🎯 What you'll have at the endYou'll have Claude drafting your shop's customer replies twice a day, answering reviews and sending you a Monday sales summary, with you approving anything that goes out.

⚡ One-click install

Checked install page (app stores, official sites and template pages): tap to get it straight away.

⬇️ Download Claude for desktopOfficial download page

🧰 Before you start

A Claude Pro plan or higher and the Claude desktop app (Cowork also runs on the web and phone since October 2026)
A Shopify shop plus the apps you already use (Gmail, Klaviyo, Clarity, Judge.me)
Your returns, delivery and tone-of-voice notes in one document

⏱️ Time needed2-3 hours to set up; 10-15 minutes a day to read and send drafts

💵 Rough costClaude Pro USD 20/month (USD 17/month billed yearly); Max plans for heavy use. Shopify, Klaviyo and the rest are on their own plans.

🪜 Step by step

🐣 Beginner mode: showing the 6 essential steps only. Extra steps are hidden; tap 🚀 Advanced at the top to see all 8.

✅ 0 of 8 steps done 📄 Printable page

1
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Install Claude and open Cowork
Download Claude for desktop (button below), sign in and switch to the Cowork tab. Cowork is the mode that does tasks and reports back; Chat is for thinking out loud.
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2
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Connect your shop tools
Go to Customize, then Connectors, click the plus and add Shopify, Gmail and Klaviyo first. Add Clarity, Judge.me or Google Drive later when you need them.
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3
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Set every 'write' action to Ask permission
Each connector action can be Always allow, Ask permission or Block. Never pick Always allow for anything that changes your shop; block actions you never want. Brendan says he has watched people break their shops this way.
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4
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Create a project for your shop
Make a Cowork project (a folder that remembers your business) and add your policies and brand notes. Test it with simple questions such as 'What was my best-selling product last month?'
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5
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Schedule the customer-service triage
Click the scheduled tasks icon and paste the 'Customer email drafts' prompt below. Set it for 9am and 2pm daily, drafts only. Read and send the drafts yourself for at least a week.
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6
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Add the Monday sales check-in
Schedule the 'Monday shop check-in' prompt for every Monday morning: sales, what is winning and what is losing.
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7
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Optional: weekly conversion review
Connect Microsoft Clarity (free heatmaps of where visitors click) and ask for a weekly list of dead clicks and pages where people stop scrolling, with suggested fixes.
➕ Extra step: hidden in 🐣 Beginner mode Mark as done
8
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Optional: reviews and campaign ideas
Add a task that checks new reviews and drafts replies, and use the 'Campaign idea' prompt when you plan a sale. Add one new task each time you connect a new tool.
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💬 Copy-paste prompts

Tap Copy prompt, paste it into your AI (Grok, ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini), then replace the [yellow bits] with your own details.

💬 Customer email drafts (scheduled, 9am and 2pm)

You are the customer service assistant for [shop name]. Twice a day, read new emails in [Gmail label or support inbox].
For each one: find the customer's order in Shopify, read the whole email thread, work out what they need, and draft a reply in Gmail using our policies in this project (returns: [X days], delivery: [times], tone: [friendly, plain, British English]).
If the request needs a refund, a discount, or anything not covered by our policies, don't promise it: draft a holding reply and flag it for me.
Save everything as drafts only. Never send. When you finish, give me a short list: customer, issue, what you drafted, anything flagged.

💬 Monday shop check-in (scheduled)

Every Monday at [8am], look at last week in Shopify and Klaviyo for [shop name].
Tell me: total sales and orders versus the week before, the 5 best and 5 worst products, any product that stopped selling, the best and worst email campaign, refunds and their reasons, and stock that will run out in the next [14] days.
Finish with 3 suggestions for this week, each with the number behind it. Use only data you can see; if something is missing, say so.

💬 Campaign idea

I want to create a sales campaign for [date or season]. Look at my best-selling product, my best-performing email campaign and the product with the most views, then come up with one campaign idea: the offer, the theme, who it's for, and [four] email outlines in our usual structure.
Don't create discounts, emails or anything in Shopify or Klaviyo yet. Show me the plan first and wait for my OK.

⚠️ Tips & common mistakes

The 80% figure is his own estimate after a few weeks, not something we have checked.
Run every new task as drafts only for a week before you trust it with more.
Keep refunds, discounts and anything legal with a person. Brendan's rule: AI does the 80%, you keep the 20% that needs judgment.
If your shop is not on Shopify, look for your platform in Claude's connector list; the same steps apply.

🌟 Why it's worth it

💡 Why it mattersHe says customer-service triage 'alone saves hours a week', and that the small scheduled jobs together 'replace most of a store manager's morning'. That is staff time a small shop can put into products and marketing instead.

🏷️ Real exampleBrendan Gillen, founder of Ecommerce Academy: one plain request ('look at my best-selling product, my best-performing campaign and the product with the most views, then come up with a campaign idea') pulled data from Shopify, Klaviyo and Clarity and came back with an end-of-month sale and four draft emails.

🔌 Connects to:ShopifyGmailKlaviyoMicrosoft ClarityJudge.meGoogle Drive

🙋 Proof level: Personal postOne person's own account on X, Reddit, YouTube or a blog. Nobody has checked it: treat any numbers as their results, not a promise.

📰 Found via Blog · ecomacademy.co: Ecommerce Academy: How to Run 80% of Your Shopify Store with Claude ↗