Orders by WhatsApp and email: the hidden costs for a dental supplier
In many dental businesses, orders still arrive from everywhere: a phone call, an email with a list, a WhatsApp photo of a product to reorder, a voice message left in the evening. It works, because it is convenient for the customer. But it has a cost that hardly anyone calculates.
The first cost is time. Every order has to be read or listened to, interpreted and typed into the management system. If a code or quantity is missing, a second call is needed. If the customer is new, you have to ask for their invoicing details.
Try doing the maths with your own figures. If each order takes ten minutes on average between reading, clarifying and typing, one hundred orders a month come to more than sixteen hours: two working days every month, spent just on receiving orders.
The second cost is errors. A misread code, a misunderstood quantity, a similar product mixed up with another. Each error becomes a return, an extra shipment and a less satisfied customer.
The third cost is traceability. Orders scattered across phone, email and chat are hard to find again. When the customer asks how an order is progressing, you have to piece the story back together.
The fourth is payment. An order received by message becomes an invoice to issue and a payment to wait for, and sometimes to chase.
It is not about getting rid of the phone, which remains valuable for long-standing customers and special requests. It is about offering customers a way to order that arrives complete.
On a dental marketplace like Oralzon, the order arrives with the exact product code, the quantity, the shipping address and the invoicing details, with the VAT number already checked. It is already paid, the courier label is generated from the dashboard, and the customer follows the shipment on their own.
Many customers, once they have tried it, prefer to order this way: they can do it whenever they like, without waiting for someone to answer.
If you want to see how a complete order arrives in the dashboard, you can explore the vendor dashboard in a demo store, without signing up.
In short: orders by phone, email and WhatsApp cost time, errors, traceability and payments to follow up, at ten minutes per order one hundred orders a month come to more than sixteen hours, the phone remains useful for long-standing customers, and a dental marketplace brings orders that arrive complete, paid and ready to ship.