Hello,
I need to send incomplete order notifications to the customers with 20 minutes delay and in case the status is still incomplete.
Is it the best solution to use cron script which will check order statuses let's say every 10 minutes and will send notifications if condition matches? Or there is another way to do it?
that's probably the most straight forward way to identify incomplete statuses (using order timestamp to ensure you don't barrage them with email every 10 minutes).
But incomplete status is usually the result of a system failure of some kind. What are you planning to tell the customer? Is there anything they can do about the issue? Notifying you of an incomplete status might be more appropriate.
Incomplete is the initial status when there is a payment provider for an order. After response from payment provider, order is usually Open, Processed, Declined or Failed. An incomplete status "should" only occur when the payment provider can't be contacted or never returns from the contact....
As I know incomplete status is not a result of any issue but just standard behavior in case your custiomers pay via Bank gateway or PayPal. I mean first system change order satatus to Incomplete and only after payment confirmation it changes to Processed. If everything is fine, the order is processed within 2-5 min. after Incomplete status. If there is error then Declined status appear (This Status already have instant notification - so that is OK).
So the point is that 10-15% of the customers arrive to Payment Gateway page and just do not proceed (There can be different reasons). That means this orderd will stay as Incomplete forever unless the client finally comes back and continues to payment.
So the idea is to automate the reminder for these orders. According to the practice 15 - 20 min. is ok timeframe to remind that customer did not pay for the order and we can assist him in case of doubts or technical issues. So if order is incomplete for 15 min and no reminder was already sent out, then notification comes (of course only once).
From experience 90% clients with incomplete orders whom we sent reminders complete the purchase or contact us for help.
Abandonded cart reminder is not ok since the majority of that people are just testing and never become real customers
Yes, we are in agreement. You have an incomplete order because the payment method you are using has not returned a payment status. And yes, your 15-20 time period seems right. And yes, having a script driven from a cron job would be the easiest to implement.
Note that different payment methods that are off-site work differently. Some happen BEFORE the order creation and hence don't cause incomplete orders but instead appear as abandoned carts. Others are delayed activities that redirect the client AFTER the order is placed to complete the payment step. The latter cause relatively high conversion issues because of exactly what you describe. They place the order and fail to make payment (while inventory is locked into their order).
If you do not find ready to use solution, our team will be glad to create a modification according to your needs. Feel free to contact us to get a free quote
Hi
I know its been a long time but this problem is still buging many store owners.
So we created this as addon
You can buy it for 22€. in our store https://www.cscart.biz/notification-of-incomplete-orders.html
Fotis
