Early Arrivals: How to Ensure Customers Don’t Show Up Too Soon for BOPIS Orders

Having a hard time with customers placing in-store pickup orders and then arriving before the order is actually ready? We know — it’s disruptive.

If your team hasn’t sent the “It’s ready” email, that means the order hasn’t been pulled and packed yet. An early arrival puts immediate strain on store staff, who feel pressured to step away from other customers to handle an order that isn’t ready.

At that point, the item could still be getting located, transferred from another store, or packed in the back. In other words, you may not even be able to hand off the order. That leaves your team feeling like they’re disappointing the customer — even though nothing went wrong.

Early arrivals are a common BOPIS pain point

We know a thing or two about early arrivals. We manage one of the top same-day delivery apps on Shopify, and our partners who offer BOPIS regularly vent about this challenge:

• Customers arrive early despite confirmation emails telling them to wait
• Customers show up at the wrong store location
• Some even send Uber drivers on their behalf, adding another layer of confusion

One Getcho partner has gone so far as to turn BOPIS off entirely during busy periods just to give store teams more breathing room.

Think about what that means: the disruption is so significant that this store is willing to forgo an entire segment of customers — and the revenue that comes with them — simply because it’s easier.

So what can you do?

If you’re reading this, you’re likely already fulfilling orders as fast as you can. Speed alone isn’t the issue. The real opportunity is controlling the process flow.

Control the process by offering courier delivery

In general, BOPIS customers are looking for the fastest possible way to get an order in their hands. That naturally selects for urgency. They’re even willing to handle part of the fulfillment themselves by driving to the store.

That’s the key tradeoff: when customers do part of the delivery, your store gives up some control over timing and execution.

The antidote is simple — offer the fastest possible delivery option and keep ownership of the process. In practice, that means offering courier delivery alongside BOPIS.

Courier delivery (also known as same-day or local delivery) is operationally very similar to BOPIS. The store receives the order, pulls and packs it, and marks it ready. The difference is that the Getcho driver network subscribes to “order ready” updates instead of the customer — which guarantees that no one shows up early.

Getcho Courier Delivery also supports pickups from any store location, making it more resilient to inventory imbalances across stores.

More context = fewer early arrivals

Back to BOPIS specifically: we’ve found that providing clearer order context goes a long way toward preventing early arrivals.

If a customer only sees “Your order is not ready yet,” they may assume it just needs to be pulled from a shelf. I can do that myself, they think.

But if they see messages like “Your cart is being consolidated” or “Your order is being transferred to the store,” they’re far more likely to understand two things:

1. Your team is actively working on it, and
2. There’s a more complex process happening behind the scenes.

That added transparency builds patience — and keeps customers from showing up before you’re ready.