How to automate replies to “where is my order” emails

Start with Shopify’s own emails: once the Shipping confirmation carries a tracking number and every template links to the order status page, customers can check an order without writing to you. The emails that still arrive get a same-day reply with the order number, the status in plain words, the carrier and tracking number, and a delivery date you can stand behind.

Every time a customer asks where their order is, you do the same lookup. You open the email in Gmail, find the order number or the sender’s address, search for the order in Shopify, check the carrier’s tracking page and write back. In the week after a sale, or when a carrier falls behind, these emails come in faster than you can look them up. Leave one until tomorrow and the same customer can email you a second time.

What a customer can and can’t see after checkout

The order status page is the customer’s main place to look, and Shopify’s default email templates link to it automatically. It starts out saying Confirmed, Shopify’s status for an order you haven’t shipped or fulfilled yet. When you fulfill the order, the status moves to On its way and Shopify sends the Shipping confirmation email. Ship with a supported carrier and the parcel appears on a map. Otherwise the customer gets a tracking number that links to the carrier’s own site.

Confirmed by itself doesn’t tell the customer when the order will ship. A parcel you send with a service that has no tracking, such as USPS First Class Mail, stays at On its way until you mark it delivered. Customers who check out with only a phone number get a text confirmation, but Shopify doesn’t send shipping updates by SMS. After three weeks, the page hides the tracking number. To see it again, the customer signs in or confirms the order number and the email or phone number from checkout.

The parts of a good order-status reply

Put the order number first, so the customer can see you found the right order. The status comes next, in plain words, such as “with USPS since Tuesday.” Name the carrier and type the tracking number out beside the link, because some carriers’ links open their tracking page without the shipment.

Give a date you can stand behind. Use the carrier’s estimate if its tracking page shows one. If it doesn’t, add the service’s usual transit time to the day the parcel left, and label it as an estimate. Then say what happens if that date passes: when the customer should reply, and what your policy says you’ll do. Send the reply the same business day, before the customer has a reason to write again.

For a shipped order, all of that fits in four sentences:

Thanks for checking on order #1047. It left us Tuesday with USPS, tracking number 9400 1000 0000 0000 0000 00, and this link opens it on the USPS site. USPS expects to deliver it Friday. If it hasn’t arrived by next Wednesday, reply here and we’ll send a replacement.

For an unshipped order, give the day it leaves and say the tracking link will follow by email.

Shopify settings that cut these emails at the source

1. In Settings > Shipping and delivery > Estimated delivery dates, set your fulfillment time and pick how dates appear. With manual dates, available on all plans, Shopify adds each shipping rate’s transit time to your fulfillment time and shows a date range. Automated dates, which Shopify predicts from your fulfillment history, need the Basic plan or higher and at least one fulfilled US order. The estimate shows at checkout and in the order confirmation email.
2. When you click Mark as fulfilled, enter the tracking number and leave Send a notification to the customer selected, so the Shipping confirmation carries the tracking number. If a tracking number reaches you later, add it with Add tracking in the order’s Fulfilled section, and Shopify sends a Shipping update.
3. In Settings > Notifications > Customer notifications, check that Out for delivery and Delivered are on. Shopify sends them on the carrier’s tracking events, and their timing and accuracy vary by carrier.
4. Open the Order confirmation, Shipping confirmation and Shipping update templates in the same list and look for a Revert to default button at the bottom. If it’s there, someone customized the template, and Shopify can’t add the order status page link to a customized one. Revert it, which erases your other edits, or add {{ order_status_url }} yourself. A customized order confirmation also leaves out automated delivery dates.
5. Place a test order with your own email address and fulfill it with a tracking number, as Shopify suggests, to see what your customers receive.
6. In Orders, add a Delivery status filter for Delayed, Attempted delivery and Failed delivery, then click Save to keep it as a view. Check the view each morning and email those customers what you know.

Shopify sends its emails when something happens to the order, such as a fulfillment or a carrier’s tracking event, and none of them reads your inbox. A customer whose tracking hasn’t moved since Monday still writes to you.

Answering the emails that still arrive

By hand, each reply takes five steps:

1. In Gmail, open the email and copy the order number, or the sender’s address if there’s no number.
2. In Shopify admin, go to Orders and paste it into the search bar, which finds orders by order number or email address. If it finds nothing, ask the customer for the order number.
3. On the order, read the fulfillment status: an Unfulfilled section means it hasn’t shipped, and a Fulfilled section shows the carrier and tracking number.
4. Open the tracking link and note the last scan and the carrier’s delivery estimate.
5. In Gmail, reply with your saved template and fill in the parts that change.

You turn Gmail’s templates on under Settings > See all settings > Advanced, and they work only in Gmail on a computer. A Gmail filter can send one as an automatic reply, but then every customer gets the same words, with no status or tracking link.

You can hand the lookup and the first draft to WebRun or another automation tool. WebRun is an AI agent, and its template for drafting order-status replies from Shopify runs this job every hour. It searches your Gmail inbox for unread order-status emails and adds a label with “Pending Draft” in its name to each one. In Shopify admin, it looks up each customer’s order under Orders. It reads the fulfillment status and the carrier’s tracking number, then drafts a reply in Gmail with the current status and the tracking link.

In Slack, WebRun posts a summary to your #support channel listing each customer’s name, order number and status, with the full text of every draft. When WebRun can’t find an order, it says so in Slack and drafts a holding reply asking for the order number. Nothing reaches the customer until you open the draft in Gmail and click Send.

Lost parcels, damaged items and address changes

For a lost parcel, a damaged item or an address change, a status draft is the wrong reply. A lost parcel shows up as tracking that hasn’t moved past the date you gave, or as a Delivered scan the customer disputes. WebRun’s draft reports only what Shopify shows, so check the #support summary for orders listed as delivered or with an exception, and write those replies yourself. A damaged item needs the customer’s photos first. Replacing or refunding is your call, and Shopify’s delivery dates page leaves late or damaged orders for you to resolve.

Before you ship, an address change is yours to make: open the order in Shopify, click the menu in the Customer section and choose Edit shipping address. Shopify recalculates the tax for the new destination. Once the carrier has the parcel, it delivers to the address on the label, so the change becomes a request to the carrier.

Checks for the first two weeks

In WebRun’s template, the Gmail search looks for unread emails containing “where is my order”, “order status” or “tracking number”. That search skips an email you’ve already opened on your phone, and one worded differently, such as “my parcel never came.” Each evening, compare the labeled emails with the rest of the inbox. The template sets out its steps in plain language so you can change them: add the wording your customers use to the search step.

Shopify sends a separate Shipping confirmation for each fulfillment, so an order that went out in two boxes has two tracking numbers. Its draft should give both. For smaller carriers, check that each draft has the tracking number itself, since their links can open a tracking page without the shipment.