The vessel has been delayed
Your forwarder emails to say the vessel has missed its slot and the container will arrive ten days later than expected. On that container are lines for twenty customer orders. Some are for retailers with promotions planned. Some are for trade customers who have already been told the date.
Your team spends the rest of the day working out which orders are affected, then phoning and emailing. A few customers are missed. They find out when their delivery does not arrive, and ring, annoyed.
Why affected customers are hard to find
The link between a customer order and a container is indirect: the order is for a product, the product is on purchase orders, the purchase orders are on shipments. Unless those links are kept, finding the customers affected by one delay means working through each step by hand. And different staff tell customers in different ways, with different levels of detail.
| Link | Where it is usually held |
|---|---|
| Customer order to product | Sales system |
| Product to purchase order | Purchasing spreadsheet or system |
| Purchase order to container | Shipments spreadsheet |
| Container to arrival date | Forwarder emails or portal |
What slow delay notices cost
Customers can often cope with a delay if they know early. What damages the relationship is finding out late, particularly for retailers with promotions or trade customers with jobs booked. Late news also means lost chances to offer an alternative, split a delivery or bring a line in by air for the urgent orders. And the day spent on the phone is a day not spent on anything else.
Consistency matters too. When three people are each ringing a share of the affected customers, each gives a slightly different story about the cause and the new date. Customers compare notes more than you might think, particularly in a trade where buyers know each other.
The delay alerts we build
- Customer order lines waiting for stock are linked to the shipment they are expected to come from, through the purchase orders on it.
- When a shipment's expected arrival changes by more than a threshold you set, the affected customer orders are found automatically.
- Each customer gets a clear message with the lines affected and the new expected date, in your wording and branding, by email or through your trade portal.
- Account managers see the list of their customers affected, with the order value and any promotion or deadline noted, so they can call the ones that need a conversation.
- Where you have other options, such as stock at another location or a later shipment, the team can offer them from the same screen.
- Each update is logged against the order, so anyone answering a customer call can see what they were told.
Your team decides which customers get an automatic message and which get a call first. Some delays deserve a personal conversation.
How the day goes when a vessel slips
The forwarder's update arrives, the affected orders are listed straight away, and customers hear about it the same day. Account managers spend their time on the few customers who need a call, not on finding out who they are. Nobody is missed. And customers learn that when you give a date and it changes, you will tell them.
Is this what happens now?
- Working out which customers a delay affects takes hours.
- Some customers learn about delays when deliveries do not arrive.
- Different staff give customers different information.
- You cannot see what a customer was told about a delay.
- Options like air freight are considered too late.