A high volume of inbound support contacts were coming in around order status and progression. Rather than treating it as a support capacity problem, we treated it as a product problem. The data pointed clearly to a visibility gap — users didn't know what was happening with their orders, or when to expect the next update. The solution was a dynamic milestone estimation feature that calculated expected progression dates based on order complexity and agreed SLAs, and surfaced only the information we could genuinely stand behind.
The change
Before
Users with no visibility on order progression contact support to ask for updates
Support team manually checks status and responds to each request individually
No distinction between delays in our control and those that aren't
Support contact volume grows in line with order volume — no way to scale out of it
After
Expected milestone dates calculated automatically from order complexity and agreed SLAs
Users self-serve status information directly in the platform, without contacting support
Estimated dates shown only for stages within internal control — external stages clearly flagged
Support team freed from repetitive queries to focus on genuinely complex issues
The work
Calculates expected progression dates for each key order status, accounting for order complexity and the agreed SLAs that govern each stage.
Estimated dates are shown only when progression is within internal control. Stages dependent on external factors are clearly surfaced without making commitments we can't keep.
A user-facing view of where an order sits in its lifecycle, what milestone comes next, and when to expect it — reducing the need to ask.
Outcome
Contribution