Playbook, online store
The marketing list and the sales ledger are not the same data
This arrives in a shop's chat window in two flavours that look identical and are not. One is somebody who is tired of the emails. The other is a formal request with a deadline attached to it. Answering the first is easy and answering the second is not the assistant's job at all, and the reply has to open the door for one without quietly mishandling the other.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for data deletion requests holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- A shop holds this in at least three unrelated places, a marketing list, a customer account, and the sales records it is obliged to retain for tax and for warranty purposes, and only the first of those simply disappears on request.
- Most people who send this want the emails to stop, so answering the narrow version first resolves the bulk of the volume without anybody touching a record or starting a clock.
- Guest checkout means an email address can sit against a run of orders with no account attached to it at all, so there is frequently nothing to log into and delete even though there is plainly data.
- A formal request carries a statutory response deadline in many markets, and a message in a chat window is not a response, so the only safe handling puts it in front of a person on the day it arrives rather than after the weekend.
How it arrives
- delete my account
- remove my email from your list
- what data do you hold on me
- can you delete my order history
- how do i unsubscribe from your emails
- i want a copy of my data
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Your privacy notice, organised by purpose rather than by system | What is held for marketing, what for the account, what for fulfilling and proving a sale. Customers ask about their data as one thing and a shop holds it as three, and a notice arranged by system cannot answer the question as it is asked. |
|---|---|
| Where the unsubscribe actually is | The link in the footer, any preference centre, and whether unsubscribing from one list unsubscribes from all of them. Also whether transactional mail continues afterwards, because somebody who unsubscribes and then receives a dispatch email believes they have been ignored. |
| What survives an account closure, and for how long | The order records kept for tax, the records kept for warranty and returns, and the retention period on each. Stated as an obligation rather than a preference, because that is the honest framing and it is also the one that ends the argument. |
| The address a formal request has to reach, and the clock on it | One nominated destination, who monitors it, and the response deadline you work to. The assistant needs somewhere specific to send these, and a general contact form that nobody reads until Monday is how a deadline gets missed. |
The reply
There are two different things behind this and it is worth separating them. If it is the emails, the unsubscribe link at the foot of any marketing message removes you from the list, and order and delivery emails carry on separately because they relate to purchases rather than to marketing [1]. If you want the account and the data removed, that is a formal request and I am not the right route for it: I cannot delete anything, and it needs to go to a person on the day you send it. Worth knowing before you do: closing an account does not remove the sales records we are required to keep for tax and for returns and warranty purposes, and those have their own retention period [2]. Leave your name and the email address the data sits under and I will pass it straight on.
It splits the two versions in the first sentence, because handling them as one either over-escalates an unsubscribe or under-handles a statutory request. The transactional email carve-out is stated in advance so the next dispatch email does not read as defiance. The retained records are explained before the request is made rather than after it is refused, which is the difference between a limitation and a broken promise.
Where it stops
The trigger. Any request to delete, export, correct or restrict data, any question about what is held, and anything phrased as a formal request or naming a right.
I cannot delete or retrieve data, and this needs a person today rather than whenever I am next read. Leave your name and the email address the data sits under, and say what you are asking for, and it goes straight to the team who handle these.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never confirm that an account, an address or a record has been deleted, because the assistant writes nowhere and the person will believe the matter is closed.
- Never say the shop holds no data on somebody, since a guest checkout leaves order records under an email address with no account attached to it.
- Never treat an unsubscribe as though it satisfied a deletion request, which is the most common way one of these quietly goes unanswered past its deadline.
- Never quote a right, a deadline or a retention period that the published privacy notice does not state, since this is the one category where an invented detail is repeated back with the law attached.
Questions
- Can it delete an account if we ask it to?
- No. It has no write access to anything, in this product or anywhere else, so deletion, export and correction are all outside it in every configuration. Its whole contribution here is speed and accurate routing, which for a request with a deadline is worth more than it sounds.
- Is it risky letting an assistant near this at all?
- The risk is in the opposite direction. These requests currently land in the same inbox as everything else and get read in order. Something that recognises one on arrival and puts it in front of a person the same day makes the deadline more likely to be met, not less.
- How much can honestly be deflected?
- The unsubscribes, which are most of them by volume. Pointing at the link, and saying that order emails continue for a different reason, closes those completely. Everything with a right named in it should reach a person untouched.
Keep reading
- Everything for a online storeDelivery cut-offs, the returns window and restock questions get asked before purchase. The one thing an assistant cannot do is find an order.
- Handling data deletion requests in generalA deletion request is a request with a clock on it, not a question. The characteristic failure is silence, so it always has to reach a person.
- The size chart is a photograph and the photograph has no wordsSize charts, spec tables and delivery grids are usually pictures. A screen reader gets nothing from them, and neither does an assistant.
- They have read the policy already. Quoting it back is the wrong moveBy the time it is a complaint it is the third contact, the policy has been read, and what is wanted is a name and a decision.
- There is no such thing as a size on a general storeOne store, a dozen suppliers, a dozen charts that disagree. What size means changes by aisle, and the chart is usually a picture.
Try it on your own material
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