How to Set Up Order Management / Self-Service Actions in Gorgias

The two things people mean by "order management"

Before you touch a setting, it helps to separate the two features that both get called "order management," because they behave very differently.

The Order Management portal is a self-service surface shoppers reach through Chat, the Help Center, or a Contact Form. Per Gorgias's Order Management 101 documentation, it gives a customer a detailed timeline of order events — order shipped, in transit, delivered — synced straight from Shopify, plus buttons to cancel, return, or report an issue. The catch, stated plainly in the same doc, is that clicking cancel or refund "will only submit a request and an agent will still need to intervene to process" it. The portal is fantastic at tracking; for changes it mostly routes a well-formed request to your team.

AI Agent Actions are the layer that closes that gap. These let the AI Agent actually make the change in Shopify — cancel an unfulfilled order and restock it, edit a shipping address, reship a lost parcel — rather than filing a request. Both features require a connected Shopify store and an AI Agent subscription, and both are Shopify-only: Order Management is "not compatible with BigCommerce or Magento 2." If you're still getting oriented on the platform itself, what is Gorgias covers the fundamentals.

Step 1: Connect Shopify and confirm the gate

Everything below is gated behind a Shopify connection. Order Actions live inside the AI Agent module, and on an account with no store connected, that module simply won't let you proceed — it shows a "connect a store" gate rather than the action templates.

1. In Gorgias, open Settings → Integrations → Shopify and connect (or reconnect) your store.
2. If you connected Shopify before subscribing to AI Agent, update the app permissions so AI Agent can read the order data it needs — a common cause of actions failing silently.
3. Return to the AI Agent module. Once a store is attached, the enablement gate is replaced by the Actions and Support Actions surfaces used in the next steps.

Step 2: Turn on the Order Management self-service portal

With Shopify connected, enable the tracking-and-requests portal so shoppers can self-serve the easy stuff. Order Management can, per Gorgias, automate up to 30% of your live Chat ticket volume — almost all of that from "where's my order" deflection.

1. Enable Order Management in your AI Agent / self-service settings and choose which of the four functions to expose: Track, Cancel, Return, Report Issue.
2. Shoppers authenticate via a one-time password (OTP) before seeing any order data, so order details are never shown to an unverified visitor.
3. For Report Issue, Gorgias tailors the list of selectable issues to each specific order's attributes, so a delivered order and an in-transit order offer different options.
4. If you run Loop Returns, connect it so return requests flow into your existing returns workflow instead of a raw ticket.

This portal typically renders inside your live chat widget, so it pairs naturally with your Gorgias Chat setup and any Flows you use to greet shoppers.

Step 3: Enable AI Agent Order Actions

Actions are where the AI stops filing requests and starts making changes. Per AI Agent Actions: make changes to Shopify orders, you enable these from a template gallery.

Setup path: dropdown menu → AI Agent → Support Actions → See all templates → pick a template → choose Shopify → Create and Enable.

The Shopify order Actions and their built-in eligibility conditions:

Notice the pattern baked into every one: the "unfulfilled" guardrail. Gorgias will not let the AI cancel, re-address, or edit an order that's already picked, packed, or shipped — a sensible default that stops the most expensive class of mistake.

Step 4: Set eligibility rules and confidence guardrails

The templates ship with safe defaults, but you tune them. Gorgias's AI Agent guardrails guidance frames Actions as opt-in and configurable — you decide which the AI may take and under what conditions. Two levers matter most:

• Eligibility thresholds. Scope an action to business rules — for example, only let the AI process a return for orders under $200 and within a 14-day window. Outside that window it collects the request and hands off.
• Confidence thresholds. For irreversible actions like cancellation, require a high certainty bar — a common recommendation is 90%, so if the AI is less than 90% sure the shopper wants a full cancellation, it hands the ticket to a human instead of acting.

A good rollout is conservative first: enable Track and read-only lookups for everyone, turn on Cancel and Edit Shipping Address with tight thresholds, and watch the handoff rate for a week before loosening. If you also run deterministic Gorgias Rules, keep them for routing and tagging — they and Actions are complementary, not competing.

The honest limits — and where an AI layer picks up

Gorgias's native order tooling is genuinely strong for a Shopify-first store, and the unfulfilled guardrail is exactly the kind of safe default you want. But the boundaries are real and worth naming.

First, it's Shopify-only. If you're on BigCommerce, Magento 2, a headless stack, or a custom OMS, the portal and Actions simply don't apply — Gorgias states the incompatibility outright. Second, the self-service portal's cancel and return buttons don't actually cancel or refund — they submit a request an agent must still process, so the "self-service" is really "self-ticketing" for those flows. Third, Actions only touch unfulfilled orders and a fixed catalogue of six operations; anything past the fulfillment line, or any workflow Gorgias didn't ship a template for (a warranty registration, a subscription swap, a 3PL status check, a loyalty-points credit), falls back to a human.

This is the seam where an AI agent layer fits, and it's worth understanding the broader category of AI agents for customer service before you reach for one. Macha is one such layer, and its Gorgias connector is live: it runs on top of the Gorgias you already use — it does not replace your help desk, your Order Management portal, or your AI Agent Actions. Because Macha reaches any REST endpoint through a custom tool, an agent isn't limited to Shopify or to unfulfilled orders — it can check a fulfillment status in your 3PL, look up a subscription in Recharge, or hit your own order microservice, then reply grounded in that live data inside the same Gorgias ticket. If you'd rather build the lookups yourself, the Gorgias API is the foundation those tools sit on. (Macha's credits are consumed per AI action, not per resolution — see the pricing breakdown.)

The clean division of labour: let Gorgias own the Shopify-native track/cancel/return flows and the unfulfilled-order guardrails, and layer an agent on top for the order questions and actions that live outside Shopify or outside the fixed template set.

FAQ

Where do I set up Order Management and order Actions in Gorgias? The self-service Order Management portal is enabled in your AI Agent / self-service settings. Order Actions live under the dropdown menu → AI Agent → Support Actions → See all templates, where you pick a template, choose Shopify, and select Create and Enable. Both require a connected Shopify store and an AI Agent subscription.

Does the Order Management portal actually cancel or refund an order? Not on its own. Per Gorgias, clicking the cancel or refund button in the portal only submits a request — an agent still has to process it. For truly hands-off changes you enable AI Agent Actions, which execute the change in Shopify directly (on eligible orders).

What eligibility rules and guardrails can I set? Actions are opt-in and configurable. Every order Action requires the order to be unfulfilled, and you can layer business rules (e.g. returns only under $200 and within 14 days) plus confidence thresholds (e.g. hand off if the AI is under 90% sure a cancellation is a full cancellation).

Does Gorgias order management work without Shopify? No. Both the Order Management portal and AI Agent order Actions are Shopify-only — Gorgias states they're not compatible with BigCommerce or Magento 2. For non-Shopify stacks you'd need a custom lookup, either via the Gorgias API or an AI layer that can call your own systems.

Can I add AI order actions beyond Shopify without replacing Gorgias? Yes. An AI agent layer like Macha connects to Gorgias as a live connector and runs on top of your existing help desk. Through custom tools it can call any REST API — your 3PL, subscription platform, or custom OMS — so order lookups and actions aren't limited to Shopify or to unfulfilled orders, while Gorgias stays the system of record.

Ready to answer order questions that live outside Shopify's happy path? Start a free trial of Macha and connect it to your Gorgias in minutes.