When a delivery is late, most people look at the end of the chain.

They blame the truck, the driver, or the warehouse team. But that’s rarely where the problem began. In manufacturing and logistics, delays often trace back to gaps in communication, broken processes, or decisions made upstream that didn’t account for what was happening on the ground.

The result is the same. A shipment doesn’t arrive when expected. A line goes down. A customer cancels a PO. The cost isn’t just measured in late fees. It shows up in missed revenue, lost confidence, and relationships that take months to rebuild.

To fix that, you have to treat support as part of the supply chain.

Fulfillment starts long before the dock door

Orders don’t just show up. They’re created, confirmed, scheduled, tracked, and updated—often across multiple systems and stakeholders. When something breaks in that process, it creates friction. When no one is accountable for resolving that friction quickly, the delay spreads.

At Nectar, we’ve worked with manufacturers and logistics providers who thought they had fulfillment under control. SLAs were tight. Inventory was stocked. But tickets sat unanswered. Purchase orders were missing a signature. A portal had outdated carrier data.

These weren’t warehouse issues. They were support failures.

The invisible cost of unanswered tickets

A missed shipment doesn’t always come from a missed truck. Sometimes it comes from a missed alert. Or a question that went ignored. Or a customer email that got flagged for review but never followed up.

Support teams sit at the intersection of systems, tools, and people. If they don’t have the access, training, or authority to respond in real time, the issue escalates silently. By the time someone in operations notices, it’s already too late.

This is where most logistics operations fall short. They staff support to move tickets, not to solve problems. And they pay for it in delays they could have prevented.

Support is not a side function. It’s a supply chain control point.

That means it needs to be staffed, structured, and trained with the same urgency you apply to the floor.

At Nectar, we build integrated support pods that operate alongside logistics and operations teams. They:

• Monitor open orders, flags, and exceptions in real time

• Own follow-ups across systems and vendors

• Escalate proactively before issues impact delivery

• Speak the language of supply chain, not just customer service

This structure creates visibility and accountability across your process, not just after it breaks.

The faster you respond, the fewer shipments go off track

Late shipments happen. But how you respond determines the cost.

If your support team catches the issue before the customer has to ask, you can reroute, reschedule, or replace. If they miss it, you’re not just late—you’re unreliable.

That’s what customers remember. Not the cause of the delay, but how it was handled. And whether they felt like your team took ownership.