Shopee CRM case study 2026: how sellers keep customers when the data stays on the marketplace

Updated on October 19, 2026: Adtek rewrote the entire article with the latest data, platform features and regulations for 2025 to 2026.

Shopee CRM in 2026 means managing customer relationships with whatever the marketplace allows: shop follows, Shopee Chat, vouchers reserved for followers, livestreams, product reviews and the numbers in Seller Centre. A shop can no longer keep its customers’ names, phone numbers and addresses, because Shopee has hidden that information from every seller since July 24, 2024. The 2022 version of this article explained how to export orders to Excel to build a customer list. That method no longer works, and any workaround runs into both marketplace policy and Vietnam’s 2025 Personal Data Protection Law.

Shopee in 2026: still the leader, but new customers cost more

According to the 2026 e-commerce report from Q&Me, a Vietnamese market research firm, as covered by The Investor on June 3, 2026, Shopee posted $7.29 billion in GMV over the 12 months from May 2025 to April 2026, up 21%, for a 53% share of the four major marketplaces. A year earlier, that share was 61%. TikTok Shop grew 83% to $5.96 billion and took 44%. Lazada was down to 3%.

The number of sellers is shrinking. YouNet ECI, an e-commerce analytics firm, estimates that in the first half of 2026 about 162,700 stores across the four marketplaces stopped generating revenue compared with the same period a year earlier. Shopee still has about 174,000 stores with revenue, averaging VND 831.7 million in GMV per store, up 44% (Dan Tri, September 29, 2026). In the same article, Nguyen Manh Tan, marketing director at the e-commerce platform Haravan and deputy head of the e-commerce platforms committee at VECOM (the Vietnam E-commerce Association), said that for some business models, total marketplace fees can reach around 40% of revenue.

Revenue is concentrating among professional sellers. Data from Metric, an e-commerce data platform, shows that in the first half of 2026, Mall stores made up only 2.79% of stores on Shopee, Lazada and TikTok Shop but generated 34.2% of sales (VnEconomy, July 25, 2026). The Q&Me survey in the report mentioned above found that 67% of shoppers want marketplaces to do more to guarantee genuine products, and 53% want more trustworthy reviews.

High fees thin out the margin on orders from new customers, and shoppers choose shops based on trust. When an existing customer comes back, the shop does not pay again in advertising to win them (how Shopee Ads and GMV Max charge is covered in our article on marketplace advertising). That is why retention rate and customer lifetime value (LTV) belong in a store’s weekly report, right next to ROAS.

What can sellers see about customers on Shopee?

According to Shopee’s notice to sellers (reported by CafeF on July 19, 2024), from July 24, 2024, buyers’ names, phone numbers and addresses are hidden in Seller Centre and in the Shopee app. The marketplace cited Decree 13/2023/ND-CP, Vietnam’s personal data protection decree, as the basis; some sellers had been under the rule since January 2023. The published exceptions:

• Shops that handle their own delivery can see the name, address and phone number while the order is in the Awaiting Pickup and Shipping statuses. Once the order is delivered, the information is hidden again.
• For Return/Refund orders, the shop can see the buyer’s name and phone number for 30 days.
• To contact a customer, the shop uses Shopee Chat.

Shopee also bans posting phone numbers and addresses in product descriptions and chat messages. GenK (March 16, 2025) documented all sorts of disguised ways of writing phone numbers to pull customers over to Zalo (Vietnam’s dominant messaging app) or to direct bank transfers. Brands should not make that trade: once a transaction happens off the platform, Shopee protects neither side in a dispute.

What does Vietnam’s 2025 Personal Data Protection Law add?

Vietnam’s Personal Data Protection Law No. 91/2025/QH15 took effect on January 1, 2026. Decree 356/2025/ND-CP guides the law and replaces Decree 13/2023 (PwC Vietnam, January 2026). Two articles bear directly on CRM:

• Article 28 (personal data protection in advertising services): processing customers’ personal data for advertising services requires the customer’s consent, given with a clear understanding of the content, method, form and frequency of product promotion, and there must be a way for customers to opt out of receiving advertising.
• Article 8: fines of up to 10 times the revenue earned for buying or selling personal data, and up to VND 3 billion for other violations. These caps apply to organizations; individuals face half.

Applied to marketplaces, Adtek’s reading is this: the phone number a shop sees when it delivers an order itself is there only to deliver that order. Adding the number to a promotional SMS list or Zalo, or uploading it to Facebook as an ad audience, is a different purpose and needs consent the customer never gave. Buying “Shopee customer data” from a third party is buying and selling personal data. For a specific business situation, ask a lawyer.

Shopee CRM tools the marketplace has officially announced

The data lives on the marketplace, so Shopee CRM is mostly about using the marketplace’s own tools well. The table below only includes what Shopee has announced through official channels or what the press reported from Shopee’s own figures. Names and conditions may change, so check them in Seller Centre.

The “twice as much” figure was self-reported by Shopee in 2021 and has not been independently verified. Chat broadcast exists in some other Shopee markets, but we have not found official Shopee Vietnam documentation for it, so it is not in the table.

A Shopee CRM process for each stage of the order

This section keeps the ideas from the 2022 version that still hold and drops the steps that required customers’ phone numbers.

Before purchase: reply faster than the shop next door

A shop’s chat response rate is shown right on its shop page, so buyers see it before they send a message. Buyers may ask several shops at once, and the first shop to answer has the edge. Repeat questions (size charts, delivery times, warranty) should have saved replies; difficult questions should go to a real person. Avoid three things Shopee’s seller materials have warned about since 2022: impolite language, canceling orders on your own, and steering customers to trade off the platform.

Suggest add-on products when they fit the need: socks with shoes, a padded sleeve with a laptop.

After the order: update customers before they have to ask

Check the goods, pack them securely, and send a message through Shopee Chat when the parcel leaves the warehouse and when it is about to be delivered. A thank-you card in the box costs little and stays with the customer. Saved replies for customers chasing a delivery, wanting to cancel or changing their address should be reviewed every time Shopee changes its cancellation or return policy.

After delivery: ask for reviews and handle low ratings

With 53% of shoppers wanting more trustworthy reviews, real reviews from real customers are something a shop should actively ask for. The 2022 version suggested phone calls or SMS; now only Shopee Chat remains. Send the message a few days after the order moves to Delivered, once the customer has had time to try the product.

For reviews below 4 stars, reply publicly, apologize for the specific problem, ask for photos and details, and then offer a concrete fix. If the issue came from shipping, say clearly what the shop will do differently on the next delivery. Once the customer is happy with how it was handled, you can ask them to update the review. For good reviews, say thank you and invite the customer to follow the shop for offers next time.

The next purchase: segment with the data the marketplace allows

Without phone numbers, a shop can still segment by on-platform behavior: people who chatted but did not buy, one-time buyers, people who bought two or more times, and shop followers. Those who chatted without buying need fuller answers and a reason to close. One-time buyers need a reason to come back within 30 to 60 days, such as a voucher for their second purchase. Repeat buyers should get offers before everyone else, in a private live session or through a membership program if the store has one.

Lessons for brands: marketplace CRM and your own CRM

Shopee keeps the buyer data. Brands may use the marketplace’s tools to meet customers again, but they may not take those customers elsewhere. That leads to four things worth doing.

1. Treat shop followers as your main CRM list on the marketplace. Set a monthly target for real followers, measure the share of them who buy again, and never buy fake follows.
2. Split the promotion budget in two: one part for new customers and a separate part for existing ones. In the year-end sale season, the existing-customer part should sit inside your 11.11 plan, especially in the 7 days after the sale, to carry momentum into 12.12.
3. Collect the brand’s own customer data only on its own channels (website, physical stores, Zalo OA, the official business account on Zalo), with customer consent under the Personal Data Protection Law, and never from Shopee orders. Direct sales channels and a D2C strategy are where this list gets built, then managed in the company’s CRM system.
4. Measure every channel with the same yardstick: monthly repeat purchase rate, and average order value from existing customers compared with new ones.

Adtek’s view: a Shopee CRM checklist for Q4 2026

Ten questions an operations team can work through in a single meeting:

1. What is the shop’s current chat response rate, and what is the average response time at peak hours?
2. Does the shop have saved replies for its 10 most common questions, and when were they last updated?
3. Is Follow Prize switched on, and is the discount still profitable after marketplace fees?
4. How many followers does the shop gain each month, and what percentage of them have bought?
5. Is the livestream schedule fixed so followers know when to tune in?
6. Does the shop ask for a review on every delivered order, and what share of orders have a review?
7. How quickly are reviews below 4 stars answered, and who is responsible?
8. Is any staff member saving customer phone numbers from self-delivered orders to message them on Zalo?
9. Has the Mall store checked whether it qualifies for the brand membership program?
10. What is the monthly repeat purchase rate on Shopee, compared with the website and TikTok Shop?

If the answer to question 8 is yes, deal with that before anything else on the list.

If you need to review your customer care process and how you use customer data on Shopee, TikTok Shop or your website, contact Adtek to talk it through.

Adapted and updated by Adtek in 2026, drawing on original content compiled from Shopee’s seller materials and Doopage (2022).