Your returns data has always lived in Exchange It. Now you can talk to it. Exchange It connects to AI assistants like Claude and ChatGPT through MCP, so you can ask plain-English questions about your returns, analytics, and policy and get answers drawn live from your own store. No exports, no spreadsheets, no switching tabs.

This is the same shift we wrote about in agentic commerce: shoppers are already discovering and buying inside AI conversations. With this release, you can run the other side of the business, the returns and exchanges side, from the same kind of conversation.

What is new

Exchange It now ships a per-store MCP connector. MCP (the Model Context Protocol) is the open standard that AI assistants use to connect to outside tools and data. You generate a connection token inside Exchange It, add Exchange It as a custom connector in Claude or ChatGPT, and your assistant can then read your returns, analytics, and policy on demand. The connection is scoped to one store, read-only by design, and you can revoke it at any time.

Think of it as giving your AI assistant a secure, read-only window into Exchange It. You ask, it reads, and nothing in your store changes.

How to connect it

Setup is self-serve and takes a couple of minutes. In Exchange It, open Settings and find the Connect AI assistant (MCP) card. Everything you need lives there: permissions, the token generator, the connector URL, and your active tokens.

Review the permissions. Read returns is always on. Turn on Access unmasked customer PII only if you want your assistant to see unmasked customer contact details; leave it off to keep email, phone, and address masked.
Click Generate connection token. Exchange It mints a per-store token (it looks like eit_mcp_...) and stores only a hash of it, never the raw value.
Use the Copy button to copy the full token. This is the only time it is shown, so copy it before you leave the page. If you lose it, revoke it and generate a new one.
Copy the Connector URL, then add Exchange It as a custom connector in Claude or ChatGPT and paste your token when prompted.

For step-by-step screenshots, see the help article on connecting an AI assistant with MCP.

What you can ask

Once connected, your assistant can call a set of read-only tools on your behalf. You do not need to know the tool names; you just ask, and the assistant picks the right one. A few examples:

"What were my top returned products last month?" Pulls returns analytics for the period you choose: volume by status, reason breakdown, the refund versus exchange split, and your most-returned products.
"Show me the returns still awaiting approval." Lists recent returns, filterable by status and date.
"What is the status of the return on order #1048?" Looks up a single return by Exchange It id, Shopify return id, or order name.
"What is my return window for international orders?" Reads back your policy: windows and expiration, country, product, and order rules, return fees, and exchange settings.
"Draft a resolution for this return." Analyzes one return and suggests an approach (approve, refund minus fees, or exchange) with a deep link into your Exchange It admin to carry it out. It drafts only; it never makes the change for you.
"How many exchanges have I processed in total?" Returns a high-level overview: install status, plan, currency, and lifetime returns and exchange counters.

Your assistant can also run read-only Shopify Admin queries (orders, customers, products, fulfillment, and more) and search the Exchange It help center, so it can answer "how do I set that up?" questions without you leaving the chat.

Built to be safe

Because this is your store's data flowing into an AI assistant, we built the connector to be cautious by default:

Read-only by construction. Every tool reads; none of them change your data. Even the resolution tool only drafts a suggestion and hands you a link to act on it yourself.
Customer PII masked by default. Email, phone, and address are masked unless you explicitly grant the PII permission when you create the token.
Tokens you control. Only a hash of each token is stored. Tokens are scoped to one store, and you can revoke any of them instantly from the same settings card.

Revoking is always available, even if your plan changes later, so you can clean up a leftover token whenever you want.

Availability

Connecting an AI assistant is available on the Advanced plan. If your store is not on Advanced yet, the card shows an upgrade option in place of the controls. Upgrade from the same screen to start generating tokens and managing returns from Claude or ChatGPT.

Get started

If you are already on Advanced, open Settings, find the Connect AI assistant (MCP) card, and generate your first token. If you are weighing it up, pairing AI access with an exchange-first returns strategy is a fast way to turn routine returns review into something you can run in a conversation.

New to Exchange It? Install it from the Shopify App Store, or browse the help center to see everything it can do.