Playbook, online store
Cut-offs, zones and duties: three questions wearing one set of words
A delivery question is the last thing between a full basket and a paid order, which makes it the highest value answer on a shop and also the easiest to write, because every part of it is already published. The difficulty is not knowing the answer. It is resisting the small helpful step of turning two working days into Thursday, because the moment that appears in writing the shop owns it.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for shipping and delivery holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- A shipping question here is really three questions sharing one sentence: how much it costs, how fast it goes, and whether it reaches the visitor at all.
- The cut-off is the only part with a clock attached, and it is the part that decides whether somebody buys in the next four minutes or closes the tab.
- Cross border orders carry a second price the checkout may never show, and a customer who meets an import charge at the door reads it as a hidden fee rather than a tax.
- Nothing here needs refusing, which makes the failure mode different from the rest of this trade: it is not overreach, it is arithmetic done on the customer's behalf.
How it arrives
- is it too late for next day
- how much is delivery to spain
- do you ship to australia
- will i get charged customs on this
- what time do you dispatch
- is delivery free if i spend more
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Your service and zone table | Every service crossed with every destination, with the price and the working day estimate for each. Shops keep this internally as a grid and publish a flattened version, and the flattening is what produces the follow-up question, so index the grid. |
|---|---|
| Cut-off times, weekends and public holidays included | The daily time an order has to be placed by, what happens to an order placed after it, and how the weekend and each public holiday shift it. This is the single most time sensitive fact on a shop and it deserves its own page rather than a line in a paragraph. |
| Destinations, duty and tax treatment | Which countries you ship to, whether prices are shown with or without sales tax to a visitor outside your home market, and whether import duty is collected at checkout or charged by the carrier on delivery. State which of those two applies, because customers assume the first and meet the second. |
| Free delivery thresholds and how they are calculated | The spend that unlocks free delivery, whether it is measured before or after a discount code, whether it includes gift wrapping or sales tax, and what happens to it if part of the order is returned. Every one of those is asked with the basket already open. |
The reply
Orders placed before the cut-off time on our delivery page go out the same working day, and the next day service is counted in working days, so an order placed on a Friday afternoon moves at the start of the following week. Delivery to your country is charged at the rate shown for that zone and is free above the published threshold, which is calculated after any discount code is applied. Import duty and tax on orders going outside our home market are charged separately by the carrier on delivery rather than collected at checkout.
It answers all three of the hidden questions in one reply, because a customer who gets the price without the timing comes straight back. It says working days out loud rather than converting to a date, which keeps the estimate a description of a service rather than a commitment. And it puts the import charge in front of the customer before payment, which loses a small number of orders and prevents a much larger number of refused parcels.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor asks for an arrival date rather than a service, or names a deadline such as a birthday, a wedding or a departure they have to hit.
I can give you the service and the cut-off, but not a date, and I would rather not guess when you have a deadline. Leave your name, email and the day you need it by and somebody will tell you what is realistic.
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 convert a working day estimate into a named day of the week or a calendar date.
- Never say a parcel will arrive without an import charge.
- Never quote an ordinary cut-off during a peak period unless that period's times are indexed.
- Never present a carrier's own estimate as something the shop has committed to.
Questions
- Which single document is worth indexing first?
- The cut-off times, ahead of the price table. Pricing questions are asked calmly and cut-off questions are asked by somebody with a basket open at four in the afternoon, and the second group converts or leaves in the next few minutes.
- Should it mention customs unprompted on an international order?
- Yes, if the material says duty is collected on delivery. A visitor who finds out at the door refuses the parcel roughly as often as they pay it, and a refused international parcel costs the shop the outbound carriage, the return carriage and the order.
- Our courier gives an estimated date. Can it repeat that?
- Only as the carrier's estimate, attributed, and only if it appears in something you have indexed. Repeating it flat makes it read as the shop's promise, and the shop is the party the customer will hold 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 shipping and delivery in generalCut-off times, zones, timescales, public holidays and duties on international orders. The material exists on most sites, it is just buried.
- Answering an order status question with no order system attachedThe one question a hosted assistant cannot answer. How to say so and still move the customer forward instead of stalling them.
- The five things a returns answer has to containWindow, start date, postage, condition and exclusions. Five facts hide in one question, and a reply missing any of them gets asked again.
- 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.
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.