“Where is
my parcel?”
Answered before they ask.
The single most repeated question in New Zealand logistics. Your tracking page today is a gateway — it takes the enquiry and routes it. This is a concept for the ninety seconds before someone gives up on tracking and picks up the phone.
“A tracking number that says “in transit” answers none of the three things the customer actually wants to know.”
What we found reading nzpost.co.nzThe parcel that has not moved since Thursday
Someone refreshes a tracking page for the fourth time. The status has not changed. They do not know whether that is normal, whether it is lost, whether anyone is looking, or whether they should buy another one. So they ring you — and the person who answers has to start from nothing.
We read your own tracking page. It offers a parcel enquiry and a link to FAQs, and it does not state a delivery timeframe, when a parcel is considered lost, how an investigation works, or what compensation applies.
What happens now
A status code, a link to an enquiry form, and a call that begins with “can I take your tracking number”.
What it costs
Every unanswered tracking check becomes a contact. The cheapest contact is the one the tracking page prevented.
What the concept does
Turns the status into an answer, in the wait, and hands the hard ones to a person with the file already open.
One tracking number. Four honest answers.
The same “in transit” status means four different things. Choose a situation and see what the customer could be told instead of a status code.
A template sends the same thing to everyone and changes the name. What matters here is the case that should get something different — or nothing at all.
The rules beside each draft are placeholders. A pilot replaces them with your actual policies. We have not seen those, and this concept does not guess at them.
What it refuses to say
Most of the harm in delivery communications comes from confident answers. These checks exist to stop them.
Drafts are held against Fair Trading Act 1986, Consumer Guarantees Act 1993, and the Privacy Act 2020.
Press run to see what it catches — and what it refuses to produce at all.
The parcels that need a person today
Illustrative and fictional. No production access is requested by this concept.
| Situation | Volume | Prepared | Waiting on | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Running normally | — | Reassurance, no action needed | Nobody — closes itself | Answered |
| No scan for 3+ days | — | Proactive note, site asked to look | Depot response | Looking |
| Delivery attempted, card left | — | Collection point, ID needed, redirect offered | Nobody — closes itself | Answered |
| Arrived damaged | — | File assembled for a claims decision | A person | Held — decision |
| Address looks wrong | — | Draft held | Customer confirmation | Awaiting reply |
| Returned to sender | — | Explanation plus options | Sender contact | Awaiting approval |
Volumes are deliberately blank. This concept has no NZ Post data and does not estimate parcel numbers.
Every draft carries its own working.
Not a log somebody has to go and find. The provenance travels with the work — what it read, which rules it held, who must approve it, and what it refused to do.
This matters most on the day someone asks why it said what it said.
- Artefact
- Tracking answer — no scan for three days
- Read
- Scan history (placeholder) · network expectations (placeholder) · published delivery information from nzpost.co.nz
- Rules held
- Fair Trading Act 1986 · Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 · Privacy Act 2020
- Refused
- No delivery date, compensation amount, hold period or claim outcome was stated — none of these were published on the pages we read.
- Approver
- A named person. Unsent until then.
- Prepared
- —
- Reference
- —
What this will never do
It does not send. It prepares, and a named person sends. It does not publish to any channel, commit spend, move money, or make a decision that belongs to a person. It does not pretend to be a person — every draft says it was prepared by a machine and approved by a human.
No production access is requested by this concept.
Scope
One parcel situation — the parcel that has stopped moving. Six weeks. Not claims, not the contact centre, not the app.
Access
Your published delivery information and the status codes themselves. No customer records. No addresses. No parcel contents.
Scorecard
Tracking checks that did not become a phone call. Answers a person agreed with. Proactive notes sent before the customer chased. One CX lead’s honest answer to “is this better than the status code?”
Fail any line of the scorecard and we change the design or stop.
Pick a verb.
Not “book a demo”. Any of these is a real next step, and the third is a perfectly good answer.
What is the one constraint we have got wrong?
Every concept is built from the outside. There is always something about how NZ Post actually runs that we could not see. One line is enough.
Opens your mail app to assembl@assembl.co.nz. Nothing is collected by this page.