Your account manager changes, and the introduction email sounds reassuring. A week later, you are explaining the same damaged-stock issue again. The problem may be less about the new person's effort than about what was handed over.
A useful transition gives the incoming manager the decisions that shaped your account: what was agreed, what remains unresolved and who can authorize the next step. That is a more practical request than asking whether they have read all the old emails.
Build a record someone can act on
Keep the handover brief enough to use during a live call. For each open issue, record the affected orders or stock, current evidence, owner, next decision, due time and customer impact. Link to the underlying record instead of pasting a long conversation that leaves the conclusion unclear.
Separate agreed terms from requests still under discussion. A proposed fee credit is not an approved credit. A request to change a cutoff is not the operating cutoff. This distinction prevents a new manager from turning a hopeful conversation into an accidental promise.
Try five handover questions
We constructed five common decision cases to make the handover observable. These are editorial examples, not findings from interviews or a survey.
| Open item | Ask the incoming manager | A useful answer identifies |
|---|---|---|
| Disputed receiving charge | What must happen before a credit is approved? | Evidence, approver and decision date |
| Stock awaiting inspection | Who can release it? | Authorized owner and required inspection result |
| Promotion next week | Which capacity commitment is actually agreed? | Volume assumptions, cutoff and exception contact |
| Recurring mispack | What correction is still being checked? | Action owner, affected period and verification step |
| Manager unavailable | Who takes the next urgent decision? | Backup contact and escalation route |
For illustration, imagine the new manager can answer the fee and promotion questions but cannot identify the stock-release authority, correction owner or backup. That leaves three specific gaps. It does not mean the manager is incompetent, and a two-out-of-five score should not become a public provider rating. Use it to direct the handover work.
Give access without transferring passwords
Confirm that the incoming person can see the records their role requires. Shopify's role model assigns permissions to users through roles; the available options depend on the account and plan. That supports a controlled access review, not a blanket grant of administration rights. Shopify roles
Have your authorized administrator review the departing person's access and the incoming person's permissions. Keep that task separate from deciding who can approve a credit or release inventory: a system permission and a business authorization are not necessarily the same thing.
Close the loop in writing
After the walkthrough, send one concise internal decision record for both teams to acknowledge through your normal working process. Each unresolved item needs an owner and next update time. If an answer depends on warehouse operations or finance, name that dependency rather than letting the account manager become a placeholder for everyone.
For the first few service calls, revisit the open items before introducing a new dashboard. You want to know whether commitments survived the transition. A friendly introduction is valuable; continuity becomes tangible when the new manager can carry a decision forward without making you rebuild its history.
Related reading
Sources
- User roles and permission scope — accessed 2026-10-04.