Cash on delivery is how a large share of online orders in Sri Lanka get paid for. Buyers like it because they do not have to trust a website with their money. Sellers accept it because without it many customers would not order at all. The cost is the parcel that comes back: the customer who does not answer the phone, changed their mind, gave a wrong address or never really meant to order. Each returned parcel costs you the courier charge both ways, the packing, and stock that sat unavailable for a week. Confirming orders before they leave is the cheapest way to reduce that, and it is a job an AI agent does well.
Why confirmation matters so much with COD
With card payment, a customer who orders has already committed money. With cash on delivery, placing an order costs them nothing. That makes impulse orders, duplicate orders and prank orders easy.
Take a worked example. Say a store ships 400 COD parcels a month and 60 come back. If each return costs LKR 700 in courier fees and handling, that is LKR 42,000 a month lost, before counting the staff time spent chasing. If confirming orders before dispatch stopped even a third of those returns, the saving would be around LKR 14,000 a month. Your own numbers will differ, but the calculation is worth doing.
Many stores already confirm by phone. The trouble is that calling every customer takes hours, and calls made in a rush miss things.
What the agent does
After an order comes in, the agent sends the customer a WhatsApp or SMS message that repeats the order clearly and asks for a reply. A good confirmation message includes:
- The item, size and colour in plain words.
- The total amount to be paid at the door, including delivery.
- The delivery address as the customer gave it.
- The expected delivery window.
- A simple choice: reply 1 to confirm, 2 to change something, 3 to cancel.
When the customer confirms, the agent marks the order ready for dispatch. When they want to change something, it collects the change and updates the order. When they cancel, it cancels the order and returns the stock to available.
The agent also checks the order itself before sending anything. Is the phone number the right length? Is the address complete enough for a courier, with a street or landmark and a town? Has the same number placed three orders in the last hour? These checks catch many problems before a message even goes out.
Handling silence and unclear replies
Most of the work is in the cases that are not a clean yes or no.
No reply. The agent sends one polite reminder after a few hours. If there is still nothing by a cut-off time, the order goes on a list for a staff member to call. It is not cancelled automatically, because some genuine customers simply do not check messages often.
A reply that is not 1, 2 or 3. People answer with “ok”, “yes pls”, “send tomorrow”, a thumbs up or a voice note. The agent can read most text replies correctly, including Sinhala or Tamil typed in English letters, but it should pass anything it is not sure about to a person rather than guess. Voice notes should always go to a person unless you have tested transcription carefully.
A change of address or item. The agent can take the new details, but a person should check changes that affect price or stock before dispatch.
Signs of a fake order. Repeated orders from one number, addresses that are clearly nonsense, or a name that does not look like a name. The agent flags these; a person decides.
Keeping it on the right side of customers
Confirmation messages can feel like pressure if they are badly written. Keep them short, friendly and useful. Send them during reasonable hours, not at 11 at night. Use the language the customer used when ordering. Do not send more than one reminder. Always make it easy to reach a person.
Customers who get a clear confirmation often trust the store more, because they know their order was received correctly. It also gives them a natural moment to fix a mistake they made at checkout.
What it does not solve
Confirmation reduces returns from mistakes, duplicates and people who were never serious. It does not stop a customer who genuinely confirms and then refuses the parcel at the door because they found it cheaper elsewhere or no longer have the cash. It does not fix slow delivery, which is itself a common reason for refusal. And it does not help if your couriers do not share status updates you can act on.
It also relies on a person handling the flagged cases every day. If the list of unconfirmed orders sits unread, parcels either go out unconfirmed or wait too long, and both hurt.
To begin, pull last month’s returned COD parcels and write down the reason for each, as best you know it. If many are “no answer”, “wrong address” or “customer did not order”, confirmation will help. If most are “refused at door”, look at your delivery times and pricing first. When the numbers point to confirmation, the automation payback calculator can help you check whether it is worth setting up.