Can the AI look up order status?

Yes. Give the assistant an order number and it verifies the order against the customer's email, then answers fulfillment and delivery questions straight from your Shopify orders. Nobody on your team copies status out of the admin for every "where is my package?" message.

Verification comes first

The standard lookup pairs the order number with the email on the order. That pairing establishes that the person in chat is entitled to the details, the same identity check a careful agent would run before reading order information to anyone.

When order tools are enabled, there are also two ways to find an order without its number:

• Name and ZIP: the name on the shipping label plus the postal code. This is the path for shoppers who never received a confirmation email.
• Card last four, billing name, and ZIP: for when the checkout email is unknown or different from the shopper's usual address, including Shop Pay, Apple Pay, and Google Pay checkouts.

If verification doesn't match, the assistant does not expose order contents. Staff can still help after a safe handoff.

The payment-identity path, in detail

The assistant collects the card's last four digits, the billing name, and the ZIP or postal code. It never asks for a full card number. If the shopper mentions the charge date, candidate orders are ranked by closeness to that date; otherwise by recency.

Then comes a deliberate piece of friction: the assistant shows a masked checkout email for the leading candidate, and the shopper must complete it before any details are revealed or any action runs, whether status, cancellation, or an address change. That step exists so a card's last four digits can't be used to read someone else's order. Unrelated orders and full payment numbers are not shown.

Wallet checkouts sometimes store a cardholder name that differs slightly from the shipping name, so billing, shipping, and cardholder names count as equivalent identity signals; the ZIP and last four are still required together. Some PayPal and wallet payments don't index a card last four at all. In that case the assistant asks for the order number or checkout email instead of guessing.

What a lookup looks like

"Where is order #1042?" works fine as an opener.

1. The shopper shares the order number, or the assistant asks for it.
2. The assistant confirms the email associated with the order.
3. It retrieves status from Shopify and summarizes it in plain language, in the thread.

Once the email checks out, it's stored on the conversation as the contact address, so later tools, replacement follow-ups, and staff handoffs don't ask for it again. If the ticket already carries a different contact email, the verified one is recorded as an additional detected address rather than silently replacing it.

What the customer can learn

Depending on the order's state: fulfillment status (unfulfilled, in progress, fulfilled, or another state your store uses), tracking numbers once carriers provide them, carrier and service level when present on the order, and expected delivery timelines when Shopify has that data. The assistant can also explain what a status means right now, like packed but awaiting carrier pickup, instead of reciting admin jargon.

When a label exists but carrier scans haven't started, it says exactly that rather than inventing a delivery date. The "it should arrive tomorrow" guess is a generic-bot mistake, and it's one this lookup refuses to make.

Where humans still come in

Split shipments with different tracking numbers, partial refunds or replacements, warehouse holds or manual fulfillment notes, and policy disputes ("I was promised express"). For those, the assistant finishes verification and basic status, then escalates with context so your team doesn't re-ask for the order number or email.