Delivery feedback calls: hear from every customer after the parcel arrives
A short call after delivery catches damaged parcels, rude handovers and unhappy customers before they become returns or one-star reviews. Here is a playbook.
The Vaakyo team3 min read
- E-commerce
- Playbooks
Most unhappy customers don't complain. They return the order, stop buying, or leave a one-star review. A short call soon after delivery hears from all of them while you can still fix things, and gives your delivery partners a rating that comes from customers rather than from the courier's own scan.
When to call
Call the same day, a few hours after the parcel is marked delivered, while the experience is fresh. Create the call from your order system when the delivery event arrives:
curl -X POST https://api.vaakyo.com/api/v1/agents/$AGENT_ID/call \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $VAAKYO_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"to": "+919812345678", "user_data": {"name": "Sneha", "order_id": "KF-1042", "items": "a cotton kurta"}}'
Turn on calling hours on the agent so deliveries marked late at night are called the next morning, not at 10 PM. To call a day's deliveries in one go, upload them as a campaign instead.
A 60-second script
Feedback calls must be short, or people stop picking up the next one.
- Greet by name and say which store is calling, and why: "about your order of a cotton kurta".
- Ask for a rating from 1 to 5. Callers can say it or press it on the keypad.
- If it's 4 or 5, thank them and end the call.
- If it's 3 or below, ask one open question: what went wrong?
- Say what happens next ("I've passed this to our team, they'll call you today") and end the call.
Set a maximum length of a couple of minutes, and a hang-up prompt such as "complete once the caller has given a rating and, if it was low, said what went wrong".
Save the answers as data
Add analytics fields to the agent so every call carries the result:
rating(number): the 1 to 5 score;issue(choice):damaged,late,wrong_item,delivery_partner,otherornone;details(text): what the customer said, in a sentence;wants_callback(yes or no).
The score and the issue are what you'll chart. The details are what your team reads.
Escalate the unhappy ones
A low rating should reach a person the same day. You can:
- send each finished call to your helpdesk with a webhook, and open a ticket when
ratingis 3 or below; - or turn on transfer to a human, so a customer who is upset can be connected to your support desk during the call.
For a damaged or wrong item, start the replacement before the customer has to ask. That turns a bad experience into a reason to buy again.
Don't over-call
Call each order once, not once per item. Skip customers who already contacted support about that order. Give anyone who says "don't call me for feedback" an opt-out that you actually honour. Turn on voicemail detection with no message, so a machine is simply hung up on rather than left a feedback request.
Measure it
Track, per week and per delivery partner or city: the share of deliveries reached, the average rating, and the mix of issues. A rise in damaged from one warehouse or delivery_partner complaints in one city is the kind of thing a dashboard of scans never shows.