Playbook, online store
The five things a returns answer has to contain
Most returns questions on a shop are asked with nothing to return yet. They are conversion questions: somebody deciding whether the risk of getting it wrong is small enough to press pay. That makes a complete, unhedged returns answer one of the cheapest sales tools available, provided it keeps the two paths apart, because unwanted goods and faulty goods do not run on the same rules.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for returns and exchanges holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The question is asked far more often before purchase than after it, which makes it a conversion answer rather than a support answer.
- Five separate facts sit inside it (the window, the day it starts, who pays postage, what condition, which exclusions), and an answer missing one produces the follow-up.
- Consumer guarantee rules in most markets treat goods that are not of satisfactory quality quite differently from goods somebody simply did not want, and a single blended policy page teaches an assistant to apply the wrong one.
- Distance selling rules in many markets give an online buyer a cancellation right that runs alongside a shop's own policy rather than being replaced by it, so quoting only the shop's terms can understate what the customer has.
How it arrives
- what is your returns policy
- how long have i got to send it back
- do i have to pay for return postage
- can i return it if i've opened it
- what if it arrives damaged
- do i need the original packaging
What has to be indexed for this to work
| The window, with the day the clock starts | Whether it counts from the order, the dispatch or the delivery, and whether the customer has to notify you inside the window or get the goods back inside it. Those are two different deadlines and most policies state only one of them. |
|---|---|
| Return postage and the label | Who pays on an unwanted item, who pays on a faulty one, whether you provide a label, and what happens to the outbound delivery charge on a refund. This is the fact that decides whether somebody buys two sizes or one. |
| Condition and packaging requirements | What unused means in practice for your categories, whether the original box is required, whether a removed seal or tag matters. Vague wording here does not protect the shop, it just moves the argument to the inspection bench. |
| Faulty goods, written as its own document | A separate page for goods that are not of satisfactory quality or not as described, covering who pays return postage, what the shop needs to see, and how the statutory position in your market relates to your own policy. Keeping it separate is what stops the two getting blended. |
The reply
You have the published window from the day the order is delivered to tell us you want to send something back, and items need to return unused and in a condition we could sell again, with tags and seals intact. Return postage on an unwanted item is paid by the customer, and we cover it when something has arrived faulty, damaged or is not what was ordered, because that is a different route with different rights attached. If yours is a fault rather than a change of mind, say so when you contact us and we will handle it under that route instead.
It gives the window with its start date, the condition test and the postage rule in one pass, which is the set of facts somebody needs before they can decide to buy. It then does the thing a blended policy page cannot do, which is invite the customer to say which of the two routes they are on. That one sentence prevents the most expensive wrong answer in online retail.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor describes a fault, the wrong item, a damaged parcel, or a return that falls outside the published window.
That sounds like more than a change of mind, and I should not decide it here. Leave your name, the email on the order and a short description with photographs if there is something to see, and the team will pick it up.
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 apply the unwanted goods rules to an item the customer has described as faulty.
- Never say a sale item cannot be returned when the customer has described a defect.
- Never confirm that a return has been received, inspected or approved.
- Never state a window without saying which day it starts counting from.
Questions
- Does spelling out the return cost lose sales?
- It loses the order that was going to be returned. The customer who reads that return postage is theirs and buys anyway is a better order than the one who buys three sizes and sends two back. What genuinely loses sales is an unanswered question at the moment somebody is deciding.
- How do we keep it from misapplying the faulty goods route?
- Write the two as two documents rather than two paragraphs of one. Material shapes what gets retrieved, and a single returns page containing a strict headline and a buried carve-out will produce the strict headline every time.
- What if the law where we trade is more generous than our policy?
- Then index both and let it quote them separately. An assistant that states only the shop's policy when the statutory position is wider is manufacturing a complaint on the shop's behalf, and the complaint arrives with the law attached to it.
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 returns and exchanges in generalWindow, condition, who pays postage, exclusions. Faulty and unwanted are two different processes with two different sets of rights.
- Restock answers when the count is behind glassA live count is the number an assistant cannot see. What it says about restocks, discontinued lines and the notify button instead.
- The handover that exists because there is no record to readMost handovers on a shop are one thing: an order nobody can look up. Collect the two identifiers and the reply comes back complete.
- Money going backwards, and the days nobody in the shop controlsA return, a refund and a chargeback are three different things. What the shop controls, and the issuer delay nobody there can shorten.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.