Phone Orders Entered Through the Website

Two order books

Orders placed on the website go into the shop system. Orders taken by phone go onto a pad by the till, into a spreadsheet or into the accounting software, depending on who answered.

Both kinds get filled, most of the time. But the website knows nothing about the phone orders, and the pad knows nothing about the website.

The gap shows up in small, irritating ways: an item sold twice, a customer asking where their order went, a month of sales that does not add up.

The fix is simple to describe and takes some discipline. Every phone order goes into the website's own admin, during the call.

What the paper pad costs

• Stock counts drift, so the site sells items the phone already sold.
• Customer histories have gaps where phone orders should be.
• Phone customers get nothing in writing to check against.
• Sales reports split between the shop system and the pad.
• Packing runs from two lists, and one gets missed.
• Card numbers end up on paper in a drawer.

The first does the most visible damage. A website that shows an item in stock after the last one went out by phone takes an order it cannot fill, and the online customer gets the apologetic email.

Enter it where the website keeps orders

Most shop systems let staff create an order from the admin side: choose or add the customer, add the products, set shipping and record how it will be paid.

The order then behaves like one placed online. Stock drops, the customer's history gains a line, and the order appears in the same list the packing is done from.

Add a note that it was a phone order and who took it. That small habit makes phone orders countable later, and tells everyone whom to ask when something is unclear.

If the admin has no way to create orders, or makes it painful, raise it with whoever built the shop. It is usually a setting, an add-on or a small piece of work.

Taking payment over the phone

The card number is the part to get right. Writing it on a pad and typing it in later leaves a record that should never exist, sitting in a drawer.

Key it straight into the payment system during the call, so it is never written down. Or send the customer a link to pay for the order online, which keeps the number off the phone entirely.

Business customers on account work the same way: the order goes in now, marked to be invoiced, and the invoice follows from the same record.

The same confirmation as everyone else

A customer who orders online gets an email listing what they bought, the price, the delivery details and an order number. A phone customer should get the same.

Most systems send it automatically when the order is created, or with one click. Read the order back on the phone, then tell the customer to watch for the email and reply if anything is wrong.

That email settles most disputes before they start. It is also the record many business customers need, because the person who phoned is rarely the person who pays the invoice.

A worked example

An office coffee service supplies beans, machines, filters and cups to offices across a city, delivering on fixed routes twice a week.

Regular customers could order online through their accounts, but many office managers still phoned. The dispatcher wrote those orders on a pad, and the drivers' route sheets were built from the pad and the website together.

Twice in one month the website sold a popular dark roast that phone orders had already used up, and online customers got substitutions they had not asked for.

The same month, one office's accounts department queried an invoice that the office manager who had phoned could not match to anything.

The mechanism was the pad. Phone orders never reduced the website's stock count, and phone customers never received a confirmation to pass on to accounts.

The dispatcher now enters every phone order in the shop's admin, under the customer's account, marked as a phone order. The confirmation goes out automatically, route sheets print from one list, and the pad has gone.

Count phone orders separately

Once phone orders live in the same system, they can be reported on: how many arrive by phone, from which customers, at what times of day.

That answers useful questions, such as which regular customers might happily order online with a little help, and whether the phone needs more cover on certain mornings.

It also gives a truer picture of the website. Many phone orders come from people who looked at the site first, and a shop that counts only online checkouts undercounts what its site does.

Discounts given over the phone

Phone orders invite small exceptions: a discount for a regular, a price remembered from last year, free delivery because the caller asked nicely.

Record each exception as a visible discount or a note on the order, rather than quietly changing the item's price. Otherwise the order history shows prices nobody can explain later.

Entered that way, the exceptions also appear in the sales reports, so at the end of the year you can see what they added up to.

The counter-case

A shop that takes one or two phone orders a month can reasonably keep a simple log, as long as someone adjusts the website's stock the same day.

Some orders do not fit the shop system at all: custom work, large quotes, standing orders on special terms. Those belong in a quoting or accounting system, with the stock adjusted by hand.

And entering orders takes practice. The first week is slower than the pad, which is normal.

Wherever phone orders are routine, though, one order system is the only way the website's stock, histories and reports stay true.

Before the next phone order

1. Find out where phone orders go today.
2. Check that the admin can create orders.
3. Stop writing card numbers on paper.
4. Enter each phone order during the call.
5. Send the standard confirmation every time.
6. Mark phone orders with who took them.
7. Retire the pad once everyone is comfortable.

Step four is the one that keeps everything else true. An order entered at the end of the day leaves hours in which the website can sell the same stock again.

An honest stock count on the website matters in the shop too, as covered in shoppers checking prices on their phones in your aisles.

Frequently asked questions

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