I ordered something recently from an online retailer.  I received the confirmation email for the order and the next day an ebullient follow-on announcement from the brand that my packaged “Has Shipped!!”  Yes, two exclamation points.  Good for them to keep the lines of communication open and to not only keep me abreast of the condition but additionally to set expectations, as the message also conveyed a projected delivery date.  In that same spirit, they also included the usual link to follow my shipping on their delivery partner’s website.  You know the drill.

In fact, within about a half-hour, I also received an email directly from that carrier with the same tracking number and link, inviting me to view the progress as the package made its way from the East Coast to Denver.

So I clicked through.

One of these days, doing so will go straight to a Google Maps site with a pin or even an avatar of my purchase showing me exactly where it is.  Refreshing the view will demonstrate whether it’s on a truck or a plane, based on how far it’s moved since the last refresh.  An obsessive would have a ball with that…  The future’s gonna be awesome!

For now, though, we’re basically limited to a somewhat behind-the-scenes (or perhaps ‘looking-over-the-shoulder’?) most-up-to-date capture of the last time the package was scanned by someone from the shipping company.  You know how this works:  At each step, or at least when the package changes hands, say, from one vehicle to another, it’s scanned and the system updated with the most recent ‘sighting’ of it.  For that matter, they do the same thing ‘in bulk’ when a truck pulls into a facility.  Your package, as well as every other one that’s been logged onto that truck is updated that it’s arrived here or there.  They’ve always done this for their own purposes (at least as long as they’ve had the tech to do so), so really the only innovation we as the Customers realize is that they’re finally showing us what’s going on.

And that’s where the whole thing gets kind of weird:  Those systems that they’ve allowed us to ‘use’ (really, they’ve just repurposed them, or perhaps made a Customer-facing interface that helps us make more sense out of their internal systems) are legacy and have been used internally for ages at that company.

Here’s another example:  Remember the old joke about buying a ticket for air travel?  If you went to the airport (remember, you kind of used to have to do it that way), the ticketing agent behind the counter would type and click away at the terminal, well, interminably, just to perform a search of what flights are going where and which seats were available.  If you’ve ever looked at what they were doing on those old green-screen paleolithic monsters using some old coding language from caveman days, it’d throw you for a loop.  Funny that, nowadays, they usually are just using an emulator to access and use the same old system on a newer PC.  But here’s the kicker:  When you go online to search for flights, so are you!  The only difference is that, they’ve developed a much better (but still in need of incredible improvements!) user interface.  The clever grid or maybe even calendar-view you get when you use their website doesn’t exist anywhere except right there…it’s still pulling from more or less the same system they’ve been using since the 70s.  The next time you sit there while the little circle spins waiting for your search results to show up, keep that in mind.

But back to the shipping company.  When I clicked through to check the status of my shipping, the status was (you’ve probably seen this one):  “Label Created.”

Now, I could play really dumb, but I’m sure that “Label Created” means that, well, somewhere, a label has been created.  In fact, intuitively, I imagine there’s probably a dock or something somewhere at a receiving location for this shipper, and right there, there’s some sort of printer that spits out the labels that you find stuck to your packages when they’re delivered.  Yes.  A.  Label. Has. Been.  Created.

But what does that mean?  Why do I care that there’s been a label created?  That’s your internal system.  Where’s my item?  When will it get here?  If it’s not in your system, that’s cool…I understand that you can’t tell (let alone promise) me anything until you at least have physical possession of it.  But this is another example of how brands, in thinking that they’re communicating and being transparent, actually show how unCustomer-conscious they are.  Sure, the sentiment of, ‘let’s communicate with our Customers’ is a great one.  But the execution of that (if it’s truly to be Customer-centric) should take into account how your Customers interact with you, not simply an outward expression of your own internal systems.  Some shipping companies have gotten the hint and, in addition to the ‘Label Created’ message, they’ll also explicitly state “Waiting for Package.”  That’s a start, but if they really wanted to make things more friendly (and seem much more transparent), they’d revamp all these communications in such a way that seems more, well, directed toward the Customer.

Simply pulling back the curtain but still using your internal terminology and lexicon is a good start if you’re only now getting around to communicating more fully with your Customers.  But the next step should be walking in your Customers’ shoes, and recognizing at each one of those communication touchpoints how they would interpret what’s going on.  Simply opening your systems to them and expecting them to know what all your abbreviations or buzzwords mean isn’t really communicating.  You may think it is, but your Customers don’t agree.