Shopify is planning a reorganization of its Support division, and employees worry cuts are on the way.
In an update posted to Shopify’s internal Workplace page on April 25, Support director David Kohl wrote that the organization’s structure had stayed “largely the same” despite experimentation with AI over the last year. Support is responsible for troubleshooting issues for Shopify’s millions of merchants.
“We’ve found multiple ways to use AI to minimize toil, help us be more efficient and improve merchant experience. We’ve learned a lot about what our merchants need through robust data, insights, and experimentation,” Kohl wrote.
“To ensure we’re set up to deliver on shifting merchant expectations and value to Shopify, we need to make some changes to how we’re organized (i.e. team structure) and how we operate (i.e. how we route issues, how we work together),” he continued.
In a video accompanying the post, Kohl detailed some of the changes on the way. He said that as the Support division had evolved in recent years, the ratio of managers to crafters — Shopify’s word for individual contributors — had fallen “below the Shopify target,” and teams were not as agile as they could be.
This has led employees to worry that layoffs could be coming soon, particularly for managers.
Kohl said in the video that employees may soon report to different people than they have previously and that some specialized teams would be consolidating. He said that Support teams working with Shopify’s largest enterprise merchants would not be affected.
Representatives for Shopify did not return a request for comment from Business Insider on the reorg.
The Support org has undergone many changes in the last couple of years. In early 2023, the company declared a “Code Yellow,” a project aimed at improving customer service levels that had “deteriorated beyond acceptable ranges.” That project officially ended at the end of 2023, but two employees in Support said that merchants continue to complain about the level of support they are receiving. These employees asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak to the press, but their identities are known to BI.
Leaning into AI was one part of Code Yellow, and Kohl’s post indicated it would continue to be a priority. Shopify has used LLMs to build tools like a help center assistant that can answer basic questions before merchants are funneled up to more specialized teams.
Shopify has also continued to hire third-party vendors — some in the Philippines, and some in Canada — to assist with customer-service tickets, which employees said has contributed to a decline in overall quality in response.
The Support division has also undergone some leadership changes. OpenAI recently hired Glen Worthington, Shopify’s former vice president of global support, to lead its own customer service operations. Jen Bebb, previously Shopify’s director of global merchant and product support, left the company in March when Worthington left. She has since joined WordPress VIP as vice president of global support. Clovis Cuqui, who previously led support as Shopify’s VP of merchant acceleration, announced his departure in October.
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