What do WISMO enquiries cost your brand, and how can you reduce them?

The post-purchase journey can be a key customer loyalty lever, particularly when it comes to transparency. If customers are chasing your brand for information on where their order is, it’s a sign that something has already gone wrong, but not necessarily in the way you might think. 

First, let’s define the problem. WISMO (‘Where Is My Order’) requests account for a significant proportion of customer service contacts for apparel brands¹. But behind the numbers is an individual customer who might be losing trust in your brand if they don’t get a good answer. 

The natural instinct may be to treat WISMO as purely a customer service issue. But that approach risks not solving the right problem. In many cases, WISMO requests don’t signal a failure of customer service but of communication infrastructure. Fixing this means looking at your entire transport transparency set-up and identifying where gaps are letting you down. 

What WISMO contacts cost 

WISMO is a double-headed problem. First, contacts cost money to handle, causing recurring drain on operational budgets that multiplies as volumes grow. Second, it’s a symptom of a situation that can erode brand perception. Around half of all e-commerce shoppers check the delivery status of their orders². When they look and find nothing, or find a status update hasn’t changed in two days, the doubt this creates is projected onto your brand. The numbers show the impact: 19% of consumers won’t order from a retailer again after a negative delivery experience³. 

Post-purchase silence is a major factor in this, and it can be addressed. Indeed, it’s a structural problem that is part of the way cross-border logistics works. According to Ruud Mars, Business Development Director Transport at Bleckmann, the situation is as follows: “If I drive from the Netherlands to Spain, that costs me two days. The moment that order is placed, there will be a message from the carrier saying ‘We have received your data’. And then, nothing more will be heard until my truck reaches Spain and the Spanish carrier triggers the first scan in the hub.” 

In practice, this means a customer gets one notification at the point of dispatch, then nothing for up to 48 hours, then a series of updates in quick succession as local delivery begins. From where the customer is sitting, the order has disappeared for 48 hours. While nothing has technically ‘gone wrong’, people can assume that silence means there is a problem. 

What causes the communication gap 

This ‘communication black hole’ is not a technological failure. Rather, it’s a gap in data checkpoints. In other words, a section of the delivery journey in which no trackable event occurs, so no update is possible. The parcel is moving but the customer can’t see it, and while that’s perfectly logical from the sender’s perspective, it can feel very different to the customer. 

Beyond the communication aspect, a high WISMO rate is a clear indicator of a problem because it shows that somewhere in your fulfilment chain, or your 3PL’s fulfilment chain, data isn’t flowing. Whether that’s a gap between your 3PL and the line haul carrier, or between the line haul and last-mile handover, the customer experiences the effects of every missed connection. 

Why (AI) customer service agents won’t fix the problem 

One temptation when WISMO volumes rise is to increase the number of customer service staff, whether FTEs or AIs. However, instead of addressing the underlying cause, increasing customer service capacity in this way only manages the complaints more efficiently. 

It quite simply doesn’t tackle the underlying cause. The volume of WISMO contacts is a direct reflection of the number of gaps in tracking visibility along the supply chain. Introducing more checkpoints in the delivery journey reduces the number of gaps, and fewer gaps mean fewer moments of silence. This will then lead to fewer customers contacting customer service. 

What closing the gap looks like 

A specialist 3PL with carrier integrations throughout the delivery chain can establish more frequent notification checkpoints across each stage of the supply chain journey, from warehouse dispatch through line haul to local carrier handover, and trigger customer communications at each one. Importantly, these messages can also be modified with your own branding, helping to deliver a seamless and professional customer experience. 

In practice, this means mapping the delivery journey and identifying where the data gaps are. On the Netherlands-to-Spain route described earlier, the gap may sit between the dispatch notification and the first scan at the Spanish hub: up to 48 hours with no trackable event through Belgium and France. Closing it would involve adding two to three notification stages in that in-transit window triggered by the 3PL, rather than waiting for a carrier scan that won’t come for two days. The parcel is moving at the same speed, but now the customer also knows it’s moving. 

The practical result is fewer WISMO contacts, lower customer service costs and a post-purchase journey that reflects well on your brand rather than undermining it. And the same infrastructure that closes the communications gap can lead to opportunities elsewhere…