Example · Customer service
Have you ever spent a morning on forty “where’s my order?” calls?
Each call takes four minutes. There are forty. Each pulls someone off the work that ships orders.
Who it's for
- Customers call and email about order or job status every day.
- Your team checks three systems, then rings the warehouse or the shop.
- Customers learn about a delay when they ask, not before.
When we'd say skip it
A handful of status calls a week? Just answer them. Customers already use live tracking you give them? You're set, and we'd say so.
Where status gets lost
- Order confirmed
- Scheduled
- Made or picked
- Shipped
- In transit
- Delivered
Only operations can see where an order sits. So sales and service both ring operations to ask.
Each question interrupts the people doing the work. And a delay reaches the customer only when they call, already annoyed.
In a distributor, it's the contractor asking if the pipe ships today. In a manufacturer, it's the buyer asking when their run finishes. In construction, it's the homeowner asking when the cabinets arrive.
We'd build an order status desk.
It answers status questions from live data, and warns customers before they think to ask.
Customers know where things are without ringing
- An emailed status question gets an accurate answer drafted within minutes.
- Your team stops calling the warehouse to find out.
- Slipping dates are spotted each morning, and customers hear first from you.
- Operations gets fewer interruptions.
What it's worth: the lookups nobody does any more
Count the status calls and emails in one week. Multiply by the minutes each takes, the call to operations included.
Multiply by the hourly cost of the people answering. Then add the hours operations loses to being asked.
Sample output · status desk · one Tuesday
46 status questions in, 7 for a person
| Item | Count | For a person |
|---|---|---|
| Answered from live data, reply drafted | 39 | 0 |
| Split shipments, needing a person | 5 | 5 |
| Orders at risk, sent to the account owner | 2 | 2 |
| Delay notices drafted before anyone asked | 8 | 8 to approve |
Every reply waits for a person to send it.
How it runs, every step
Open the full run
When it runs
Whenever a customer asks, and once each morning across every open order.
What it reads
Your ERP or job system, such as Epicor, NetSuite or Procore. Carrier tracking. The customer service inbox. Each source is confirmed in the first conversation.
The six steps
- Reads each status question and finds the order.
- Pulls its stage, ship date and tracking.
- Drafts a plain answer for the customer.
- Checks every open order each morning for dates that are slipping.
- Drafts a delay notice with the new date and the reason.
- Flags orders at risk to the account owner.
Where a person decides
Your team approves every answer and every delay notice before it goes.
What it never does
It never promises a date. It states only the dates your systems show. It never changes an order or a delivery.
Three things we'd need from you
Read access to your order system and tracking. Your rules for what customers are told. One person who owns service.
Neighbours it often comes with
- Supplier chasing, so delays are caught upstream before they reach the customer.
- Quote to order, so every order starts with a date you can keep.
- Scheduling, so crews and shifts move with the orders.
You become the supplier nobody has to chase.
Customers know where their order is, and the morning goes back to shipping.
Yours won't look exactly like this. A first conversation is where we work out what it should look like.
Next step
Count it with us first.
One conversation, about an hour, with one of our co-founders. It's free and needs no access.
Every message is read by a person, with a reply most often inside one working day.