What your customer does when they don't know where their order is

Your customer doesn't always ask you where their order is

When an order is delayed, the normal thing isn't for the customer to write straight to support.

First they dig out the confirmation email. Then they copy the tracking number and go to the carrier's site. They check where the parcel is, wait a few hours and check again.

And if they still don't know what's going on, then they ask.

These customer enquiries are usually within the top 3 reasons for customer support tickets, "Where is my order", costing on average £5 per ticket to a brand. Not only that, the frustration for the customer builds up, and whilst the problem may be with the carrier, the brand suffers the consequences.

More than a third of European online shoppers ran into a problem

Eurostat data shows that problems with online purchases are far from occasional.

In 2025, 35.4% of online shoppers in the European Union reported having a problem when buying through a website or an app. The most common one was the order arriving later than expected, which happened to 19.9% of shoppers.

And the differences between countries are significant. In Spain, for example, 50% of shoppers reported some kind of problem.

For a brand selling across several markets, that can translate into very different volumes of queries and issues depending on the country.

When the carrier fails, the customer is still thinking about the brand

From the retailer's point of view, a delay may be the carrier's responsibility. From the customer's, it isn't nearly so clear-cut.

According to a study by Bringg, 62% of consumers blame the store for a late delivery, not the carrier.

And it makes sense. The customer bought the product from your store, paid your store and is waiting for the order they placed with you. Who takes it to their door is part of your operation, but for the customer it's still part of their experience with the brand.

So even when the last mile sits with a third party, what the customer goes through still lands on the brand.

A bad delivery can stop the customer coming back

The problem doesn't end when the parcel arrives.

According to Bringg, 55% of shoppers would stop buying from a brand after a single negative delivery experience. And more than half of the consumers surveyed by AlixPartners say they'd stop buying from a retailer after one or two failed deliveries.

But there's something even harder to measure: most of those customers don't complain.

They don't write to support. They don't send an email. They don't necessarily leave a bad review. They just don't come back.

Which means a bad delivery experience can fail to show up anywhere in your customer service data and still end up affecting your sales.

Delays happen. What matters is how you handle them

You can't prevent every delay. Parcels go missing, carriers have problems, and estimated delivery dates aren't always met.

What you can control is what information the customer gets when something goes wrong.

According to Locus, 93% of consumers say proactive updates can make up for a bad experience caused by a late delivery. Knowing your order is delayed is far less frustrating than spending several days not knowing where it is.

And it works the other way round too. In the UK, 94% of consumers point to false delivery notifications, the ones saying a parcel has arrived when it hasn't, as one of the most frustrating experiences of all. Information matters so much that when it's wrong, it does more damage than the delay itself.

Getting ahead of the question changes the conversation entirely.

Instead of receiving:

"Where is my order?"

you can get there first with something much simpler:

"Your order has been delayed. Here's what happened and here's the new estimated delivery date."

You haven't made the parcel arrive any sooner, but you've saved the customer from having to chase the information.

Tracking is part of the brand experience too

Which leaves one question: where does the customer go looking for that information?

If every time they want to know where their order is they have to leave your store, go to the carrier's site and find the tracking number there, that part of the experience happens entirely outside your brand.

A tracking page can be far more than somewhere to check a number. It can keep the brand's identity alive after the purchase, offer useful information and keep the customer informed throughout the process.

This isn't about turning every tracking visit into a sales opportunity. It's about not disappearing at the exact moment the customer is paying most attention to their order.

Where Smart Tracking fits

Smart Tracking lets brands keep tracking inside their own experience, with automatic updates on shipment status and alerts when there are delays or problems.

It doesn't stop a parcel being delayed. But it does stop the customer having to go and find out what's happening on their own.

Because a good delivery experience doesn't mean every order always arrives on time.

It means that when something goes wrong, the customer isn't left waiting without knowing what's going on.