From Reactive to Proactive: How Webhooks Deliver Real-Time Parcel Tracking
Discover why modern shippers are leaving the chaos of chasing carrier tracking updates in the past
Shipment tracking has become one of the most broken links in the shipping experience, yet customer expectations for instant updates, proactive communication, and full transparency have never been higher. Ironic, right? In fact, ProShip’s annual industry-wide parcel shipping survey revealed that 57% of shippers rate granular, real-time tracking as “very important,” however, 1 in 4 still struggle with visibility. That’s because many shipping teams are still relying on manual lookups and delayed carrier status updates. And too often, customers are the first to notice when something goes wrong. In a world where instant answers are expected, tracking that lags is a major inconvenience to the customer, but an even bigger liability to the business.
Today’s shippers are done chasing carriers for updates. They need visibility that moves data automatically at the speed of their business and meets customer expectations for transparency. This challenge is amplified in multi‑carrier environments, where every carrier has its own systems, data formats, and update timing, making consistent, real-time tracking even harder to achieve at scale. This is pushing businesses to shift from reactive to proactive tracking where shipment updates are communicated at the moment they happen, directly into their systems.
Instead of asking carriers for the updated status, webhooks power this proactive approach by automatically pushing shipment events to the customer in real-time. Whether it’s a scan at a facility, an out-for-delivery notification, or an exception, immediate visibility is delivered across your operations, reducing service gaps and information delays while triggering the right next step, like rerouting or initiating exception management. As the first tracking capability within ProShip expanding visibility features, the Webhook Tracking End Point establishes the foundation for a more proactive, resilient shipping operation that keeps shippers in control of even the most complex shipping environments.
The Visibility Problem Shippers Still Face
Despite the large investments made in technology, shipment visibility remains a significant pain point for many shippers. However, the issue isn’t the lack of information, but how it’s accessed. Siloed systems and scattered data inhibit the streamlined flow and unified view of crucial information, oftentimes leaving businesses with partial or outdated data. Manual tracking processes eat up valuable time, create service inconsistencies, and produce delayed visibility.
These communication bottlenecks can leave operations and customer service teams in the dark about the status of a shipment, oftentimes until the customer reaches out. This gap increases “where is my order?” (WISMO) inquiries, slows response times, and negatively impact consumer trust. Until tracking data can flow automatically between systems in real-time, true shipment visibility will continue to fall short.
The Cost of Operating Without Real-Time Visibility
While poor tracking capabilities can damage the customer experience, it can also quickly spread downstream, disrupting other departments like operations and IT. Outdated or inconsistent shipment data limits the ability for logistics teams to effectively plan routes, accurately manage inventory, and proactively handle exceptions. Even small delays can add cost and complexity such as missed SLAs and expediting shipments at the last minute.
Customer service teams can also feel the impact through more WISMO inquiries, often lacking the real-time data necessary to respond confidently. Amidst the chaos, IT teams can get pulled away from high-priority tasks to mend fragile integrations and support manual tracking processes. Operating this way may begin as a visibility flaw but can rapidly transform into an organizational hurdle.
However, by leveraging real-time tracking, data flows automatically and instantaneously across teams, providing a single source of truth. This is when visibility becomes more than a customer-centric capability, but an operational advantage that supports scalability, flexibility, and confidence. The difference between these two outcomes boils down to whether tracking is reactive or truly proactive.
Reactive vs. Proactive Tracking: What’s the Difference?
What separates proactive from reactive tracking is both how and when shipment data flows through your organization.
Reactive tracking is executed after shipment information is either requested, or an issue arises, typically relying on teams and systems to ask for the updates. This usually requires manually checking carrier portals, dashboards, or delayed queries. A reactive approach to tracking takes time to search for the needed information, eating away valuable man hours, slowing response times, and increasing customer frustration.
On the flip side, proactive tracking automatically pushes new shipment events as they happen directly into internal systems such as order management systems (OMS), warehouse management systems (WMS), and customer support tools. By eliminating manual intervention and update delays, shipping teams gain real-time status visibility as part of their everyday workflows. Proactive tracking methods enable quicker response times to issues before they escalate, enable transparent communication, improve operational efficiency, and provide greater control over complex shipping environments.
How Webhooks Enable Proactive Tracking
More traditional methods of tracking, like polling, rely on periodically checking for status updates from a carrier’s database rather than receiving them in real time. In modern logistics, this process is considered inefficient, as it often creates information delays, visibility bottlenecks, and poor customer experience. This is especially true in multi-carrier shipping environments where each carrier operates on different timelines and systems.
Streamlined Data Flow Across Your Systems
Webhooks, however, offer a different approach. As the powerhouse behind proactive tracking models, this event-driven method sends real-time shipment updates instantly to the appropriate webhook endpoint. This ensures the most up-to-date information is visible across your organization, such as warehouse, order management, and transportation systems as well as customer-facing platforms.
As a leading provider of enterprise-grade multi-carrier shipping software, ProShip normalizes tracking events and ensures consistency across carriers and shipping systems. By removing manual tasks and time-consuming waiting periods, webhooks enable proactive communication, streamlined decision making, and the real-time visibility required to meet today’s customer expectations.
Built for Scale, Efficiency, and IT Simplicity
Webhooks also reduce the burden on IT teams. Instead of maintaining complex integrations or putting key tasks on hold for manual tracking needs, webhooks provide a standardized endpoint that automates data flow to deliver tracking events as they occur. With a seamless webhook shipping integration, this advanced architecture enables better scalability, minimizes pressure on IT teams, and reduces integration headaches.
The Webhook Tracking Endpoint transforms proactive tracking into a continuous, real-time stream of shipment insights. Additionally, this creates a foundation for future visibility enhancements across the shipping operation.
The Bigger Picture: Visibility in Action
Leveraging real-time tracking delivers a powerful advantage to today’s shippers. However, when incorporated into a wider observability strategy, its true value shines through. Efficient observability is a combination of the past (what happened), present (what’s happening), and future (what happens next). By monitoring shipping data for trends, signals, and outcomes, logistics teams can anticipate challenges and proactively work to mitigate them.
As ProShip introduces webhooks tracking into its visibility capabilities, organizations are empowered with visibility across teams that enable smarter, faster downstream decision making. With fewer surprises, transparent communication, and tighter alignment between operations, IT, and customer service departments, ProShip’s Webhook Tracking End Point supports efficient execution, and data-driven confidence across the entire shipping operation.
Proactive Visibility Starts with ProShip
Many businesses still struggle with tracking capabilities because critical data is fragmented across carriers, systems, and workflows. In an increasingly complex environment where cost control and customer experience go hand-in-hand, proactive parcel visibility is essential to stay competitive and maintain customer trust in multi-carrier shipping environments.
While webhook tracking represents a major leap forward, it’s important to acknowledge that the availability of webhooks is ultimately dependent on carrier readiness. Not all carriers currently support real-time event pushes, largely due to the differences in data standards, how modern a system is, and the effort required to shift high-volume tracking infrastructure to event-based models. However, as more carriers shift towards webhook functionality, ProShip’s integration capabilities ensure shippers can easily adopt new tracking processes without disrupting their current operations.
As an advanced multi-carrier shipping software provider, ProShip helps businesses keep control amidst complexity. The Webhook Tracking End Point replaces reactive workflows with continuous updates that transform shipping data into trusted, real-time visibility. With ProShip’s seamless webhook integration, shippers are empowered to keep both internal teams and their customers informed while having the flexibility to scale operations.
Proactive visibility starts with ProShip. And with greater visibility comes stronger confidence that your business is built to perform, even as demands increase.
Ready to leave chasing updates in the past? Schedule a discovery call with our team of Parcel Shipping Experts to learn how webhook-based tracking can strengthen your shipping operations and open the door to true observability.
