Answer ‘When Will It Arrive If I Order Today?’ on WhatsApp with AfterShip
Yes. AeroChat works directly with AfterShip. When a customer asks “if I order today, when will it arrive?”, AeroChat asks AfterShip to predict the delivery date for their address and your shipping service, and replies with the expected date in the chat, before they buy.
This recipe answers the delivery question that decides a sale. It uses AfterShip’s delivery date prediction, which works for orders that do not have a tracking number yet. For orders already on the way, see the delivery date of a shipped order. Part of connecting AfterShip to WhatsApp and AI chat.
What happens today
A customer wants a gift by Saturday and asks before ordering whether it will make it. Someone checks the order cutoff, the carrier and the customer’s city, and guesses. The reply is “usually 3 to 5 working days”, the customer cannot tell whether that covers Saturday, and some leave to buy elsewhere.
The flow that works
- The customer asks when an order would arrive, or whether it would arrive by a date.
- AeroChat asks for their postcode or city if it does not have it.
- It sends AfterShip a prediction request with your warehouse address, the customer’s address, the order time and your usual carrier and service.
- AfterShip returns the expected delivery date, and an earliest and latest date where it gives a range.
- AeroChat answers in plain words, such as “Thursday, so yes, before Saturday”, and offers to take the order.
- If the date is later than they need, it offers your faster shipping option, or hands the conversation to your team.
What it looks like on WhatsApp
Customer: If I order the leather wallet now, will it get to Austin by Saturday? (example)
AeroChat: Yes. If you order before 6pm today, standard shipping is expected to reach Austin on Thursday, and Friday at the latest. Would you like me to set up the order?
Customer: Yes please, in brown.
In AfterShip: nothing changes. AeroChat requested a delivery date prediction for your warehouse address to Austin with your usual carrier.
The recipe
Copy this into AeroChat
When a customer asks when an order would arrive before they buy, follow these steps.
- Ask for their postcode, or their city and state, if we do not have it.
- Ask AfterShip to predict the estimated delivery date from our warehouse address to their address, with today’s order time, our order cutoff of 6pm (example) and our usual carrier and service.
- Reply with the expected date written as a day and date. If AfterShip gives an earliest and a latest date, give both.
- If they asked about a specific date, answer that question directly: yes, no, or it is close.
- If the date is later than they need, offer our express option and its price from our shipping policy.
- If AfterShip cannot predict a date, give our shipping times for their region from the knowledge base and say they are estimates.
Never promise a delivery date. Say it is the expected date. Reply in the customer’s language.
Change the order cutoff, the warehouse and the carrier to yours before you paste it. If you ship from more than one warehouse, name which one serves which region.
What to connect
- AfterShip. Open the API keys page in your AfterShip admin, create an API key and paste it in when AeroChat asks. As of November 2026, AfterShip includes API access on its Premium tracking plan and above. Check that delivery date prediction is part of your AfterShip plan.
- Your store. Shopify, WooCommerce and Wix are built into AeroChat, so AeroChat can take the order once the customer decides.
- Your shipping policy. Add your order cutoff, shipping times by region and express options to the knowledge base.
The prediction is AfterShip’s. AeroChat passes on the date AfterShip returns and does not make up its own.
After you paste the recipe, AeroChat builds the workflow as a draft and shows a checklist: connect AfterShip, add your knowledge base if the recipe uses one, then switch it on. If it built the connection from AfterShip’s public documentation, the checklist asks you to check it once against the current docs.
Using a different system? If it has a public API, it connects to AeroChat the same way: describe what you want, paste in its key, and it runs.
Can’t find your tool? Message us in the chat on this page and we’ll tell you how it connects.
What you still decide
- Your order cutoff time and which carrier and service the prediction uses.
- Whether AeroChat gives the single date, the range, or both.
- What AeroChat offers when the date is too late, such as express shipping.
The result to expect
Customers who need an order by a certain day get a dated answer before they buy, at any hour, and the conversation moves straight to the order.
Measure it with your own numbers: pre-sale delivery questions per month, and how many of those chats ended in an order, before and after.
POS Malaysia delivery is built into AeroChat, for sellers who ship in Malaysia. See how it works.
See also: track parcels across carriers with AfterShip and let customers choose a delivery date in chat.
Works on every chat channel
This workflow runs the same way on WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, the chat on your store and email, with the same AfterShip connection behind it. See what each channel does on the AfterShip integration page.
Answer delivery questions before the sale
Paste the recipe, add your AfterShip API key, and ask your own chat when an order would reach your home address.
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