Why is “where is my shipment?” answered by hand?

The question this file answersHow many of the status emails my team answers are just a lookup — and which ones hide a real delay?

Fits: forwarders and carriers whose customers still ask for status by email and phone throughout the shipping cycle — the logistics playbook gives no per-day count for this desk, so the audit counts yours.

Not for: operators whose customers already self-serve on a tracking portal such as project44 or FourKites — your customers already answer their own question.

Typical day

What the desk looks like today

Typical, from the logistics playbook — not a client's day. The playbook gives no count for this desk — inquiries are continuous — so we invent none. A customer emails: where is it? An agent opens the TMS or the tracking portal, finds the shipment, writes the same sentence with a new date. The real problem — a delay, a claim — waits its turn in the same inbox. It hurts the day a vessel slips: everyone asks at once, and the people who should be fixing the delay are describing it.

What changes

What Monday looks like after

A Tuesday when a ship is late. The agent's screen is not a wall of "where is it" — it is the delays and the claims, each labelled, with the shipment record open. Status questions were answered from the tracking system as they arrived. The agent's day goes to the phone: the carrier, and the customer whose cargo is genuinely stuck — the conversation that keeps the account. You can see, per customer, how many questions the system answered and how many a person did; nobody is replaced by that list, the typing is. Capgemini (2023) published the share of tracking inquiries handled without escalation — their study, not your inbox.

Typical, not a measured client result. Every figure here comes from the playbook source named below.

~60–70%

of tracking inquiries answered without escalation — Capgemini (2023)

Before: an agent looks up the same shipment and types the same sentence all day. After: Capgemini (2023) reports 60–70% of tracking inquiries answered without escalation — delays and claims still reach a person.

Where this number comes from

Capgemini "Logistics 4.0" (2023) reports that automated tracking responses handle 60–70% of customer inquiries without escalation — an industry figure, not our measurement. The logistics playbook's own range for dispatch documents and status updates is 40–60%.

What we install

What we put in front of the systems you already run

The tracking data you already have is the source — in the TMS (SAP TM, CargoWise, Transporeon, Alpega or the one you run) or in project44, FourKites or your own portal; no new tracker. In front of the shared mailbox:

every inbound message is sorted — status question, delay, claim, other
a status question is answered from the tracking record, in your wording, with the current milestone and date
a delay or a claim goes to a named person with the shipment, its last events and the customer's history
where the tracking system has an API we read it directly; otherwise we read the feed your team looks at today.

We start with the customers who ask most.

What stays human — and what this will not do

Investigating the delay itself. Claims and carrier disputes. Any question that is not a lookup — a customer changing the plan, not asking about it.

What can go wrong — and what we do about it

If milestones in the TMS are stale — a late scan, a carrier that does not report — the automatic reply is confidently wrong, so replies are held when the last event is older than your threshold. Without an API on the tracking side we read a portal the way an agent does, and that breaks when the portal changes. A message mixing a status question with a complaint is a complaint; doubt goes to a person. The Capgemini 60–70% is for tracking questions only; delay investigation and carrier disputes are outside it.

How long it takes, and what we need from you

Audit, about two weeks (€1.5–3K): we go through a month of the shared mailbox, count lookups against delays and claims, and check which tracking system holds the answer and whether it has an API. Pilot, 4–6 weeks — medium complexity in the logistics playbook (€10–20K): the customers who ask most, status replies only, an agent reads a daily sample. Production: proactive delay notices before the customer asks. From you: mailbox access and read access to the TMS or tracking portal.

The path: free 60-second estimate → free 20-minute review → paid audit of this one process (€1.5–3K, typically two weeks) → pilot with your people in the loop (€10–20K, weeks, not quarters). No transformation programme. Prices are public, on the services page →

This is about you if…

Do customers still ask for shipment status by email or phone rather than through a portal?
Does an agent look each one up in the TMS and type the reply by hand?
Is the tracking data already in one system — TMS, project44, FourKites — that can be read?

What does this mean in euros?

That depends on your volumes and wage costs — this page will not invent the number. The free 60-second estimate runs that calculation from your answers, with every multiplier sourced.

Get your free savings estimate 60 seconds · no sales call Or write first → Map a logistics process like this one — free, 60 seconds →

Not a named Aperanda client. Process file · Logistics.

Deep-dive process file. Volumes, weeks and sources come from the industry playbook; nothing here is a named client.

All process files