COD customer follow-up: keeping the buyer informed

Why an informed customer refuses less

Refusal on delivery is almost never a rejection of the product. More often it is a collision between the parcel and the customer's day: they are not at home, they do not have the cash on them, they had forgotten they ordered, or the total the courier announces is not the one they had in mind.

Those four causes have one thing in common: information fixes them, and only before the courier arrives. A customer who knows a parcel is coming tomorrow gets the money ready and makes sure they can be reached. A customer who knows nothing finds a stranger at the door with a bill, and their first instinct is to refuse — which is a reasonable reaction on their part and a straight loss on the seller's.

One reason is less often stated: a buyer paying cash on delivery has no guarantee about the seller. Every message received before delivery is evidence that they are dealing with someone organised — and the reverse holds, because several days of silence between order and delivery looks a great deal like a scam.

The moments that matter, and what to say

Informing does not mean writing often. Four moments change something for the customer; the rest do not interest them and wear down their patience.

1. The confirmation call — The most useful message in the whole chain, because it runs both ways. It settles the item, the quantity, the exact cash total, the address with a landmark, and when the person is at home. A call that leaves out the exact total has missed the point.
2. Dispatch — A short message: the product is on its way, the amount to prepare, and the expected lead time for their city. This is the last moment an address error can still be corrected by the customer themselves.
3. Out for delivery — The parcel is with the day's courier. This is the only genuinely urgent message: it is what gets the cash counted out and somebody waiting at home.
4. The failed attempt — The courier could not find the customer. A message within the hour often turns a return into a successful second attempt; the same message three days later is worth nothing.

The tracking page, with no account and no app

The end customer has no account, and that is a decision rather than a shortcoming. Asking them to create a login to find out where their parcel is would lose more orders than the tracking would save: nobody registers for an order worth a few dozen dirhams.

What they get is therefore a public link. They open it, they see the state of their parcel and the amount due, and there is nothing to install or remember. That is also what makes it a good thing to send: a link can be forwarded to whoever will take delivery on their behalf, which happens constantly.

The trade-off is that a public page must contain only what the customer is already entitled to know: their product, their amount, the state of their parcel. Nothing else. A tracking page is built to be shared, and everything on it will be.

WhatsApp, SMS or a call: picking the channel

In Morocco the default channel for talking to a buyer is WhatsApp, then SMS, then a call. Each suits a particular job, and mixing them up is what produces a lot of writing to little effect.

• The call — For anything that has to be negotiated or verified: the confirmation, an address that makes no sense, a customer who is hesitating. It is the only channel that gets you an answer.
• WhatsApp — For anything that has to be read and kept: the order summary, the tracking link, the amount to prepare. The message stays in the conversation, and the customer finds it again when the courier knocks.
• SMS — For reaching a customer who does not use WhatsApp, and for one-line messages. It arrives everywhere, including on a phone with no internet.
• What not to do — Writing long messages, sending the same thing three times, or announcing a precise delivery time you do not control. A broken promise about timing produces exactly the refusal you were trying to avoid.

The unreachable customer

A customer who does not answer is not a customer who refuses, and treating them the same way loses sales on one side and money on the other. The useful question is: at what point do you stop trying.

Before dispatch, being unreachable still costs almost nothing. The workable rule is to schedule callbacks at different times of day — morning, late afternoon — rather than ringing three times in the same hour, and to accept that after a few spread-out attempts the lead will not convert. Dispatching to somebody who has never answered is the worst bet in the business.

After dispatch the position reverses: the delivery fee is committed and the return will be added to it. This is where a written message is worth most, because it leaves something the customer may read that evening. If nothing comes back, the parcel returns, and that case is kept separate from a refusal on CODFamilia because it does not cost the same.

Recognising a returning buyer — and the limit of all this

A buyer already delivered to once is not a stranger, and treating them as one is waste. Their address is known and verified, and so is their behaviour: they paid, or they refused, or they were not there. Those three facts are worth more than any estimate about a fresh lead.

Keeping a customer record therefore shortens the call — the address only needs confirming, not asking for again — and informs a decision: a customer who has refused two consecutive parcels deserves one extra question before dispatch, not a third parcel sent out of habit. On CODFamilia customers form a list of their own, with their past orders attached.

That leaves the honest limit, usually left unsaid: communication reduces refusals, it does not eliminate them. A customer can have had the call, the summary and the tracking link and still refuse — the money has gone, they found the product elsewhere, or they changed their mind, which is their right. A seller who builds their cash flow on the assumption that everything dispatched will be paid for will be wrong, however good the messages are.