Use case · customer service
Have you ever lost a morning to customers asking where their order is?
Each call takes two minutes. There are forty of them. Every one pulls someone away from shipping orders.
Is it for you?
- Customers call and email about order or job status every day.
- Your team checks three systems, then rings the warehouse or the shop floor.
- Customers learn about a delay only when they ask.
When it isn't worth it
A few status calls a week? Just answer them. If customers already see live tracking and use it, you're covered.
Where status gets stuck
- Order confirmed
- Scheduled
- Made or picked
- Shipped
- In transit
- Delivered
Only operations can see where an order is. Sales and service both ring operations to ask.
That interrupts the people doing the work. Delays reach the customer when they call, already annoyed.
At a distributor, it's the contractor asking if the pipe ships today. At a manufacturer, it's the buyer asking when the run finishes. In construction, it's the homeowner asking when the cabinets arrive.
What we'd build: an order status desk
It answers status questions from live data, and warns customers before they need to ask.
What changes
- Emailed status questions get an accurate reply drafted within minutes.
- Your team stops ringing the warehouse to find out.
- Slipping dates are spotted early, and customers hear first.
- Operations works with fewer interruptions.
What it's worth
Count the status calls and emails in a week. Multiply by the minutes each takes, including the call to operations.
Multiply by the hourly cost of whoever answers. Then add the time operations loses to being asked.
Status desk · Tuesday
46 status questions today
- From live data
- 39 answered, replies drafted
- Needed a person
- 5 split shipments
- Escalated
- 2 orders at risk
- Warned early
- 8 delay notes drafted before customers asked
How it runs, from start to finish
Show all the steps
What it reads
Your order or job system, carrier tracking and the customer service inbox. It runs when a question arrives, and each morning for open orders.
Step by step
- Reads each question and finds the order.
- Pulls its stage, ship date and tracking.
- Drafts a plain answer for the customer.
- Checks open orders each morning for slipping dates.
- Drafts a delay note with the new date and reason.
- Flags orders at risk to the account owner.
Where a person signs off
Your team approves every reply and every delay note before it goes.
What it never does
It only states dates your systems show. It never promises a date, or changes an order or a delivery.
What we'd need from you
Read access to your order system and tracking. Your rules on what customers are told. One person who owns service.
Goes well with
- Supplier chasing, so delays are caught upstream.
- Quoting that starts each order with dates you can keep.
- Crew and shift scheduling that moves with the orders.
You become the supplier customers never have to chase.
Customers know where their order is, and your mornings are your own again.
Your status desk won't look exactly like this. We work out its shape in a first conversation.
Want to go through yours?
A first conversation with one of our co-founders is free. It lasts about an hour and needs no access.
A person replies, normally the same or next working day.