Post-purchase is the longest part of the customer experience and the least observed, because it happens across systems that belong to other companies and generates no analytics you own.
What to put in the public brief
- The country and roughly when they need to be available
- That the task runs across several days
- That they must be able to receive a parcel
- Whether they keep the item
- That records are needed along the way, not only at the end
Keep the store, any codes and the product private.
What to put in the private instructions
Say exactly how to order
Which product, which shipping option, which code. A worker choosing express when you meant standard has tested a different service.
Ask them to screenshot every email as it arrives
With timestamps. The gap between dispatch notice and tracking becoming live is a common and invisible failure.
Ask about the tracking link specifically
Whether it worked immediately, what it said, and whether it ever went stale. Stale tracking generates more support contacts than late delivery does.
Ask for the parcel condition on arrival
Photograph before opening. Damage, over-packaging and a soaked box are all things you are otherwise told about only by the customers annoyed enough to write in.
Proof worth requiring
Ask for
Screenshots of each email with timestamps, the tracking page at two points, a photograph of the parcel as delivered, and the delivery date against the promised one.
Do not ask for
A return. Returning goods purely to test the process consumes real handling cost, and if it is a competitor's shop you are imposing that cost on a business that did not agree to the experiment.
When this task type is the wrong tool
If you already know deliveries are late, this will confirm it expensively. Use it to find out where in the chain the days are going, which requires the timestamps rather than the outcome.
If the problem is before the confirmation screen, that is a checkout test and it costs a fraction of this.