The "where is my parcel?" call
Every delivery business is drowning in this call. It is the most common thing anybody rings a courier about, it almost never generates revenue, and it arrives in exactly the hours dispatch is busiest — because the reason people ring is that something is late, and things are late when you are busy.
Why tracking links did not solve it
They solved it for the people who were going to be fine anyway. Somebody whose parcel is moving normally checks the link and stops. The ones who ring are the ones whose tracking says something unhelpful — "in transit" for two days, or "delivery attempted" when nobody knocked. The link answers the easy question and sends the hard one to your phone, which is why the call volume never fell as much as anybody expected.
What they are actually asking
Almost always the real question. They are deciding whether to stay in, not auditing your network.
The fear underneath, and the reason a vague answer makes them angrier rather than calmer.
They want a human to have noticed. Half the value of this call is being taken seriously.
Occasionally. This one needs a person, and quickly.
Be honest about what can be automated
Answering the call, identifying the consignment, capturing the details and getting it to whoever can act — all of that is routine and shifts a large volume off dispatch. Reading a live tracking status back to the caller is a different thing: it requires a connection into your tracking system, and any assistant that has not got one should say so plainly rather than improvise a status. A confident wrong answer about a parcel is worse than no answer, because the customer stops chasing something that needed chasing.
What stops the call happening at all
Proactive messages when an exception occurs, not when everything is fine. Nobody rings about a parcel that is on time. They ring when your system knows something has gone wrong and has not told them — which is the moment a message costs you least and saves you most. Businesses that message on exceptions rather than on milestones see this call volume drop in a way that tracking pages never achieved.
Separate it from the calls that make money
A new customer wanting a same-day collection and a existing customer chasing a late parcel are worth very different amounts and need very different handling, yet they arrive on the same line and are answered in the order they ring. Getting the chasers answered properly but elsewhere is what stops a booking being lost to a queue of status enquiries.
Frequently asked
Tracking answers the easy question. The people who ring are the ones whose tracking says something unhelpful — "in transit" for two days, or an attempted delivery nobody witnessed.
Whether it will arrive today, usually — they are deciding whether to stay in. Underneath that is a fear it has been lost, which is why a vague answer makes things worse.
Only with a connection into your tracking system. Without one it should say so plainly rather than improvise — a confident wrong answer stops a customer chasing something that needed chasing.
Messaging on exceptions rather than on milestones. Nobody rings about a parcel that is on time.
Because a new customer wanting a same-day collection is queued behind them on the same line, and that is the call worth money.