When a courier marks a COD order undelivered, the parcel is still near the customer and the customer still remembers the last hour. A day later both are gone: the parcel is on its way back to you, and nobody can say whether the phone ever rang. The first message after a failed delivery decides which of those endings you get.
What the first message asks
One question, sent within the hour: did anyone actually call or come by? The courier status says "customer not available", but only the customer knows whether that is true. The message is not an apology and not an accusation - it is a check of what the customer actually saw, while they can still answer from memory.
What the customer receives reads like this:
"Hi Priya, the courier just marked your Saanvi Studio order #1042 as undelivered. Did anyone call or come by? Reply 1 if no one came, 2 if the timing was bad, 3 if the address needs fixing."
Each reply moves the order instead of just recording a complaint. A 1 raises a reattempt and files the customer's word against the courier's status. A 2 sets a better delivery window for the next attempt. A 3 fixes the address before another attempt is wasted on the wrong door.
Why the first hour, and not the next morning
The answer is only worth asking for while the customer still remembers, and the parcel is only worth saving while it is still nearby. Ask the next morning and the customer is guessing, the parcel has moved a hub further away, and the cheapest outcome left is usually the return you were trying to avoid.
This is the failed-delivery flow Hextor builds
When a courier marks your order undelivered, Hextor's flow sends the customer a WhatsApp asking what they actually saw. The answer is timestamped and filed against the order, and a reattempt or an address correction is raised from what the customer says - not from the courier status alone. You end up knowing which failed deliveries the customer says nobody ever attempted, with their answer on record. It runs from your own WhatsApp number, in your accounts, on your keys. The broader case for asking the customer first is in a failed delivery needs a customer answer, not just a courier status.
Want this running on your store? Tap the "Ask anything" button on this page and tell us where your returns come from - we will tell you what the flow would look like for you.
Sources and scope: flow behavior as documented on hextorlabs.com. WhatsApp requires customer opt-in before a business messages them - see Meta's opt-in documentation. The Saanvi Studio examples are illustrations, not client claims.
