Short answer: The question "where is my order?" arises when the customer wants to know something the company already knows but has not shown: whether the order has shipped, when it will arrive and what happens if it is late or missing. It shrinks when notifications answer that and when the help centre and chat can look up the order and the carrier's status.
Anyone who runs customer service for an online store with a few hundred orders a week knows which question tops the inbox: where is my order? It arrives by email, chat and phone, it comes back two days later from the same customer, and it takes time from the tickets that actually need a person. The question cannot be abolished, but it can be made rare. This article shows where it comes from, what the customer is entitled to and how to build it away without hiring more people. A broader overview of e-commerce support, covering all five ticket types, is in the article on e-commerce customer support.
Why is "where is my order?" e-commerce's most common question?
The question arises because the customer wants to know something the company already knows but has not shown, at the moment the customer wonders. The industry calls it WISMO, from "where is my order". According to Salesforce these are questions about order status and delivery that arrive in every channel, each one simple but together so numerous that they take a large share of customer service's time; as a worked example Salesforce states that a retailer shipping 5,000 orders a month can receive around 1,200 such questions.
The volume comes from a gap. Between the order confirmation and the delivery the order passes through several systems, each with its own status: the store's order system says "processing", the warehouse says "picked", the carrier says "in transit". The customer sees one of them, usually the last, and it is rarely updated. The longer the gap, the more people ask. That is also why the question peaks in November and December, when delivery times grow and customers are more numerous; what that means for staffing is covered in the article on preparing for the Christmas season.
What is the customer entitled to when the parcel is late or lost?
The company that sold the item is responsible for it until the customer has received it, and that applies even when the carrier caused the problem. According to the Swedish Consumer Agency the customer should direct their claims to the company they bought from if the delivery is late or disappears in transit, regardless of whether the shipping company caused it. The same applies according to the agency when an item breaks during transport: the risk passes to the customer only on receipt.
For delays there is a time limit. If no delivery time was promised, the item counts as delayed after 30 days from the purchase, according to the Swedish Consumer Agency's page on late delivery of goods. If you promised a delivery time, that applies. When a delivery is late the customer can demand that the item be delivered or, if the delay matters a great deal to the customer, cancel the purchase and get their money back.
Two things follow for customer service. The answer "contact the shipping company" is wrong; the customer is entitled to turn to you, and you in turn take it up with the carrier. And a delivery time promised at checkout is a promise that Swedish consumer sales law holds you to, so it should match what logistics can actually deliver.
Why is the carrier's tracking link not enough?
Because the tracking link shows where the parcel has been, not when it will arrive or what the customer should do if it does not. A Gartner survey shows the pattern: only 13 percent of customers say they receive proactive service, and 90 percent of those who did found it valuable, yet two thirds still contacted the company afterwards, most often because they needed more information or a confirmation. A notification that does not answer the next question creates a contact instead of preventing one.
This is an excerpt. The full article continues on the Supportifier blog.
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