While order volume is low, you can look over every order before it ships. As volume grows, there isn’t enough time — and the orders that most need attention get buried. This article looks at how to move from checking every order to checking only the ones that need a look.
The kinds of orders that slip through
Orders that lead to shipping mistakes, or to extra work after shipping, tend to follow a few patterns.
- Address problems: a missing street number, address lines entered in the wrong fields, no phone number
- Missed payments: shipping a prepaid order, such as a bank transfer, before the payment has cleared
- Delivery-date problems: a requested date that has already passed, too little time to prepare, or a date that couldn’t be read
- Delivery-condition conflicts: items with different temperature requirements in one order, or chilled delivery to an area that can’t receive it
- Missing gift details: a noshi gift-wrap name that is too long, or no choice between inner and outer wrapping
Each one is preventable. But when people check every order by hand, familiarity and busy days mean some get missed.
Let rules catch them, and people decide
If the patterns are predictable, split the work: rules catch the orders, and people make the decisions.
- Set rules that match how your store works: decide which payment methods count as prepaid, how many days to wait for payment, and which delivery dates you accept.
- List only the orders with a problem: instead of every order, show only the ones a rule matched, with the reason. Sorting by how long they’ve waited shows what to handle first.
- Hold fulfillment until they’re reviewed: for the important patterns, holding fulfillment until someone has reviewed the order prevents accidental shipping. Decide per pattern whether to hold, and simply list the minor ones.
- Leave the final decision to people: staff decide on things like filling in an address or confirming a payment, and record what they did.
Record who reviewed what, and when
When several people handle orders, it’s easy to lose track of whether someone has already checked an order. Recording who reviewed it, when, and what they decided makes handovers and customer questions much easier.
Summary
The more orders you get, the less “check every order” works. Turn the patterns that slip through into rules, list only the orders that need a look, and let people make and record the decisions. You spend less time checking — and miss less.