Proactive Communication to Help Solve the ‘Where Is My Order?’ Puzzle

If you're in customer service for online retail, chances are WISMO queries dominate your day. "Where Is My Order?" - the question is a universal pain point for both customers and businesses. It wastes time, causes frustration, and eats into profits. Yet despite its omnipresence, WISMO remains stubbornly unsolved.

According to a study by Convey, a staggering 70% of consumers have contacted customer service about an order's status in the past year.

The problem is clear: if eliminating WISMO benefits both customers and companies, why is it still the number one query?

Understanding the WISMO Puzzle

We’ve spent nearly 20 years working with online retailers on delivering great Customer Service. A big part of this play was to reduce WISMO queries, beginning with our co-founder, Maria McCann (link to linkedin) leading Customer Care at ASOS. Back then, we were hit with a tsunami of queries across social media from customers around the world asking about their orders. The technology for real-time tracking and serving customers was much more limited, which led to two significant changes:

1. We became an early adopter of customer care on social media (a story for another time).
2. We developed a proactive communication strategy, focusing heavily on mapping when customers were making contact - which turned out to be the distribution and 'final mile' stages of the process.

Over the years, the strategy evolved across retailers: automatic notifications, real-time tracking, and chatbots helped reduce the cost of managing WISMO queries. Yet, despite these advancements, WISMO continues to cost retailers anywhere from ￡4 to ￡6 per query according to Sorted.com, while 40% of logistics costs sit in the final mile of delivery, as noted by the SRF.?

Consumers’ expectations have also evolved. 83% of customers expect regular communication about their purchases, according to Narvar. Yet many businesses still fall short, leading to WISMO continuing as the top reason for customer contact.

Reducing the cost of managing WISMO is great, but wouldn’t it be better to eliminate WISMO as the top reason customers contact retailers in the first place?

The Missing Piece in the WISMO Puzzle

In our experience, the key to reducing WISMO isn’t just about operational efficiency - it’s communication. Customers reach out when they feel left in the dark. They expect an update, don’t get one, and that leads to uncertainty and uncertainty leads to contact.??

If you’ve received a WISMO query, you have to assume that the customers' confidence in you has reduced and that's the problem you need to solve.

Retailers often focus on tracking the process—when packages are packed, shipped, and delivered. But they overlook the customer’s emotions. When companies fail to recognise the feeling of uncertainty, they miss the real cause of WISMO queries.

Here’s how it typically plays out in the post-purchase journey:

We worked with a retailer who couldn’t understand why 35% of their customer queries were WISMO-related, despite having low late deliveries and order tracking for customers.

Once we started to analyse and map where and when customer uncertainty was being triggered, we discovered that whenever there was an order spike, the warehouse would upgrade standard shipping to next-day delivery to handle the volume. The brand had more time in the earlier stages of the process and the order still arrived on time. But there was one problem—they never told the customer.?

The lack of communication during the pick-and-pack stage created uncertainty. Customers were expecting a shipping notification at a specific time, and when they didn’t get it, they contacted customer service. While the chatbot answered their questions, the damage was already done. Customers had already experienced that moment of doubt.

Once the brand understood the impact of its operational decisions on the customer’s perception, we adjusted their notification flow and informed customers at the right point, along with the free upgrade. This single change cut WISMO queries by a third.

Another example is a luxury fashion brand we worked with who were struggling to provide an estimated delivery date until the order had been shipped out of the warehouse. They took the decision not to tell customers until that point but it wasn’t working as customers were complaining.? Our analysis, along with testing a different journey showed that customers preferred to receive an estimate at the order confirmation, along with a promise to commit to a date once the order was shipped. Understanding what was creating uncertainty for the customer and preventing that trigger was key for the brand understanding the type of experience it wanted the customer to have with them and how best to deliver it.

Proactive, Just-in-Time Communication

In our experience, eliminating WISMO is all about reaching customers just before they feel uncertain. Too early and customers won't digest or appreciate it. Too late and you have the incoming contact.

Here’s some suggestions:

Conclusion

From Problem Solving to Experience Building

Reducing WISMO queries isn’t just about managing them—it’s about making them unnecessary. Understand your customers so well, you can anticipate their needs and communicate the right message just in time for the customer to appreciate it.

Let’s move beyond answering questions and create experiences that make customers say, “Wow - They really thought about me.” Because at the end of the day, that's what great service is all about.

Sources:

1. Convey by project44, "The Consumer’s Last Mile Report" (2022)

2. Convey, "The Importance of Delivery in Building Brand Loyalty" (2021)

3. Narvar, "Consumer Report 2021: Evolving Shopper Expectations"

4. Sustainable Road Freight, "Online Shopping: Full Report" (2021)

5. Sorted.com,"How to Reduce WISMO and WISMR Costs: A Deep Dive"