With the recent changes to Shopify making customer data an absolute chore to capture, using Sparklayer can be an invaluable tool for merchants dealing with wholesale customers in ensuring accuracy with the customer tagging. Essentially, they are able to pass us the customer directly so that the customer tag will consistently apply without any hoops or sensitive settings.
This doesn't come without it's own set of factors though, so if someone is looking for a wholesale solution, please do consider the points below:
- This is great for identifying wholesale customers, but does not allow for purchasing on behalf of a third party. If the shop provides dropshipping for their purchasers, this will not be available as Sparklayer has a "fixed" address within the checkout, meaning that the customer cannot modify the shipping address, and thus, cannot directly ship to an alternate address
- This functionality does not come "out of the box", so if this is a solution for the merchant, they do need to contact Sparklayer, which you can let them know would be to ensure that it will work with Intuitive Shipping. The change is a quick fix on Sparklayer's end, and for internal knowledge, is essentially a switch to using the draft order system to pass the order data, otherwise, we don't see the information appropriately.
- This does come, of course, with another level of cost to the merchant, so if they are very price-sensitive, it may be best to attempt other troubleshooting means prior to suggesting this option.