How to reduce customer WISMO calls

4th November 2020

Let’s paint a picture. Someone has visited your website, added multiple items to their basket, chosen from one of the many delivery options in your online checkout and have paid. Job done right?

Unfortunately not. The hard work starts now! You need to provide regular delivery updates in order to keep your customers informed and provide a seamless delivery experience to encourage repeat purchases.

But what happens when you don’t do this? In one acronym which should fill any company with dread – WISMO.

What does WISMO mean?

WISMO stands for “Where Is My Order?” A phrase that will be familiar to those of you who speak to customers about their orders on a daily basis

You can understand why when a customer expects their delivery within a certain timeframe and it still hasn’t arrived, they will pick up and phone to find out what is happening.

But each of these calls comes at a cost in terms of time, resources and a potential loss of customer loyalty. As they make up 70-80% of all customer enquiries, it’s crucial that you find ways to reduce these type of calls and ease the burden on your customer service teams.

Here are our tips to help you manage and reduce the number of customer WISMO calls:

1. Make tracking information easy to read on mobile devices

When a customer completes an order through your website, you will more than likely provide them with a tracking link or page where they can follow their parcel throughout its journey.

But often, these aren’t mobile optimized. They’re clunky and old fashioned, plus the key information they need, (such as the order status) is hard to find. This means they have to call your customer service team to get the answers they need.

With 40% of consumers turning to a competitor’s website after an unsatisfactory mobile experience, it could end up affecting your bottom line.

Instead, choose a solution that is user friendly and displays key information clearly on all devices.

2. Provide an accurate ETA

After completing their order, your customers’ next question is likely to be when is the ETA (estimated time of arrival) of their delivery?

If you can’t provide this information up front, then they will have no choice but to call your customer service team for an update.

By managing your carriers in one platform, this process should be straightforward. To take this further, some platforms allow you to use AI (Artificial Intelligence) technology to automatically update the ETA so your customers always have access to the most up to date ETA for their parcel.

3. Trigger notifications at the right time

With so many touch points throughout the delivery process, it can be difficult to decide which updates you should notify your customers about.

The key is to make them clear. From order received, through to loaded on truck and ready for delivery (or collection) giving your customers visibility of all the key touchpoints in their order’s journey means they don’t have to call up your customer service team to get an update.

4. Share only the most relevant information

Once you have an order tracking page which is mobile optimized and user friendly, it’s tempting to send the same link with the same information and layout to all of your customers.

However, this isn’t always the most sensible move. You may sell products from multiple brands, work in different markets or ship B2B and B2C. So the question is, should you send the same information to each of these segments?

Let’s use B2B and B2C customers as an example. Each of your B2B customers will expect their own branded tracking link and have the ability to see packing slips, invoices and other types of shipping documents.

If you were to share the same level of documentation with your B2C customers, this will only cause information overload and confusion, which would then lead to an increase in calls to your customer service teams.

Instead, create separate unique tracking links for your B2B and B2C customers and provide them only with the most relevant information.

Coming soon…

Stay tuned for the launch of the new Shipment Viewer interface in Consignor on Wednesday 11^th November where you can provide easy-to-understand track and trace information on all devices to your customers, customize the setup and design according to your brand, promote your latest marketing campaigns and much more!

Request a demo to find out more.