Out of Stock, Not Out of Touch

Unfulfilled products are a familiar problem in wholesale.

A customer places an order through a B2B ordering platform. The order reaches the warehouse. The team starts picking it. Then it becomes clear that one or more products cannot be supplied.

That might be because the customer ordered a large quantity. It might be because stock has moved quickly. Or it might simply be that a line was technically orderable, but not actually available when the order was picked.

The real challenge is what happens next

In the worst cases, the customer only finds out when the delivery arrives and the product is missing. That creates frustration, avoidable calls and a poor customer experience.

Many wholesalers try to manage this manually. A report comes out of the ERP showing which customers have missing lines, then the team decides who to call. But phone calls are expensive and time-consuming. A human-handled customer service call is often estimated at around £5.50 to £6.50, and even a short call can take several minutes once admin and repeat attempts are included.

For a large wholesaler dealing with hundreds of affected customers, that quickly becomes impossible to manage consistently.

This is where WhatsApp can help

With ProConnect connected to the ERP, an automated WhatsApp message can be triggered when a product cannot be fulfilled. The customer can be told early, at scale and at a fraction of the cost of a phone call.

The message might simply explain which products are unavailable. Or, if substitute products are already mapped in the ERP, it could offer an alternative and ask the customer to confirm the switch.

That turns a painful manual process into a faster, cheaper and more customer-friendly workflow.

Phone calls will always have a place, especially for complex or high-value conversations. But they do not need to be the default for every missing line on every order.

Unfulfilled products may always be part of wholesale. Poor communication does not have to be.