How to get fewer "where is my order" emails

Four gaps that make customers ask where their order is, and how to close each one with the shop platform you already pay for.

11 October 2026 · The Workden team

A customer emails on Tuesday morning: "Hi, just checking where my order is." You open the shop admin to find the order, the courier's site to find the parcel, and your inbox to see whether anyone already answered. Ten minutes later you send two lines. Then the next one arrives.

The short answer: these emails tend to be written in one of four moments. The customer was never told when to expect the parcel, the order sat packed and silent for days, the dispatch email had no tracking in it, or the parcel was late and nobody said so. Close those four gaps and fewer people have a reason to ask. You can do all of it with the shop platform you already have, and none of it needs a helpdesk or a chatbot.

Before you change anything, count them

Go back through the last 30 days of your inbox and tally every "where is my order" message. Next to each, note which of these it was:

Asked before the order had been sent
Asked after it was sent, with no tracking to look at
Asked after it was sent, when the tracking had stopped moving
Asked after the date you promised

A sheet of paper is enough. The biggest pile tells you which section below to do first, and the total gives you something to compare against next month.

Gap 1: they do not know when to expect it

If your product page says "fast delivery" and your confirmation email says "thanks for your order", the customer has to guess, and they will guess sooner than you can manage.

Put a plain dispatch promise in three places: the product page, the basket, and the order confirmation email. Something like "We post orders on Mondays and Thursdays. Delivery usually takes two to three working days after that." Make the promise a day longer than your real average, so you beat it more often than you miss it.

On WooCommerce, the confirmation is the Processing order email, which the documentation describes as the one sent to customers containing order details after payment. The email settings include an "Additional content" box for text that appears below the main email content. That box is where the dispatch promise goes.

There is a legal backstop too, and it is a long way behind what customers expect. In the UK, unless you have agreed a time with the customer, the Consumer Rights Act says you must deliver without undue delay and in any event not more than 30 days after the day the contract is made. In the US, the FTC's guide to its mail and internet order rule says that if you make no shipment statement, you need a reasonable basis for believing you can ship within 30 days, and a reasonable basis for any shipping time you do state.

Gap 2: the order is packed but still says nothing

The quiet stretch between paying and hearing that the parcel has gone is when a customer starts to wonder. The fix is to mark the order as sent on the day it leaves, not at the end of the week when you catch up on admin.

On Shopify, that means fulfilling the order with "Send a notification to the customer" selected, which sends the shipping confirmation email. On WooCommerce, it means moving the order from Processing, which WooCommerce defines as paid and awaiting fulfilment, to Completed. The Completed order email goes to the customer at that point, and the same email settings page notes that this usually tells them the order has shipped.

Gap 3: the dispatch email has no tracking in it

"Your order is on its way" with nothing to click produces an email two days later. If the postage you bought comes with a tracking number, get it in front of the customer.

On Shopify, type the number into the tracking field when you fulfil the order. Shopify's help centre says the number is displayed in the shipping confirmation and shipping update emails, and that Shopify might recognise the format and pick the carrier for you. Customers can also go back to the order status page, which Shopify says lets them check the status of their shipment without contacting you directly.

On WooCommerce without any extra plugin, add an order note marked "Note to Customer" with the tracking number and the courier's tracking link. WooCommerce emails that note to the customer.

If you post untracked to keep costs down, say that in the dispatch email along with the date you posted it and the date by which they should get in touch. An honest "this is untracked, it normally arrives by Friday, tell us if it has not come by Monday" saves more emails than a tracking link that never updates.

Gap 4: it is late and nobody has said so

Once a week, look at every order that was sent more than your promised number of days ago and has not been delivered, and every paid order that has not been sent. Write to those customers before they write to you. Two sentences will do: what has happened, and what you will do if it has not arrived by a named day.

In the US this is more than good manners. The FTC's guide says that if you learn you cannot ship within the time you stated, or within 30 days, you must seek the customer's consent to the delay, and refund them promptly if you cannot get it.

The ones that still arrive

Some will always ask. Make those quick to answer:

Keep one saved reply with gaps for the name, the sent date, the tracking link and the expected day.
If two of you share the inbox, agree who replies to order questions so the customer does not get two answers or none.
Put "Where is my order" at the top of your contact page with a link to the order status page or the courier's tracking page, above the contact form.

If you are a one-person shop sending a handful of parcels a week, the four gaps and one saved reply are enough. You do not need anything else.

Where Workden fits

Workden does not send your dispatch emails or track parcels. Your shop platform does that, and the steps above are the fix. What Workden changes is how long each remaining question takes to answer, and whether you spot the late order first.

Orders from Shopify or WooCommerce appear on their own, with who placed them and whether they have gone out yet, on the page of the customer who ordered. When you email that customer from Workden, the email goes out as you and is saved on the same page. With Outlook and most other mailboxes their reply lands there too, so whoever picks up next can see what was asked and what was promised. With Gmail, your sent emails are saved and replies stay in Gmail. Workden also brings an order that has gone quiet to your attention, which helps with the weekly check from gap 4.

It is £10.99 a month for your whole team, and the 14 day free trial is long enough to connect your shop and try it on a week of real orders.

Questions shop owners ask

Should I turn off order emails so customers get fewer messages?

No. The confirmation and dispatch emails are what stop people asking. Send fewer marketing emails if you are worried about volume, and make the order emails say more.

How long do I legally have to deliver an order?

In the UK, the default is without undue delay and within 30 days unless you agreed something else with the customer. In the US, the FTC rule works from the shipping time you stated, or 30 days if you stated none. Both are a backstop. Treat the promise on your own product page as the real deadline.

Do I need a tracking app?

Not to start. Use the tracking field or customer note your platform already has, and count your emails again after a month. A dedicated tracking tool makes sense once you send enough parcels that the weekly late-order check takes more than a few minutes.

Sources

Checked 11 October 2026.