Providing the best customer shopping experience goes a long way. It gets you awesome reviews, returning customers and the best word-of-mouth marketing. And since order placement is the most important stage in the customer's journey, it's also a stage you need to provide the best experience at. One way to do that is by placing orders on behalf of your customers.
Can you even do that in Shopify?
You definitely can! So, today you'll learn how to order on behalf of a customer in Shopify.
Create Draft Orders in Shopify
By default, Shopify allows you to create draft orders in the admin panel. You add customer details, add products to the order, apply discounts, and then send an invoice to a customer. The invoice contains a link to checkout where customers can complete the order.
Additionally, you can also set payment terms to specify the date when the payment is due.
Relatively simple right?
The downside is that customers can't really edit the order or change any options. That often leaves them "hanging" on the checkout, as it feels forced.
So, if you want to give your customers some space while still removing the friction, use the persistent shopping cart sharing using the Shopify Login as Customer App.
Prepare Shopping Carts
Persistent shopping cart sharing is one of the options in the Magefan Login as Customer app that allows you to prepare shopping carts for customers.
It keeps the carts with product for customers on any device for an entire year or until the order is complete.
Note: for the cart to stay persistent, you have to log into your customer account within the last 7 days to prepare it. It means that if you logged into an account a month ago and haven't added any products, the persistent shopping cart feature won't be available for a customer.
So, to enable a persistent shopping cart in Shopify, navigate to Apps > Magefan Login as Customer > Configuration and enable the Shopping cart sharing option.
Note: if your customer has already added some products to the cart before you logged into their account to prepare a cart, the customer has to re-login to see a cart created by an admin.
Place Orders as a Customer on Frontend
Even if you prepare a shopping cart, some difficulties might still appear at the checkout, forcing customers to leave or request your assistance.
Thus, you might also need to make a purchase instantly on behalf of customers from the frontend. Use the Magefan Login as Customer app for that too.
To place orders on behalf of a customer in Shopify:
1. Navigate to Apps > Magefan Login as Customer > Customers and find a customer you'd like to place the order for.
2. Confirm that you want to log into the customer's account.
Note: you can login as customer without a password only if you use Shopify Plus. Otherwise, you need to ask customer to allow assistance or simply reset the customer's password.
4. Land in the customer's account and start placing an order on the customer's behalf.
If you want to keep track of orders placed by admin users, go to Apps > Magefan Login as Customer > Configuration and enable the Order Tagging option. You'll need to create and specify Order namespace and key for that.
Then once you save the settings, you'll find admin users assigned to orders, if they created them on the frontend.
However, if you want to improve the process even more, you can track admin users on the frotend and display custom fields or collections for them specifically.
The process is super easy with the Login as Customer app. But that's not the only case when it comes in handy.
If your customers ever come across any issues in their accounts or your frontend, you'll also be able to assist them quickly. Moreover, if comes with a set of APIs that allow you to log in to customers' accounts from any CRM or helpdesk.
