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· N Khanna

Where is my order is a question your software already answered

Count the questions that reach your customer line for 1 week. On an illustrative 2 person desk it was 231, and 203 of them were somebody asking a person to read a screen. At 4, 3 and 2 minutes each that is 11 hours a week, $17,360 a year at a $31 loaded rate, for answers that were sitting in the shipping software and the accounting system the whole time.

A minimal ink drawing of a desk telephone whose long coiled cord runs off the desk, across the floor and up a tall warehouse shelf in the background, where a tiny figure on a ladder is reading the side of a box. On the desk beside the phone sits an open green cash box, the only colored object, with a few coins scattered next to it.
The whole thing up frontFor 1 week, tally every question that reaches the people who answer your customer line. On an illustrative distributor with 2 people on that desk the count was 231. 107 were where is my order. 52 were send me a copy of the invoice. 44 were what is my price, or is it in stock. Timed with a stopwatch, those take 4, 3 and 2 minutes to answer. That is 672 minutes a week, 560 hours a year, $17,360 at a $31 loaded rate. The tracking number, the invoice PDF and the price list already sit in systems the business pays for. The fix for most of it is a setting that was never switched on.

When I want to know what a customer service desk does all day, I do not ask. I put a sheet of paper next to the phone and ask the 2 people who sit there to make a mark every time a question comes in, with 1 word for what it was about.

The first day the sheet fills so fast that they stop writing the word and just make the mark. By Wednesday they have started grouping the marks into columns on their own, because they can see it too.

The tally

231 marks in a week, on the illustrative desk I use for arithmetic on this site. 2 people, 1 phone line, 1 shared orders inbox. A distributor, though the sheet reads the same at a job shop or a print house.

  • Where is my order: 107
  • Send me a copy of the invoice, or the proof of delivery: 52
  • What is my price on this, and is it in stock: 44
  • Everything else: 28
1 week of marks on the customer desk A horizontal bar chart of 231 questions tallied in 1 week by 2 people on a customer service desk. Where is my order is the longest bar at 107 and is marked in green as the finding. Copy of the invoice is 52. Price or stock check is 44. Everything else is 28. A note underneath says 203 of the 231 asked a person to read a screen. 1 week of marks on the customer desk 231 questions, 2 people, 1 phone line and 1 shared inbox Where is my order Copy of the invoice Price or stock check Everything else 107 52 44 28 203 of 231 asked a person to read a screen

What each answer costs

I time the answers 3 times each, on 3 different people, take the median and round down. I round down so that nobody can later say the stopwatch was generous.

A status question comes out at 4 minutes. Open the order, then find the shipment and its tracking number. Sometimes the number has not been typed into the order system yet, so the 4 minutes includes a walk to the shipping desk and back.

An invoice copy is 3 minutes. Find it, export the PDF, write the email, attach, send.

A price or stock check is 2 minutes. Open the customer, open the item, read the number out.

  • 107 × 4 = 428 minutes
  • 52 × 3 = 156 minutes
  • 44 × 2 = 88 minutes
  • 672 minutes a week, which is 11.2 hours

Over 50 working weeks that is 560 hours. At a $31 loaded hourly rate, salary plus benefits divided by the hours actually worked, it comes to $17,360 a year.

That number leaves out the shipping desk, which gets interrupted every time a status question ends in a walk. I leave it out on purpose, so that the total is smaller than the truth rather than larger.

Where the answer was the whole time

Take 1 of the 107 and follow it.

A customer calls at 2 in the afternoon. The phone is answered, the order number is read out, the order screen comes up. No tracking number on it. The second screen, the shipping software, has it. The label was printed at 9:40 that morning, and the tracking number has existed since 9:40. The customer is told, the call ends, 4 minutes have gone.

The path of 1 status question A flow of 6 boxes in 2 rows showing 1 where is my order call. Top row, left to right: the customer calls at 2:00 pm, the phone desk takes the order number, the order screen comes up with no tracking number. An arrow drops to the bottom row, which runs right to left: the shipping screen, marked in green because the tracking number has been there since 9:40 am, then a walk to the shipping desk, then the answer at 2:04 pm. A note underneath says the number existed more than 4 hours before the call. 1 call, 2 screens, 1 walk Where the 4 minutes go Customer calls 2:00 pm Phone desk order number read out Order screen no tracking number Shipping screen here since 9:40 am Shipping desk walk there and back Answer 2:04 pm The number existed more than 4 hours before the call

The tracking number was in a system the business pays for, more than 4 hours before anyone asked. The customer’s email address was in the same system, on the same label. Nothing connected the 2.

The same is true of the other 2 columns. The invoice PDF exists the moment the invoice is posted, in the accounting system, with the customer’s billing email on the record next to it. The price is on the customer’s price list in the order system, and the stock count is on the item.

Turn on what you already own

Before anyone gets a quote for new software, open the settings on the 3 systems that already hold the answers.

  • Whatever prints your shipping labels almost certainly has a shipment notification email in its settings, with the tracking link in it. Find that setting and read what it is set to. If it is off, turning it on is the fix for most of the 107.
  • Look for the same thing in the accounting system, an invoice email that goes to the billing contact at the moment the invoice posts. Then check that the billing contact on each customer record is filled in, because the setting does nothing for a customer with a blank field.
  • The price and stock questions are the only ones that may need something you do not have, which is a place a customer can log in and see their own prices and your stock. Ask your order system’s vendor, in writing, whether the plan you already pay for includes a customer portal. Some do. Get that answer before anyone looks at a new product.

None of this is a project. The first 2 are an afternoon, and the person who does it should be 1 of the 2 people who kept the tally, because they know which customers ask and what they ask for.

The 28 I did not count

The 28 marks under everything else were the real calls. Can you split this into 2 shipments. The pallet came in wet and the driver has already left.

Those are the calls you want your 2 best people taking, and right now each of them is taken between a tracking number lookup and an invoice export. Nobody is getting laid off over 11 hours a week. What comes back is 11 hours of the 2 people who know your customers best, and a customer who gets the tracking link at 9:41 instead of calling at 2.

Why it stays like this

Every 1 of the 203 takes 4 minutes or less, and a 4 minute problem never gets a meeting. The shipping account was set up by a rep in a hurry the week the business switched carriers, the accounting system was set up by a consultant who is gone, and nobody has opened either settings page since, because nothing was broken.

Each question is small, which is exactly how it survives.

Count yours this week

Put a sheet next to the phone on Monday. Marks, 1 word each. Add the shared inbox, because a status question by email costs the same 4 minutes and is easier to forget.

On Friday, sort the marks into the ones that asked a person to read a screen and the ones that needed a person. Time the first kind with a stopwatch, round down, multiply out. If you get 30 a week rather than 231, put the sheet in a drawer and go do something else.

If you get something like 231, you know which 3 settings pages to open, and nobody has to buy anything to find out. Before you start, ask the 2 people at the desk to guess the weekly count and write it on the back of the sheet. My bet is the marks beat the guess. If they do not, I would like to hear about it, since it would be the first thing that week to come in under the estimate.

We run this as a fixed-fee audit. $2,500, and if we find less than $7,500 a year we refund it.

See whether it fits your company