Understanding your customers

Use this guide when you want a picture of your customer base: who your best customers are, how customers break down into groups, and which products bring people back.

Your customers at a glance

Ask Claude for a breakdown of your customers into groups. VYG sorts every purchasing customer into one group based on three things: how recently they bought, how often they buy, and how much they spend.

Group	What it means	What to do with them
Champions	Bought recently, buy often, spend the most.	Thank them, early access, referral asks.
Loyal	Buy often and spend well, though maybe not very recently.	Keep them close with new launches and perks.
New	Bought recently, with only a short history so far.	Welcome series, help them make order two.
Promising	Bought fairly recently, still building a habit.	Nudge towards a repeat purchase.
At risk	Used to buy often, but have not bought in a while.	Win-back, before they become lapsed.
Lapsed	Have not bought for a long time.	Low-cost reminders, or a strong offer.
Needs attention	Do not fit any of the groups above yet.	Watch, or treat like promising.

The groups are relative to your own customers, so "recent" means recent for your brand, not a fixed number of days.

Try asking:

"Break my customers down into groups. How many are in each, and what share of the total?"
"How many champions do I have, and how does that compare with the number at risk?"

Your best customers

"Who are my top 25 customers by total spend? Show their name, email, number of orders and last order date."
"Which customers have placed at least 5 orders?"
"List customers who have spent more than $500 with us, most recent order first."
"Who are my newest customers this week?"
"Which customers were most active on the website in the last 30 days?"

You can sort by total spend, number of orders, date added, last order, or last activity, and filter by a minimum number of orders or minimum spend.

Looking up one customer

Useful for CX teams and for checking on a VIP. You can look someone up by email, phone number or their Shopify customer number. You can also search using the first three or more characters of an email or phone number.

"Look up the customer jane@example.com. How many orders have they placed and what have they spent?"
"Show me everything this customer did in the last month: visits, orders and messages."
"What subscriptions does this customer have, and are any paused?"
"Show this customer's last five orders with what was in each one."

If a customer has shopped with more than one email or phone number and VYG has linked them, Claude shows them as one customer with all their orders together.

What your customers buy

"What were my top 10 products in the last 30 days, and which ones do people buy again?"
"Which products brought in the most revenue in August?"
"Of my top 10 products, which one gets bought again most often?"

Product rankings show your top 10 products by revenue and by number of orders, for one period of up to 31 days at a time. For a longer view, ask for each month separately and have Claude put them side by side.

Tips

Customer totals only count orders VYG has seen. If your store was connected recently, older orders may be missing. For all-time figures, ask Claude to check with Shopify directly.
Totals refresh every 15 minutes, so a purchase made a moment ago may not show yet.
Customer details are personal data. Only share lists of names, emails and phone numbers with people who need them.