Refund requests reconciled automatically across Shopify and Zendesk
Context
A UK furniture retailer handled refund requests through internal Shopify order comments while the related customer conversations lived in Zendesk. The actual payment status remained in Shopify.
Challenge
There was no reliable view of what had been requested, what had actually been refunded and what was still outstanding. Refund reasons were buried in unstructured comments, making recurring causes and monthly cost trends difficult to see.
What was delivered
Built a pipeline that captures refund-related Shopify order events and connects each request to its order and customer context.
Categorised requests by operational cause, including damage, delivery, quality, sizing, cancellation and change of mind.
Created a secure dashboard showing requested, processed and outstanding refund amounts, with filters, monthly trends and cause-level analysis.
Added a reconciliation layer against Shopify's actual refund records, plus direct paths back to the Shopify order and relevant Zendesk conversations.
Results
7
Refund causes tracked automatically
6 mo
Baseline for monthly cause and cost comparisons
1 view
Shopify orders and Zendesk conversations connected
Tech stack
Shopify
Zendesk
Cloudflare
Make.com