💡 Discover and understand complex e-commerce terms with Ingrid Glossary.
WISMO definition
Ask your customer support representatives about the questions they dislike answering the most, and WISMO is likely to be at the top of their list.
WISMO stands for Where Is My Order, and is more common than you might think.
When shipping orders, every e-commerce business sooner or later gets customer inquiries about the delivery status. These usually come through a variety of support channels — emails, calls, live chat, or whatever channel is available.
The issue is — the more frequent WISMO questions are, the bigger the impact on customer support, and the company bottom line. Plus, it also means that the post-purchase experience offered by the e-commerce store is pretty bad.
Here’s an example of a messy after-sales communication that can generate WISMO questions:
How to reduce WISMO
When you think about it, there’s a direct correlation between the effectiveness of the order tracking, the after-sales emails — or lack thereof — and the number of Where Is My Order inquiries.
After they complete their purchase, customers already treat the products as their own. But between the products being 'purchased' and 'delivered', a lot can go wrong. Think of issues like lost parcels, broken items, or delivery delays.
The problem is, even the smallest issue along the way makes anxiety kick in. There’s even a word for it in the Urban Dictionary — pre-parcel anxiety. And this type of anxiety is exactly what makes online shoppers repeatedly contact your team.
The better and more predictable the order tracking experience, though, the fewer support questions like WISMO coming from customers.
In the e-commerce realm, order tracking allows shoppers to — wait for it — keep track of their online orders. Along with relevant and frequent e-commerce notifications, they actually play a crucial role in reducing WISMO queries.
An example? A while back, IDEAL OF SWEDEN launched a brand new tracking site thanks to Ingrid Tracking right before Black Week to avoid unnecessary stress for their team members, and it turned out to be extremely useful for both consumers and staff.
Thanks to a great tracking experience, the number of delivery-related support tickets decreased from 37% to 4%.
The easiest way to offer transparent post-purchase communication is to invest in order tracking software like Ingrid Tracking, Shipup, AfterShip, Narvar, or parcelLab. There's no 'one size fits all' solution here, but considering the decision key criteria should help every merchant choose the right e-commerce tracking solution for their needs.
