How to Prevent “Where is my Order?” Complaints Before Customers Ask #599

There are few phrases in ecommerce more expensive than, “Hi, just wondering where my order is?”. It sounds harmless. Polite, even. But behind that sentence is friction. Doubt. A small crack in trust. And if you’re getting a lot of them, you don’t have a response-time problem. You have a design problem.

In today's Playbook, Jevon Le Roux from Keeyu joins a group of smart operators tackling the same issue from different angles. Alongside Hamish McKay, Boozebud’s Damien Smithand Erin Williamson, and the Starshipit tracking example, the message is consistent: Stop optimising how fast you answer complaints. Start designing the experience so they don’t happen.

In today's playbook:

• Why reactive CX metrics like response time and CSAT don’t solve WISMO complaints
• How proactive ecommerce ops intercept stalled, lost or delayed orders before customers notice
• The hidden impact of checkout mistakes and why post-purchase order editing reduces support load
• How to remove surprises with early, high-stakes communication
• Why branded tracking pages reduce anxiety between dispatch and delivery
• The operational shift from clearing tickets to preventing them

Connect with Jevon
Explore Keeyu
Keeyu's main episode
Order Editing's episode
Boozebud's episode

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

When your brand is riding a wave that just keeps growing, you need more than just the right platform. You need the right partner. Gander Clothing was scaling rapidly, but their e-commerce tech just couldn't keep up. That's when they partnered with Convert Digital. Since launching a Headless Shopify Plus site in 2021, they've seen incredible results. A 300% increase in daily orders, 16% revenue growth, and a 12% conversion boost. With faster load times, seamless checkout experience, and powerful omnichannel integration. Gander has transformed into one of Australia's biggest retail success stories. And it's all powered by Convert Digital's commerce expertise. It's commerce that stacks up.

SPEAKER_02 0:47

Read the full case study at convertdigital.com.au Let's be honest, those where is my order inquiries aren't just support tickets that are piling up. They're often a signal that's flashing red in your business. Because by the time a customer asks that question, something has already gone wrong. It's not necessarily in your warehouse, not necessarily with your carrier, but their perception of you is saying there's something wrong here. So today we are flipping the lens from reaction to those tickets to how to prevent them. And in this masterclass, we are going to bring back some guests who tell us how to prevent those where is my order tickets? Everyone from Jevon LaRue from Kiyu to Hamish McKay from order editing and Damien Smith and Erin Williamson from Paramount Liquor. Plus, we've got a very special Oz Hair and Beauty example that we want to talk through. But before we get to all those examples, let's do a bit of a flashback to Jevon LaRue's episode, which has triggered this. He's the founder of Kiyu, which is an orchestration platform which essentially is made to tell you where things are going wrong in your business. And today we're not just talking about clearing tickets faster in customer service. We're talking about taking the anxiety out of the entire customer journey.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Let's just take us back to where a consumer is. You know, we've all been there. We order a order a birthday gift online. It never arrives. There's an email, no reply, make a phone call, no pickup, chat with a bot, no resolution. Then finally we give up. And, you know, for them, it's a hassle. For the brand, it's a lost customer and a hit to trust. And this happens millions and millions of times a day, right? Each delayed or missing order is a small crack in customer loyalty. Behind the scenes, CX teams are buried in where's my order tickets, chasing data across five, seven silos systems. And that result is always one thing, right? Late deliveries, missed refunds, wasted hours, frustrated teams. So in every single one of those issues costs time, money, and repeat customers. So really to hit your question, I guess today most customer service tools are built to do one thing: react to complaints. A ticket comes in, it's because of a late delivery, a missing item, a refund delay. And the help desk is really built to manage tickets so that customer service teams can triage them, right? Clear tickets as quickly as possible. Clear tickets as quickly as possible. And you measured on first response time, resolution time, customer satisfaction because you're fixing something that they didn't want. They didn't want to complain. They didn't want to have to chase up something you should have just got right. So we flip that model completely and we fix the problem before the customer even knows it exists. So if a parcel hasn't left the warehouse, we catch it and push it out. If a payment fails, we retry. If an item is out of stock, we place it on back order. If a return is stuck, we flag it for resolution. Yeah. So sort of instead of managing these complaints, we're preventing them. Because if you fix the ops issue at the route, there is no complaint. And that's proactive e-com ops. And that's the difference. And it means teams spending less time firefighting and customers never have to ask again, where is my order?

SPEAKER_02 4:09

So let's dive into one of those, maybe pick where is my order? So I think that's a very common problem is that maybe dispatch times get blown out, which leads to longer delivery times for a customer. So instead of it leaving the warehouse within 24 hours, we've had Black Friday, whatever it is, it's blown out to seven days or the items not available where we thought it was. How do you catch that? And how are you catching that that the WMS or other systems aren't catching?

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Yeah, so we're in a unique position because what we are is an orchestration layer, right? We're not a point solution. And the way orders run today is they captured on a storefront, they're processed through a payment portal, they go through an ERP, a WMS, pickpack, ship, carrier integrations, delivery return. And each of those point solutions are doing a good job performing their function. But they're not designed to detect if an order doesn't push through, is held up. And so what we do is we connect all those systems together into one centralized platform. And we use the customer promise, which is order before 12, pay express, ship same day, get tomorrow. And we use that customer promise and work backwards along every single touch point and say, oh, this order hasn't progressed to where it should be at this point. And then we flag that in the centralized platform in a very clear, visible way. And that then is either red, as in it's broken the service level, or it's amber, it's about to, or it's blue, it's moving through according to plan. And when it hits amber or red, it then kicks off a workflow that's associated to resolving that issue that our AI agent then takes on and runs through the resolution all the way through. So let's use an out of stock, for example, a lost in transit, for example. We identify that that order hasn't moved between different stages for a certain amount of time. And then that is likely a lost in transit. And then we start the process of finding alternative stock, placing an order, putting it onto Express so the customer gets it next day, shipping it out to the customer, sending them a notification hey, your order's been lost and transferred, and you're going to get it tomorrow. It's on a different traffic number. Yeah, it is. Sorry about that, but we picked it up before you did. And then it goes through the process of sorting that out with Ozpost. So fully automated where the agent is taking on updating systems, communicating, and facilitating uh resolution.

SPEAKER_02 6:35

Everyone who I've talked to about Jevron's solution there with Kiyu goes, oh, why hasn't that existed earlier? And I think it comes back to that basic understanding that we all want to fix it before our customers feel it. Jevron paints a painfully familiar picture. You order a birthday gift online, it never arrives. You send an email, no reply, call up the phone number, no pickup, chat to a bot, no resolution. Eventually, you just give up. For the customer, it's a hassle, it's another thing on their to-do list. For a brand, it's a lost customer that you probably paid a lot of money to get and a big crack in trust. And as Jevon points out, this is happening millions of times a day. Behind the scenes, CX teams are buried in where is my order tickets, chasing data across five or seven siloed systems. Most help desks are built to do one thing react to complaints and clear tickets as quickly as possible. First response time, resolution time, CSAT. But honestly, customers don't care. They don't want to complain in the first place. So instead of optimizing how fast we react, Kiyu flips the model, fix the issue before the customer even knows it exists. Most e-commerce stacks are point solutions. Storefront, payment gateway, ERP, WMS, carrier, returns. Each one does its job, but none of them are designed to detect when an order silently slips between the cracks. So Jevon works backwards from the customer promise. If the order hasn't progressed to where it should be in that point in time, it gets flagged. Amber, if it's about to miss, red if it's already broken the promised service level. When something goes wrong, the workflow triggers automatically. Replacement stock is found, it's shipped express. The customer is told, we noticed an issue. It's on our way. Here's the new tracking number. That's not Reactive CX, that's Proactive E-Commerce Ops, and that is a customer who will tell so many people about that experience. If customers keep asking, where is my order? The problem isn't response time. It's that you've lost that customer and potentially more customers because of that experience. Now, zoom back to immediately after checkout. Hamish McKay, the founder of order editing, drops a stat that should make every e-commerce manager wince. One and a half percent of customers make a mistake at checkout. Wrong address, wrong size, wrong variant, autofill chaos. Who knows? That's the seed of a future. Where is my order ticket that Jevon was talking about? Because if that mistake isn't corrected quickly, the parcel ships incorrectly, delivery fails, and now you've created a full-blown support saga. The preventative move? Give customers a short, controlled post-purchase editing window. Let them fix address errors, adjust minor details, or cancel within a defined timeframe before the order has even hit the warehouse. Even better. You can use that time to do a little bit of upselling. But a huge chunk of where is my order anxiety starts in those five minutes after checkout. Design for that moment and you remove the domino effect. Boozebud is a retailer that lives in operational complexity. Multiple warehouses, split shipments, time critical products. Paramount Retail is a retailer that lives in operational complexity. They have multiple warehouses, split shipments, multiple storefronts, and some really time critical products, especially around Christmas and events. There's plenty of opportunities for customers to assume that something's missing. But instead of hiding the complexity, their CTO Damien Smith and their CMO Aaron Williamson explained how Paramount leaned into Clarity. If an order is shipping in multiple parts, they explain it early. Their customers know to expect multiple parcels. If there's a delay, they communicate it before it becomes a surprise. Erin summed it up perfectly. We don't wait for the complaints. We called customers before they called us. As a customer, how nice is that? Customers don't panic because something is delayed. They panic because they're unsure what's happening. And the last example I want to leave you with is this. And this is nothing new. How many brands do you remember that have disappeared after shipping the order? Customers click track my order and then they get dumped into a generic carrier page, which is often very ugly with no context at all. But the thing is, if you send customers to a carrier site, you lose the ability to reassure them in your brand voice and the trust that you've earned to get that purchase in the first place. Branding tracking pages like the Starship example with Ozhair and Beauty keep the customer inside your ecosystem. By having those where is my order links go back to your own site, you can explain what each tracking status actually means. You can reassure them about expected timeframes, you can surface helpful FAQs, you can reinforce brand tone, and you can give them the option to contact you if they need it. That's right. You haven't fixed the courier, that's for sure. You haven't sped up delivery either, but you've reduced uncertainty. And that alone reduces tickets. So if your CX dashboard is full of where is my order tickets, the instinct is to hire more agents or optimize response time or create some crazy AI bot. But that's not treating the symptom. It's better to be honest and ask yourself, at what moment did the customer start feeling unsure? Why is this happening? Was it right after checkout? Was it when nothing moved for 48 hours? Was it when tracking looked confusing? Was it when a split shipment looked like it was missing an item? Find that moment and design that moment out rather than race to the bottom of the tickets. Because the best support ticket isn't the one you answer in 45 seconds. It's the one that never gets written.