Ecommerce delivery tracker with exception alerts and customer updates

I'm saying this while actively dealing with the fallout so bear with me. A few months back I had a product I was testing, and it started performing really well, and at that point, some new fulfillment partners showed up online, with one in particular promising really good prices, so I thought what the hell and went with them, because if it turns out to be legit, I could save a LOT if I switch all my other products to them. At first it seemed fine, but now just a month later It's genuinely one of the worst decisions I ever made Tracking numbers aren't updating, customers are messaging me daily asking where their orders are, and half the time I don't even know myself. I went to check what was going on and it's soooo bad. Some tracking wasn't uploaded until days after the order shipped, some just stopped updating entirely, a couple haven't moved in almost two weeks, so now customers think I'm scamming them. I've got people posting about it, demanding refunds, questioning if my store is even legit and I can only blame myself. The money I saved switching agents is nothing compared to what this is costing me in refunds, chargebacks, the brain cells wasted on dealing with their terrible communication and of course reputation damage. TL;DR If it's too good to be true, it probably is, so save yourself the headache and if you're going to invest in anything, I suggest you invest in your fulfillment partners.

We are an EU based ecommerce brand that has expanded into selling to the UAE. Since we started doing this a little over a month ago we have been hit with non-stop issues. From customers providing wrong addresses, to delivery attempts failing, lost packages where tracking just stops and customs holding onto packages for weeks on end with no insight into why. The rate of "failure" per 100 packages is so high that we have paused selling to an otherwise good market. We cannot afford the replacement cost, poor reviews and constant customer service demands that come from this. Does anyone else have experience with this market? If you have found a way to solve or at least mitigate some of the issues, I'd be interested in hearing! Thanks!

Operations lead here. My typical day looks like this. Wake up, check shopify for orders that need attention. Open gorgias, answer 30 emails about tracking. Check instagram dms, answer 15 more tracking questions. Update spreadsheet with fulfillment notes. Send tracking numbers to customers who can't find them. Repeat every few hours. I'm spending at minimum 3 hours daily just on order tracking communication. And this is on top of actually managing fulfillment, dealing with supplier issues, handling inventory, and everything else operations involves. The growth is great but the manual workload is not sustainable. Here's what I've tried. Set up automated emails with tracking from shopify, customers still ask. Created an faq page with shipping info, nobody reads it. Made tracking more prominent in order confirmation, doesn't matter. People want personal confirmation that their specific order is on the way. Started using alhena recently which has helped because it can pull order data and respond automatically but I'm still handling edge cases and customer anxiety. The question is how do you scale operations without just adding more hours to your day? Because I'm already working 60 hour weeks and don't have more to give. Anyone found actual solutions to this that work long term?