Using a customer's name lifted spend 17% and doubled upsell acceptance
When staff addressed customers by name, average spend rose 17.3% and upsell acceptance more than doubled, from 22.6% to 48.4%. It builds rapport, as long as the name is used naturally and not in every sentence or an awkward moment. Bring the same principle to your support chat and post-purchase emails.
Quick Summary
In a field experiment at a restaurant plus three online experiments, addressing customers by name raised average spend by 17.3%, more than doubled upsell acceptance (from 22.6% to 48.4%), and lifted satisfaction by 15.9%. Using someone's name signals you see them as a person, not a transaction, which builds rapport and openness to suggestions.
The study was in-person, but the mechanism travels. Personalize your live chat, support replies, and post-purchase emails with the customer's name, used naturally. Two rules from the research: do not use it in every sentence (that felt manipulative and canceled the benefit), and do not use it in sensitive or embarrassing contexts.
Key Finding
+17%
Increase in average customer spend when service staff addressed people by name, versus not at all.
Srinivasa Raja, Cheng & Danaher, 2026
Personalization in ecommerce usually means product recommendations. This research points at something simpler and more human: using the customer's name. When staff did, people spent more, accepted upsells at more than double the rate, and rated the experience higher.
Crucially, the effect depended on how the name was used. Sprinkled naturally through the conversation, it worked. Used in every single sentence, it tipped into feeling scripted and manipulative, and the benefit vanished. Used right before an upsell, it read as a tactic and did not help. The lift came from genuine rapport, not from a trick.
Why it works
Hearing our name makes us feel recognized as an individual rather than a source of revenue. That builds rapport, which makes us happier with the service and more open to suggestions. Break the rapport, by overusing the name or deploying it transactionally, and the effect collapses.
What to do on your Shopify store
- Personalize human touchpoints. In live chat and email support, greet customers by name and use it naturally once or twice, not in every line.
- Warm up post-purchase emails. A named, human "Thanks, Sarah, your order is on its way" beats a faceless template.
- Introduce your people. Rapport was stronger when the employee gave their own name first. A named support agent beats "Team."
- Keep it genuine near the ask. Do not stack the name directly onto an upsell. Build the relationship first, then suggest.
Where to be careful
Avoid names in sensitive or potentially embarrassing contexts (health or intimate categories), and remember cultural differences in formality. The online-chat application is a reasonable extension of the findings but was not directly tested, so treat it as a strong hypothesis and measure it.
This is a relationship lever, most valuable across the post-purchase customer journey, where repeat business is won. The upsell-acceptance finding also connects to how to increase average order value.
Research: Srinivasa Raja, S.V., Cheng, Y. & Danaher, T.S. (2026). Journal of Retailing. Monash University. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretai.2026.03.008
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