Shipping delay notifications
When an order slips, every affected customer hears it from you first, by text, with the new date and an honest apology.
Trigger
An order is flagged delayed with a revised date.
Built from
Why teams set this up
A delay your customer discovers on their own is a complaint. The same delay announced in advance is decent service.
Delays announced, never discovered
Cancellation requests caught in a conversation
Fewer angry where-is-it calls
How the automation runs
A supplier slips a week and 60 orders are affected. Every customer has the new date by text within the hour, the four who want to cancel get a conversation and three stay, and the biggest order gets a phone call. The complaint thread that usually follows never forms.
- 1Ticket field
The delayed order is flagged with its new date
- 2Outbound SMS
Affected customers get the news and the revised date
- 3Conditional branch
Replies asking to cancel route into a save conversation
- 4Outbound call
High-value orders get a personal call instead of a text
- 5Smart ticket
Unresolved concerns become tracked tickets
The same workflow in different businesses
Construction
Material delays reach every affected client before crews get rescheduled around them.
Retail
Backordered items announce themselves with new dates instead of waiting to be asked about.
Built from standard Frontdesk blocks
No custom development. Each step is a building block you can rearrange, retime, or extend, so this workflow can grow into the next one.
Retention journeys that include this workflow
This workflow is one step inside larger retention journeys that run the full customer lifecycle.
Customer retention
Combine behavior, sentiment, service history, and conversation data into proactive retention workflows.
See the journey →Churn risk intervention
Route each at-risk customer into a playbook based on value, issue, urgency, and preferred channel.
See the journey →Renewal journey automation
Coordinate education, value review, objections, approvals, offers, and signatures before the deadline.
See the journey →Common questions
How does the shipping delay notifications workflow start?
An order is flagged delayed with a revised date.
Which channels does this use?
This workflow runs over sms, outbound voice. Each step can use the channel that fits the customer and the urgency.
Can my team stay in control of when it fires?
Yes. The trigger can be a field a person flips on a ticket or contact, so a human makes the decision and Frontdesk does the follow-through. Any step can also route to a teammate with the transcript and collected data.
Does it keep our records up to date?
Every call, text, and email in the workflow is logged against the contact and ticket, with transcripts attached. Frontdesk can also sync contacts and fields to your CRM.
What happens when a customer needs a human?
The workflow hands off with context: the right teammate gets the full history, the transcript, and the collected answers, so the customer never repeats themselves.
Thinking bigger than one workflow?
The customer journey library maps full lifecycle automations across activation, onboarding, retention, and growth.
Explore customer journeys →More from orders and deliveries
Status questions answered around the clock and delays announced before customers ask.
Order status hotline
Callers asking where their order is get a live answer pulled from your order system mid-call, around the clock.
Return authorization automation
An RMA approved field that, once flipped, sends the label, the instructions, and the refund timeline, then chases the package until it ships back.
Back-in-stock callbacks
Out-of-stock disappointment becomes a list, and restocking flips a field that calls everyone on it, in order.