Reduce WISMO & cost, while taking the pressure off your contact centre

“Where is my order?” (WISMO) and “Where is my return?” (WISMR) enquiries have long been a pain point for ecommerce businesses. WISMO is a common customer service inquiry where customers seek updates on the whereabouts of their online orders. WISMR stands for “Where is my return?”. Similar to WISMO, WISMR enquiries arise when customers want to track the status of their returned items. They may be eager to know if the return has been received, processed, or if a refund has been issued.

These questions often represent a significant portion of all customer service interactions, making it a crucial area for ecommerce businesses to address to improve customer satisfaction and reduce operational costs.

On average, we find the cost for each WISMO or WISMR contact sits between £4-6, making it an expensive problem to have. And with online shopping hitting uncharted heights, it’s a problem that risks becoming unmanageable.

Customers expect on-demand delivery and return tracking updates, and if they can’t find updates easily, they’ll be reaching out to you, the retailer. However, with the right systems in place, customer contacts and the costs associated with dealing with them can be cut and winning delivery experience can be preserved.

So, here’s the real cost of WISMO, and some tips on reducing customer calls and contacts. We’ll cover:

• The baseline for customer enquiries
• What causes WISMO contacts?
• Is your contact-per-order ratio too high?
• Is your contact centre becoming operationally (and financially) overwhelmed with WISMO and WISMR contacts?
• Are customers using a high-cost contact channel for WISMOs and WISMRs?
• Is customer satisfaction or loyalty at risk due to poor customer service experience with WISMO and WISMR enquiries?
• Strategies for WISMO reduction

When weighing up the true cost of WISMO, there are two key factors to look at:

1. The cost you can see

On average, we find the cost for each WISMO or WISMR contact often sits between £4 and £6. Working out how much these contacts are costing you is pretty simple. Look at how many contacts you’re getting in a set time period. If you categorise your calls, see how many contacts are related to tracking enquiries.

Next, establish how long it takes to resolve one tracking enquiry in agent minutes and work out how many full-time employees this takes per year. This is the direct monetary cost of your WISMO and WISMR calls.

2. The cost that you can’t see (as easily)

This is where identifying the real cost of WISMO and WISMR becomes a little more complex.
45% of customers won’t shop again following a poor delivery experience which leads to a high potential for churn and serious revenue loss. Plus, every disappointing delivery experience or unresolved customer enquiry turns a promoter into a detractor as 93% of customers read online reviews before buying.

It’s important to consider falls in other customer experience (CX) metrics you’re tracking, such as NPS and CSAT, as well as negative reviews online, offline and on social media. This impacts brand reputation, loyalty and new customer acquisition.

It’s not all doom and gloom though. 90% of customers would choose to shop again following a positive delivery experience. And that’s what to strive for.

We know that high WISMO and WISMR rates are expensive problems. But this is where we have to look to the source.

The two most common causes of WISMO and WISMR are:

1. If teams don’t have access to delivery performance insights, they can’t handle issues proactively or keep customers informed of any delays or issues.

2. Customers don’t have easy access to the delivery or returns insight they need so are having to reach out.

High volumes of tracking-related contacts are often a result of a poor post-purchase customer experience where retailers and brands have limited visibility of delivery status and performance. This is where we can make positive, impactful change.

Do WISMO and WISMR contacts pile up because customers aren’t kept up to date?

When Royal Mail and IMRG asked a sample of customers, over 80% of them reported that not only is tracking important but they expect it to come from the seller. The moment a customer completes an online transaction, they want certainty about a parcel’s whereabouts.

It comes back to managing expectations. A lack of quality communication, paired with no self-serve tracking, means there’s only one way for customers to get updates which stretches your customer support team.

This is where proactive communications come in. Informing customers of delivery status changes means they’re always in the loop and don’t need to get in touch. Post-purchase tracking software provides customers with a device-agnostic tracking timeline and customisable tracking pages. This means you’re always pushing customers to engage more deeply with your brand.

As the WISMO contacts decrease, you can expect to see increases across NPS, CSAT and other CX metrics.

When it comes to WISMO and WISMR problems, prevention is better than a cure.

Every time a customer contacts your customer service team about the whereabouts of an order the profits from that order reduce. When WISMOs and WISMRs accumulate to a sufficient degree, profits are hacked, rather than shaved.

Instead, you could give customers fully-branded updates through your preferred channel, regardless of which carrier is delivering their parcel. You can also warn agents of potential issues with proactive alerting such as ‘parcel is late’ or ‘may be missing’ before your customer becomes aware. This allows agents to take matters into their own hands and contact customers directly rather than wait for them to call, reducing inbound call volumes.

Alternatively, embedding tracking directly in your own app or website allows customers to self-serve and keeps all interactions exactly where you want them.

Automation can be used to embed tracking updates directly into your automated comms channels, ready to update customers whenever they ask. For example, if you use chatbots through onsite live chat, the bots could share the link to a tracking page helping your customers without any agent interaction at all.

If the customer does make contact, agents can immediately identify the status of parcels with real time updates through CS-friendly management dashboards. Putting the power in the customer’s hands by giving them access to their own tracking hub isn’t the only benefit here.

Keeping contact per order ratio down will ultimately lead to a better delivery experience for both customers and CS teams.

So, how can retailers reduce customer calls, in practice?

Call deflection

The concept of ‘call deflection’ conjures misleading images; customers being bounced through different systems, pre-recorded robots telling them to ‘press the hash key’ and interactive voice response systems that don’t seem to understand. But call deflection isn’t about avoiding phone calls at all. It’s about working smarter, not harder, to create a 5* customer experience and reduce high call volumes.

Communicating with your customers through lower-cost or more efficient channels immediately helps to streamline customer support operations. With live chat or WhatsApp, an agent can handle multiple enquiries at once. Going one step further and allowing your customers to self-serve the information they need means they often don’t have to contact you at all.

With the continued rise of the omnichannel contact centre, in line with customer expectations rising exponentially, there are plenty of options for savvy retailers to choose from and many customers prefer choice. Whether it’s live chat, chatbots, emails, SMS or social channels, the important takeaway is that every retailer or brand must pick the channels most relevant to their customers.

Author and retail commentator Miya Knights told the Sorted Retail Sessions podcast that ‘retailers mistakenly think omnichannel means that they need to be everywhere – but they don’t have to be everywhere, they just have to be where their customers expect them to be’.

Self-service & automation

Self-service allows your customers to access the insight they need wherever they are in their post-purchase journey.

With post-purchase tracking software, you should get access to branded tracking pages as standard, so customers can consume fully-branded updates at their whim regardless of which carrier is delivering their parcel. Alternatively, embedding tracking directly in your own apps or websites keeps all interactions exactly where you want them.

Whatever method you choose, you’ll be sure to increase digital and brand engagement and improve your delivery experience.

Automation is used to embed tracking updates directly into your automated comms channels, ready to update customers whenever they ask. For example, if you use chatbots through onsite live chats, bots could share links to a tracking page, helping your customers without any agent interaction at all.

Even better, there’s no need to wait for the customer to enquire at all.

Automated updates, communications and notifications keep customers informed every step of the way so they know where a delivery or return is before they even ask. Post-purchase tracking providers effortlessly support this, whether that’s through comms partners or triggers via API or webhooks. With no effort, you’re always keeping customers up to date.

Informed and Proactive teams

Now contact volumes have been reduced, you can make sure customer service teams have the information they need to quickly and efficiently resolve WISMO or WISMR queries.

Getting actionable, accurate delivery performance data and insights can be tricky and, often, retailers and brands only hear about issues when the phone rings. They struggle to access the tracking they need, having to log into multiple systems to check on progress – which negatively impacts both average handling time and first contact resolution.

With post-purchase tracking software, you get access to CS-friendly dashboards and delivery performance reporting that informs teams of issues and performance across all carriers. Teams should be able to set up escalation management, like alerts and warnings when a parcel may be late or ‘is missing’, allowing agents to proactively resolve issues before they touch customers or NPS and CSAT scores.

A fully connected delivery experience

If you’re looking to create a post-purchase experience that reduces WISMO and takes the pressure off your contact centre, Soted’s Track software can do it all. See the platform in action by booking a demo and begin to reduce WISMO contacts now.