This resource is about one fictional week's delayed orders at an office-supplies company, and the job is to work out what those numbers say and what to do next. You are on the customer-service desk, and the week's data is sitting in front of you. The label on it says what it is, and what it is not — so the first thing to read is that label.
Before you go on — can you remember a reason a customer once gave for an order arriving late?
There is no right answer here and nothing is marked.
The order details leave the sales desk and reach the warehouse that will pick and pack the order.
The item is taken from the warehouse shelves and matched to the order.
The order is loaded and the van leaves the depot.
The order arrives at the customer's delivery address.
This simplified journey shows the company’s work. The chart does not establish who caused any particular delay.
| Cause | Delayed orders |
|---|---|
| Missing handover information | 20 |
| Stock unavailable | 12 |
| Address query | 8 |
Illustrative training data, not research.
This table shows one fictional week at an office-supplies company, not your own company's numbers — and the label says so. Three causes of delay were recorded. Missing handover information means the details of an order did not pass from one part of the company to the next. Stock unavailable means the item was not there to be picked. Address query means something about the delivery address on the order had to be checked.
The three counts — 20, 12 and 8 — add up to 40. In the training week there were 40 delayed orders.
Of the three causes, which would you put at the top of a list to investigate first — and why? Hold your reason.
Missing handover information is the tall bar at twenty of the forty, so that is where to start looking. A cause that stopped half the week's orders is the one to follow first.
Now look at what all three recorded causes have in common — none of them is a customer. A handover between teams, a stock level and the address held on an order are all things on the company's side. The chart's unit is the order, not the customer, so it counts late orders rather than people.
That is the first thing the data tells you: the week's delays sit on the company's side of the desk, and the largest sits in the handover. Fix the handover, not the customer.