How to Stop Answering Where Is My Order Emails All Day

Where is my order emails are the ones you can answer in your sleep, which is the problem. Each one takes two minutes: open the store, find the order, read the tracking, write it back. Do that forty times a day and it's your morning gone. So get fewer of them, answer the rest in one reply, and hand the lookup itself to an AI agent connected to your store.

How do I stop answering where is my order emails all day?#

Do it in this order, because each step makes the next one smaller.

Get fewer of them. Some of these emails come from customers who haven't heard a thing since checkout, and some from customers who've seen the tracking page and still can't tell whether to worry. A shipping email with the tracking link, and a delay email the day you know, gives customers less reason to write in. More on that in send the update before they ask.

Answer the rest once. A reply with the status, the last scan, a date and a plan should head off the second email. The four parts are in the reply that ends the thread.

Hand the lookup to an agent. The two minutes go on finding the order and reading the tracking. An AI agent connected to your store can do that part, and how to automate it shows what it reads in each store.

Send the update before they ask#

Send these three.

• The shipping confirmation, with the tracking link. Send it the day the parcel leaves, not when the carrier first scans it.
• A delay email as soon as you know. If a supplier slips or the carrier is backed up, tell the affected customers before they notice. A short email beats the customer finding out from the tracking page. In a 2023 Körber survey of 2,200 shoppers, more than half of those hit by a delay had to look up the order to find out, and only 40% got a heads-up from the seller.
• A delivery-date line on the order-status page. It's a page customers can go back to without writing to you.

On Shopify, the shipping confirmation and shipping update emails live in your customer notification settings, along with the out-for-delivery and delivered emails. Turn them on and check the wording before a busy week, not during it.

The reply that ends the thread#

A good where is my order reply has four parts, in this order.

1. The status in plain words. "It's with the courier and on its way to you", not the carrier's code.
2. The last scan. Where it was and when.
3. A date. When it should arrive.
4. What you'll do if it doesn't. A resend, a refund, or a claim with the carrier, and when you'll start it.

Put the tracking link last, as a backup. If the first four parts are there, plenty of customers won't need to click it. We have where is my order email templates for the usual cases, from a parcel that's on time to one that's stuck.

When where is my order means I want a refund#

A customer asking where their order is and a customer saying it's been two weeks and they want a refund need very different replies, because the second one is asking you to decide something.

Answer the second one as a refund question. Give the status, then say clearly what you'll do about the refund. Sending the same tracking line back usually just gets you a crosser email. In Hay.chat, the refund itself waits for a person on your team to approve it by default.

How do I automate where is my order emails?#

The lookup is the part to automate: finding the order and reading where it is. This is what Hay.chat reads in each store.

Hay.chat is an AI support agent that connects to your store. When a customer asks where their order is, it looks the order up and tells them what's happening. On Shopify, WooCommerce and Magento it also reads the tracking and tells them where the parcel is, instead of sending them back to the tracking page. If the customer wants a refund instead, the refund waits for a person on your team to approve it by default.

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How do I handle a spike in order status emails?#

A shipping delay can fill your inbox overnight. When it does:

• Email the affected orders first. One delay email to everyone whose parcel is late, with the new date, heads off a lot of the questions.
• Use one reply everywhere. Write the delay answer once and use the same words in email, chat and your FAQ, so nobody gets a different story.
• Filter your own notifications. If your store's order and shipping notifications land in the same inbox as customer email, a filter in Gmail or a rule in Outlook moves them out of the way, so you only see the messages that need a reply.

Black Friday is the obvious spike, and we cover it in Black Friday customer support with a tiny team.

After hours, and when a person needs to step in#

Hay.chat answers from the order at any hour. Outside your business hours, a customer who needs a person is told the team is away and when you're back, and the AI keeps helping with anything else. When a conversation needs someone, available teammates get a phone alert, a second one after 10 minutes, then an email.

Frequently asked questions#