This is part 2 of our ‘Anatomy of a Shopify POS Implementation’ series, in which we aim to help de-risk your ecommerce store’s POS setup and integration. 

Read part 1: Hardware, Integration & Middleware Guide

Personalization is everything in 2025. According to McKinsey, personalization in marketing can reduce customer acquisition costs by as much as 50%, lift revenue by anywhere from 5% to 15%, and increase marketing ROI by 10 to 30 percent. When 71% of customers expect personalization, and 76% become frustrated when they don’t receive the level of personalization they expect, it’s important to consider all the ways you can create personalized retail experiences – many of which can begin at the POS level. 

When most mid-market retailers are stuck in a maze of separate tools and systems, achieving the level of personalization necessary to make customers happy and drive conversions is a challenge. Shopify POS aims to break this cycle by unifying customer data across online and in‑store channels. 

Modern POS systems can automatically capture email addresses at checkout, match transactions to existing customer profiles or create new ones–all without disrupting the customer experience. With unified data at their fingertips, staff can recognize returning customers, reference past purchases, and suggest complementary products in real-time. 

In part two of our Shopify POS implementation series, we’re diving into all the ways the Shopify POS makes clienteling easy, as part of Shopify’s unified commerce platform. From CRM integrations to customer data capture solutions, we’ll help you understand how Shopify customer profiles can be leveraged to create exciting experiences for your customers, no matter the sales channel or physical location. 

Clienteling with Shopify POS

Shopify POS excels at clienteling, offering features like customer profiles that store vital data, including purchase history and preferences. Accessing customer data and habits across all touchpoints and activities enables the creation of exciting and unique customer experiences, regardless of where they shop. 

Shopify POS Native Clienteling Capabilities

Using the Shopify POS enables you to gather and access all customer information from anywhere in the store, allowing you to view order/purchase history and marketing activity to recommend products and create personalized in-store experiences. 

Identify your VIP customers, offer birthday gifts/discounts or in-store consultations, all from the POS with Shopify’s unified customer profile data. With Shopify’s open APIs, merchants can create POS UI Extensions that leverage in-house connect apps to display on the POS in your retail stores or attribute sales to reps (at the time of sale or later on) in your clienteling app, for example. 

One simple yet extremely powerful clienteling functionality that you can get right out of the box with Shopify POS is the ability to email a cart to a customer for them to purchase it later. Do you sell items that might be cumbersome to take home, or have everything a customer needs in store except for one item? Open their customer profile on the POS, build/edit their cart, and send it to them by email so they can complete the order from home and get everything they need with just a click.  

This draft order functionality is also great for repeat customers who your store associates have built relationships with. Maybe you sell luxury bags and know that one of your customers would love something from your latest launch. Now, you can reach out to them to let them know the item is available and send over a draft order for them to review and confirm the purchase if they’re interested, without ever having to step foot in the store or keep an eye on your website or email newsletters! 

Shopify Flows can also be leveraged to run POS-specific automations, such as tagging customers who purchased at a specific physical store for later marketing segmentation or campaigns.  

In addition to customer data collection and access, Shopify includes built-in marketing tools with forms, email marketing, automation, segmentation via Shopify Audiences, and chats via Shopify Inbox, enabling you to build campaigns and further complete customer profiles without the need for any integrations/links to any other tools–although you can also set that up if you’d like.

Finally, Shopify offers one-click integrations with third-party clienteling apps, like Endear or StyleSend, allowing you to get up and running in minutes with minimal setup. Create POS tiles for these apps so that your store associates can quickly access and pull up relevant customer information in-store.  

What Shopify Data Can You Extract That Powers Clienteling?

• Customer name, email, phone number, address

• Order history and last order placed across locations

• Marketing preferences (email/SMS)

• Tax setting (whether the customer is exempt from taxes)

• Available store credit

• Total amount spent to date

• Tags

• Notes

• How long someone has been a customer

• The customer’s entire activity timeline with your company (when they were added to the system, when their orders were placed/shipped/cancelled/returned, etc.)

Shopify POS CRM Integration and Data Capture

Shopify POS allows seamless customer relationship management (CRM) integration, ensuring customer data is accurately captured in-store. Features like birthday promotions and CRM data alerts facilitate better customer engagement and personalized experiences. As with any other integration regarding the POS, it’s up to you and the needs of your business to determine how closely you wish to link these tools. 

While Shopify itself can perform many CRM-specific tasks, such as segmentation or sending emails, merchants may want to integrate an existing CRM into their stack rather than relying on Shopify’s tools. Once you’ve linked your CRM, there are several ways to utilize the data to provide your customers and staff with a premium shopping experience, ensuring they feel valued. 

How to Leverage Shopify POS and Your CRM Data to Create In-Store Experiences

With your CRM and POS properly integrated and working together, you can achieve a lot of additional functionality in-store. Here are a few examples. 

Birthdays

If your customer has a birthday saved in your CRM, or you use a birthday app, you can use metafields to track their birthday and generate a unique birthday coupon code if they visit your store during their birthday month. 

When an in-store customer is added to a POS session, the associate will be able to see that the customer has had a birthday since their last visit. Since the POS is already directly connected to the customer’s Shopify account, they can use their birthday discount code in-store, just like they would have been able to if they were shopping on your website. 

Enable Easy CRM Data Capture

With Shopify, you can set up the POS to notify the associate that certain metafields are missing information when they pull up a customer’s profile, such as postal code, date of birth, etc. The associate can then view what’s missing and ask the customer if they want to provide the information. This facilitates the creation of more comprehensive customer profiles for further marketing strategies/activities and campaigns.

Simplify Employee Discounts

Add your employees to your CRM in a customer segment or use a specific metafield created for them. Then, develop a custom discount function for your employee discount, which you can add as a tile to the POS to process transactions with this specific discount for your staff. 

Questions you will need to consider:

• How will I identify a customer in-store (e.g., email, mobile, landline, postal code, name, etc.)?

• What features/functionality do I need that are already supported by Shopify, and what will require additional customization? 

• How will I notify staff about what data they should collect from customers in-store?

• How will I notify my staff about promotions for which the customer is eligible?

• How will I get my POS data into my CRM?

• How will I collect marketing SMS/email opt-in consent?

Shopify POS Gift Cards 

Shopify POS simplifies gift card management, allowing associates to issue, track, and redeem gift cards across both physical and digital mediums. Gift cards are easily integrated into customer profiles, providing better tracking for future purchases.

With Shopify, you can create gift cards directly from your Shopify admin, with a set amount greater than zero and up to a maximum of $2,000 USD (or equivalent in your local currency). These can be used for future purchases from your store at no cost to the recipient. If you wish to sell gift cards, you can add a gift card product to your store, just like any other item, allowing customers to purchase them online or in-store. 

Physical gift cards purchased from a third-party provider or the Shopify store need to have a unique code printed on the card. You can then enter this code in the Shopify POS app. The code must be between 8 and 20 digits long. When a customer is added to the gift card transaction, the gift card information will be added to their customer profile for easy access later.

Shopify also provides robust reporting functionalities for gift cards through its APIs. Merchants can effectively track and manage gift card issuance and redemption.

When a sales associate sells a gift card, it does not contribute to the store's sales targets. Both the POS system and backend reports track the sales of gift cards. Associates can check customers' gift card balances. In the POS, selecting “gift card” as a payment method enables associates to scan the card instead of manually entering the number.  

Conclusion

A POS that automatically captures customer information at checkout and syncs it across channels removes friction for staff and shoppers. Integrating your CRM or loyalty program lets associates see birthdays, preferences and past purchases in real time, powering the personalized recommendations and timely promotions consumers demand. 

As a Shopify Plus Partner agency, we at Blue Badger have the skills and experience you need to get your brick-and-mortar store set up with a point of sale system that not only processes payments but also helps build and maintain customer relationships by providing excellent customer service without leaving all the extras from your online store on the table. Get in touch with us today to learn more about the Shopify POS.