Tracking shipments

After orders are created, customers contact the call centers to track the shipments. In such situations, you can monitor the delivery of products to the customer, answer their queries, and take appropriate actions.

You can provide the status of an order, and the date when the products are expected to arrive at the customer’s location. If the products do not arrive at the customer’s location as promised, you can view the shipment tracking details and explain the reasons for the late delivery.

If the customer is required to pick up the products, you can provide the address of the store where the products are available, and the date when the customer can pick up the products from the store.

If the order is already shipped, you can view the shipment details for each order line. Each shipment is uniquely identified by a shipment number and all the order lines that belong to a shipment have the same shipment number.

An order can comprise several order lines and all the order lines can be part of the same shipment or spread across different shipments. Similarly, order lines from different orders can be included in one shipment. For example, consider an order that comprises a notebook with extra components such as a 2 GB RAM, and 1 TB hard disk. In such situations, you can use the shipment or container numbers to explain to the customer whether all products were shipped together or in different containers.

If there are any provided services or delivery services in an order, you can view details on the work order and any scheduled appointments by clicking on the product that is associated with the work order.

You can inform when the customer would receive the products that are pending delivery. You can also view the relevant tracking information for the shipment or container, on the carriers' website.

Sometimes, holds that are applied to orders delay the fulfillment process. For example, a hold is applied to an order when a payment authorization fails. You must rectify the payment details to resolve the hold until which the shipment is delayed. In such cases, you can explain the reason for the failure of payments and suggest an alternative payment method to the customer.

When a customer places an order, you can provide a date when the products will be shipped. If the products cannot be shipped on the promised date, an alert is raised. You can view such alerts to monitor the delays and inform the customers.

You must reship an order line if the product is not delivered to the customer. For example, a television that is shipped, does not reach the customer due to mishandling. In such situations, you can reship the product after you track the shipment and confirm the cause of the delay.

If the shipment tracking details show that a product is backordered from a location, it indicates a shortage of inventory. In such situations, you can contact the locations, check the availability at different locations, and inform the customer.

Sometimes, the selling enterprise does not have access to information about the shipments because the products are shipped by an external vendor. In such situations, you can inform the customer that the product is shipped by an external vendor.

You can also track the returned products, the reason why certain products were returned, and so on.