Shopify plans to introduce a new level of customer support for its largest enterprise merchants, as it works to attract bigger companies, leaked video reveals

• Shopify is working on a customer support offering for enterprise merchants.
• The company has been working to attract larger sellers with new tech offerings.
• Shopify’s Support organization has been undergoing several changes.

According to an internal video viewed by Insider, Shopify is developing a customer support offering for its enterprise-level merchants.

“We’re seeing much more of them coming onto the platform,” said Chief of Staff Glen Worthington at the company’s recent merchant acceleration summit, referring to enterprise customers. “We understand that their needs differ from those of the average merchant, so what can we do?”

Though Shopify has traditionally been known for serving small and medium-sized businesses, the Canadian company has made enterprise e-commerce a higher priority this year. It launched Commerce Components in January, allowing merchants to integrate parts of Shopify’s software, such as checkout and inventory management, into their existing tech stack. Shopify announced in June that its one-click checkout service, Shop Pay, would be made available to non-Shopify enterprise merchants via Commerce Components.

According to Ken Wong, managing director of e-commerce software research at Oppenheimer, the average Shopify merchant makes about $35,000 in sales per year. The average merchant using Shopify Plus, a more advanced version of Shopify used by brands such as Allbirds and Brooklinen, generates $7 million in sales per year. Shopify could use Commerce Components to target merchants with sales in the $500 million range, according to Wong. Mattel, which is expected to generate more than $5.4 billion in revenue in 2022, was an early adopter of Commerce Components.

When asked about the upcoming enterprise support offering, a Shopify representative told Insider, “This is just the beginning as we forge a future for enterprise retail that is more interconnected, accessible, and robust.”

“This year, Shopify has become the go-to platform for major enterprise businesses worldwide, driven by the increasing demand for flexible and customizable solutions that can be implemented quickly,” a Shopify representative told Insider. “To meet this demand, we will continue to provide dedicated support across all aspects of enterprise commerce.”

Shopify’s Plus and Commerce Components efforts to attract enterprise merchants were recently recognized in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant, a research report for larger e-commerce businesses. The report’s 2023 edition evaluated Shopify Plus and ranked the platform first among its peers in terms of execution. During the company’s second-quarter earnings call on August 2, president Harley Finkelstein stated that sales growth from Plus merchants outpaced regular merchants, and that the Plus merchant base experienced “strong” year-over-year growth.

Shopify’s Support organization, on the other hand, has been undergoing some changes. During a town hall in July, Shopify executives unveiled a road map for the division that placed AI squarely at the center of the company’s plans. Shopify also intends to notify approximately 16,000 of its Plus merchants that they will no longer have direct access to merchant success managers, a key benefit of the more expensive subscription. Merchant success managers are Shopify employees who advise Plus merchants on how to launch and manage their online stores. They’re frequently promoted as a feature that can help merchants “get the most value out of Shopify Plus.”

To reach Plus Support staff, merchants with less than $2 million in annual sales must use Shopify’s help center. Subscribers with annual sales of $2 million to $10 million will no longer be assigned a merchant success manager. However, they can contact merchant success teams for specific, escalated situations like “monetized product adoption and merchants growth scenarios,” according to an internal email obtained by Insider.

“To be very clear without any equivocation: Shopify Plus merchants will continue to get access to Plus Exclusive Support, 24/7 on a priority basis,” COO Kaz Nejatian responded to a LinkedIn post about the changes to merchant success.