The audit isn’t about how fast you ship. It’s about whether the checkout promise matches what arrives, whether you hear about the gap before the customer does, and whether anyone outside support feels it when it breaks.

Open your order export, shipping platform, help desk and your checkout on a phone. Score each check 0 to 2: 0 if it failed or nobody can answer it, 1 if partly true, 2 if clean.

A promise nobody measures is a guess you made on the customer’s behalf.

The twelve checks

1. You know your on-time rate against the date you showed · 4 minLook at: Last month’s delivered orders, with the delivery date the checkout showed and the date the carrier scanned delivery.
   Good: Someone can give the share delivered by the promised date, split by carrier and shipping method, today.
   Cost if wrong: You track speed and miss the broken promises customers remember.
   Read next: An Accurate Date Beats a Fast One
2. One weighted failure number · 4 minLook at: Your weekly operations report.
   Good: Late, very late, wrong, damaged, missing and unannounced split orders are counted in one index, weighted by how much each hurts, and reported per 1,000 orders.
   Cost if wrong: The team improves on-time rate while damage and wrong items grow unseen.
   Read next: One Number for Every Failure
3. Repurchase is measured after each failure type · 5 minLook at: Whether anyone has compared repeat rates of customers whose first order failed and didn’t.
   Good: A table exists, by failure type, with a matched comparison group, refreshed each quarter.
   Cost if wrong: Unpriced failures lose every budget argument to acquisition.
   Read next: What a Broken Promise Costs
4. The checkout date comes from data, not a template · 3 minLook at: Your product page and checkout on a phone, for an address near your warehouse and one far away.
   Good: The date changes with address and cutoff time, set from your own transit data.
   Cost if wrong: A fixed “3 to 5 business days” is broken for every far-away customer, every week.
   Read next: An Accurate Date Beats a Fast One
5. Delay notices go out before the customer asks · 3 minLook at: The last time a shipment stalled or an item went out of stock after purchase.
   Good: An automatic message went out the day the delay was known, with a new date and a choice.
   Cost if wrong: The customer finds out by waiting, then contacts you, angrier.
   Read next: Bad News First
6. Your delay process meets the FTC shipping rule · 4 minLook at: Your stated ship times, your backorder and preorder flow, and your refund timing.
   Good: You ship within the time stated or 30 days; when you can’t, the customer gets a revised date and the option to cancel for a prompt refund.
   Cost if wrong: Civil penalties per violation, and a pattern regulators find easy to prove.
   Read next: Bad News First
7. The tracking page says something useful · 3 minLook at: The tracking link from your last shipping email, opened on a phone.
   Good: It shows your brand, the expected date, each step so far in plain words, and how to get help.
   Cost if wrong: “Label created” for three days reads as nothing happening, and becomes a contact.
   Read next: Show the Work
8. Contacts per order, by reason, every week · 4 minLook at: Your help desk’s reporting.
   Good: Every ticket, chat and call has one primary reason code, and contacts per order is reported weekly for each reason.
   Cost if wrong: You staff up for volume instead of removing its causes.
   Read next: Contacts per Order
9. Each reason has an owner outside support · 3 minLook at: Your top five contact reasons.
   Good: Each has a named owner in the team that causes it, with a target and a review date.
   Cost if wrong: Support absorbs the cost of other teams’ decisions forever.
   Read next: Every Reason Has an Owner
10. Agents have a recovery grid and a budget · 3 minLook at: What an agent can offer without asking a manager.
    Good: A written grid says what each failure gets, and each agent has a monthly budget to spend beyond it.
    Cost if wrong: Recovery depends on who picks up and how hard the customer pushes.
    Read next: The Recovery Grid
11. Apologies carry a remedy, and repeat failures are flagged · 3 minLook at: Your apology templates and your customer records.
    Good: Every apology comes with a fix or a credit, and an agent can see when this customer was last failed.
    Cost if wrong: Words alone do little, and the same apology twice does harm.
    Read next: How to Apologize
12. Someone outside support is paid on the promise · 2 minLook at: Bonus and review criteria for operations, fulfillment and ecommerce.
    Good: At least one delivery or failure number sits in their goals, and ideally a shared one for everybody.
    Cost if wrong: The people who can prevent failures are paid for speed and cost alone.
    Read next: Paying for the Promise

Score as you go; your band appears when all twelve are in.

Read your score

If you use a 3PL, checks 1, 2 and 4 depend on data they hold. Put it in the contract: order-level ship scans, delivery scans and error codes, daily.