in the first half of 2023 to turn around Shopify\u2019s floundering support division. The plan was to use AI to \u201celiminate all the low-hanging fruit questions\u201d by putting them through a chatbot, said one of the former Shopify merchant support workers. \u201cAnd now, in order to get in touch with a human at all, you have to go through this AI.\u201d Executives haven\u2019t been shy about this plan, sharing the vision with analysts on earnings calls.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As far back as the summer of 2023, an AI chatbot appeared on Shopify\u2019s help page for merchants, seemingly replacing a button that allowed them to contact a human support worker. Another former Shopify staffer said moves like this were a stark contrast to how Shopify had typically handled merchant support, with the firm previously having a team of several hundred so-called gurus scattered across Canada who were all just a phone call away.<\/p>\n

Shopify also trained a version of ChatGPT on its internal documentation and then asked support staff to use the AI system to help merchants, one of the former staffers said. They were asked to use ChatGPT \u201cfor everything,\u201d including writing emails and checking grammar.<\/p>\n

The focus on using AI for support is part of a broader mandate from Shopify leadership to put the technology at the forefront of its work, a position<\/a> made public by CEO Tobi L\u00fctke in April.<\/p>\n

As some merchants struggle with Shopify\u2019s new AI-powered support service, the company\u2019s earnings have grown considerably. In 2024, revenue grew 26 per cent even as the firm\u2019s head count fell by 200 people. \u201cWe think this speaks, in part, to the success it\u2019s had in leveraging AI for internal efficiency,\u201d said Thanos Moschopoulos, managing director of equity research on technology for BMO Capital Markets.<\/p>\n

Martin Toner, managing director of institutional research, growth and innovation at ATB Capital Markets, said that merchant success was \u201ccritical\u201d to Shopify\u2019s business\u2014but that didn\u2019t negate the use of AI to make things more efficient. \u201cThat is their raison d\u2019\u00eatre, and having good customer service has to be important,\u201d he said. Though, he added, that service doesn\u2019t have to be provided by humans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shopify merchants are struggling with the firm\u2019s AI-powered support service and are finding it nearly impossible to speak…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252865,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,13831,64,61],"class_list":["post-252864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-shopify","tag-tech","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}