Somewhere between the Optibac Probiotics warehouse near Andover and a customer’s front door, there used to be a black hole. Once a parcel left dispatch, Wren Laboratories had almost as little visibility into it as the customer waiting on the other end.
Wren Laboratories is the company behind Optibac Probiotics, a range of specialist supplements sold direct-to-consumer, through retail, and across international distribution. Its customers come looking for something specific—support for gut health, women’s health, pregnancy, travel or immunity. A growing number of them are on repeat, ordering via subscription every month. That mix brings its own delivery complexity: different pack sizes and weights across the range, rising subscription volume, seasonal promotional spikes, and a blend of UK and international orders.
For a long time, once a parcel left the warehouse, that was where the visibility ended—for Wren Laboratories and its customers alike.
“The main issue was that customers had no visibility into their parcel once it was dispatched, so they were constantly calling or emailing to ask where it was,” said Jess Phillips, Digital Marketing Manager at Wren Laboratories.
Metapack’s Delivery Tracker became the direct answer to that gap. Rather than hand customers over to a carrier’s own tracking page, Wren Laboratories built a branded tracking experience of its own—one that let customers check on their order without ever needing to pick up the phone or send an email.
The effect showed up almost immediately in customer service volume: a reduction of roughly 80% in “where is my order” (WISMO) contacts.
“Customers now get proactive visibility into where their order is, rather than having to chase us for updates,” Phillips explained.
For Phillips, that shift goes beyond logistics.
“Delivery Tracker turned a gap in the post-purchase experience into a moment where we can keep the Optibac brand front and centre rather than handing that off entirely to the carrier.”
Similarly, checkout carried its own version of the same problem. Customers were ordering everything from a single pack to a bundle suitable for all the family, shipped across the UK and internationally. No single carrier could handle all of it. So Wren Laboratories needed a way to offer real choice at checkout without overwhelming customers with options that didn’t apply to them.
“We wanted to give customers different shipping options depending on shipping speed and location, which meant offering different carriers depending on a number of factors,” Phillips said. “Metapack let us present those options clearly, and only show the ones that were actually valid for that order.”
That filtering happens through Metapack’s Delivery Options, surfacing only the carriers and speeds genuinely valid for each order.
The last piece was infrastructure. When Wren Laboratories wanted to connect Metapack to BigCommerce, the platform it runs on, Metapack’s webhooks made it possible. The team’s dev agency used them to build a custom connector between the two systems.
“Our dev agency built a custom connector between the two using the available webhooks. This lets us pull shipping options and costs directly into checkout, and provide tracking links in the account area and in dispatch emails,” Phillips added.
Now, that connector does double duty. The branded tracking experience doesn’t stop at a single page. It follows the order everywhere the customer might look for it.
“Metapack made it straightforward to surface only the delivery options genuinely valid for a customer’s order and location, and to build tracking visibility into account and dispatch communications without a native platform integration.”
Step back from the day-to-day mechanics, and the value comes down to one thing for Phillips:
“Metapack gives us the carrier flexibility and delivery visibility we need to run our ecommerce business without the overhead of managing every carrier integration ourselves, while giving our customers a much better post-purchase experience.”
Today, the black hole between warehouse and doorstep is gone. What’s left is a brand customers still recognise, all the way to their door.
Ready to turn your own dispatch process into a branded moment instead of a blind spot? Talk to the Metapack team.
reduction in ""where is my order" (WISMO) contacts
A branded, self-serve tracking experience that keeps the Optibac brand present after checkout instead of handing customers to the carrier
Checkout delivery options filtered to only what's valid for each order's speed and location
