Asking a customer to create an account before they can ask where their order is has a predictable outcome. Some of them do it. The rest email you, or leave a review about it.
Guest checkout exists because friction costs sales. Putting that friction back at the support door undoes the point.
How it works
Most customer-facing emails Helpie sends carry a link into the support portal. The customer clicks it and they are looking at their own ticket. No password, no registration, no reference number to quote back.
The link is single-use and expires after seven days. Once spent, it does not work again, so a forwarded email or a link sitting in a shared inbox is not a standing door into someone’s support history.
Why single-use matters
Support conversations contain more than people expect. Order contents, delivery addresses, what went wrong, what you agreed to refund. A permanent unauthenticated URL to all of that is a liability, even if nobody ever abuses it.
Single-use with an expiry keeps the convenience and closes the window. The customer gets in when they need to, and the link is dead before it can end up somewhere it should not be.
Logged-in customers
They never see a magic link. Their account is the credential, and the portal is on their My Account page.
The magic link exists for the people your account system does not cover, which on most stores is a larger share of customers than the owner expects.
What this means in practice
Support is available to everyone who bought from you, not just the subset who registered. The requests that would otherwise have become an untracked email land in the ticket queue with their history attached.
And nobody has to reset a password to tell you a parcel arrived broken.