COD order confirmation in Morocco: a working method

In Morocco, an online order is not a sale. It is a promise the customer may or may not keep when the courier rings the bell. Between the click and the door they can change their mind, stop answering, have given an incomplete address or never have meant to order at all. Confirmation is the step that turns that promise into a parcel with a real chance of being paid for. This guide sets out a complete method: why to confirm, when to call, what to check, how to choose between the phone and WhatsApp, what to do with customers who cannot be reached, what the law says and what to measure.

Why every COD order needs confirming

Cash on delivery still dominates Moroccan e-commerce. According to ANRT data reported by Hespress, it is used by more than eight buyers in ten, and the national ICT survey quoted by Le Matin finds that more than 66% of orders are still paid in cash at the door. The market keeps growing: 24.9% of Moroccans bought online in 2024. But every new buyer who pays on delivery is also a buyer who can refuse the parcel and lose nothing.

That refusal has a price for the seller. An expert interviewed by Le Matin puts refusals at delivery between 20 and 40% and lists what follows: stock tied up, logistics costs doubled, cash flow blocked. A refused parcel pays for the outbound trip, often for the return, and keeps the product off the shelf for days. An order cancelled on the phone costs only the minute of the call.

Confirmation therefore does three jobs: it stops orders that will not be paid before they ship, it corrects the details that would make a genuine delivery fail, and it reminds the customer what they bought and how much they will pay. To see what one point of refusals really costs you, use the COD calculator.

The right time to call

An order goes cold quickly. A customer who has just ordered remembers the product, the ad and why they wanted it; the next day they may have seen a lower price elsewhere or forgotten that they clicked at all. The most useful rule is simple: confirm while the intent is still there, and in any case before the parcel is packed.

• Work the queue in order of arrival, newest first when it overflows: a fresh order confirms more easily than yesterday’s.
• Match the team’s hours to when orders come in. If your ads run in the evening, a team that only works mornings will be confirming orders that have already gone cold.
• Avoid the hours when nobody answers: Friday prayer, mealtimes, late at night. A call missed at the wrong moment is an attempt wasted.
• Prepare nothing before confirmation. A parcel packed too early pushes the warehouse to ship it even when the customer is hesitating.

During Ramadan the rhythm changes completely: orders and answers move to the evening. Shift your confirmation hours accordingly instead of piling up unanswered attempts in the afternoon.

What the confirmation call must check

A confirmation call is not a formality where the agent asks “do you confirm?”. It is a check of everything that can make the delivery fail. A good script covers, in this order:

1. Identity: is the person on the line the one who ordered? An order placed for a relative should say so, with the name and number of the person who will receive the parcel.
2. The exact product: model, size, colour, quantity. This is the moment to fix a wrong shoe size, not at the door.
3. The total price, delivery included, said out loud. Many refusals come from a customer surprised by the amount the courier asks for.
4. The full address: city, neighbourhood, street, number, and a landmark (a mosque, a school, a well-known shop). In many neighbourhoods the landmark is what lets the courier find the door.
5. The delivery window: the time the carrier gives for that city, and when the customer will be reachable and at home.
6. A second number if the customer has one. It often saves a delivery when the first stops answering.

End with a one-sentence summary: the product, the price, the city and the timing. A customer who hears that summary and says “yes” makes a clearer commitment than one who only said “fine” at the start of the call. If the customer is unsure about the size or the model, offer to correct the order rather than cancel it: a corrected order is still a sale.

Phone or WhatsApp

The phone remains the most direct tool: a voice reassures, and the agent can hear hesitation and answer an objection. Mobile is everywhere: DataReportal counts 57.1 million mobile connections, equal to 148 percent of the population, in late 2025, and according to Le Matin more than 75% of online orders now come from mobile. The customer who ordered on their phone has that same phone in hand when you call.

WhatsApp complements the call more than it replaces it. It leaves a written record of the product, the price and the address, and the customer can answer when they are free. The WhatsApp Business app has tools made for this work:

• quick replies, shortcuts for messages you send often, such as the order summary or the request for a landmark;
• labels, to organise and filter conversations: “to confirm”, “confirmed”, “unreachable”;
• away messages, which answer automatically outside working hours and say when the team will be back.

At larger volumes, the WhatsApp Business platform sorts messages into categories. Utility messages are triggered by a person’s action, such as placing an order, and are not promotional: that is the category of a confirmation message. WhatsApp changed its pricing on 1 October 2026: Meta bills service messages again, with an allowance of 1,000 free service messages per business number each month. When a customer writes to you from a click-to-WhatsApp ad, the free entry-point window can stay open for up to seven days, and messages sent in it are not billed. Not all of Meta’s public pages have caught up: check the developer documentation and the rates for your market before you build a flow around these rules.

In practice many teams use both: a WhatsApp message with the summary right after the order, then a call for customers who do not reply or whose address is still unclear. See also our page on WhatsApp confirmation.

Unreachable customers, hesitant customers and fake orders

Some customers will not pick up the first call. That is not a refusal, and you need a clear rule so that you neither give up on them too early nor chase them forever:

• Several attempts at different times: one in the morning, one in the afternoon, one in the evening, rather than three calls in ten minutes.
• A message between calls: a short WhatsApp that names the product and offers to answer in writing.
• A limit set in advance: past a number of attempts and a delay that you choose, the order is cancelled and the stock released.
• One status per situation: “unreachable”, “call back later”, “wrong number”, “cancelled by customer”. Mixing these cases makes it impossible to see where the losses come from.

A hesitant customer deserves a real conversation: ask what is holding them back. Price, timing, doubts about size or quality each have their own answer. Doubt about timing is settled by stating the date clearly; doubt about size, by correcting the order. Pushing for a “yes” achieves nothing: a forced yes often becomes a refusal at the door.

Fake orders, finally, show simple signs: an invalid or incomplete number, a made-up name, an impossible address, several identical orders from the same number within minutes, a person who says they ordered nothing. Record these separately: they tell you more about the quality of your ad campaigns than about your confirmation team.

What the law says

Distance selling is governed by law 31-08 on consumer protection, which has a chapter on contracts concluded at a distance and on the right of withdrawal. Its article 38 lists the cases where that right cannot be exercised, for example services that began with the consumer’s agreement before the seven-day period ended. A bill tabled in 2025 sought to extend the right to defective products; check the text in force before you write your terms of sale. The confirmation call is the right moment to remind the customer what they are buying and on what terms.

Customer data falls under law 09-08 on personal data protection, enforced by the CNDP. Calling a customer to confirm the order they have just placed is part of carrying out that order. Sending them promotions afterwards is something else: the CNDP sheet on direct marketing requires the recipient’s prior consent and a declaration of the processing, with an exception for similar products when the contact details were collected at an earlier sale. In every case, anyone may object free of charge to receiving marketing messages, and the sender must give them an easy way to do so. Keep confirmation and marketing apart: a confirmation call that turns into a hard sell damages trust as much as compliance.

The numbers to track

A confirmation team is run on a handful of indicators, provided they are always calculated the same way:

• Confirmation rate: confirmed orders divided by orders received over the same period. On its own it misleads: a team can inflate it by confirming customers who are hesitating.
• Delivery rate of confirmed orders: parcels delivered and paid for divided by confirmed orders. This is the one that tells you whether confirmation is done properly.
• Handling time between the order and the first call.
• Cancellations by reason: unreachable, wrong number, price refused, fake order.

Break these down by agent, by product and by ad source. An agent whose confirmed orders are often refused needs a different script; a product whose customers hesitate over size needs a better size guide; a campaign that brings mostly fake orders should be stopped, whatever its cost per order. To follow what comes back, see our page on returns.

Running confirmation with Cashod

Cashod brings the steps of this method into one tool. It includes a call center where agents confirm COD orders by phone. It can also confirm orders over WhatsApp, including with an AI agent: see automatic confirmation. One Cashod account can manage several stores, so the confirmation team does not have to be split across several tools. Cashod also tracks returned parcels, and each carrier’s delivery and return fees are set per city, so every refusal can be tied to what it really cost.

Whatever the tool, the method stays the same: call quickly, check everything that can make a delivery fail, leave a written record, set a rule for unreachable customers, respect customer data, and measure deliveries rather than confirmations alone.