"Where is my order?": how to answer it less often, and faster

Why this question matters

In most online shops "where is my order?" is the most common question. It is rarely difficult, but it arrives on every channel, at every hour, and each answer means finding the order, finding the tracking and writing a reply. The best way to deal with it is to make it less necessary, and then to answer it in seconds when it still comes.

1. Make the tracking easy to find

Shopify sends a shipping confirmation with the tracking link when you mark an order as fulfilled with a tracking number. Check that it is switched on, that the text is in your customers' language, and that the link opens the carrier page directly. Customers can also follow the order from the order status page linked in the confirmation email.

2. Tell customers before they ask

A short message when the order is confirmed and another when it ships answers the question before it is asked. Email works, but many customers read WhatsApp first. On WhatsApp these updates are business-initiated messages: they need an approved message template and the customer's consent, which you can ask for at checkout or in the first conversation.

3. Publish your delivery times

A clear page with delivery times by country, the carriers you use and what happens if a parcel is late removes many doubts. Link it from the footer, the product pages and the shipping confirmation, and keep it up to date during sales periods and holidays.

4. When they ask anyway, have the order at hand

Most of the time spent on this question goes into looking things up. Find the customer by email or phone number rather than asking for the order number first, and keep a saved reply with a place for the tracking link, so the answer is the same whoever writes it.

• Search the order by the email or phone the customer wrote from.
• Check the fulfilment status and the tracking before replying.
• Use a saved reply, adapted to the case, instead of writing from scratch.

5. Count the questions

Tag these conversations for a month. You will see how many there are, which carrier or which country causes most of them, and whether the steps above are working. It is the simplest way to know whether delivery questions are a small nuisance or a real cost.