By business type
Lead times, access surveys and the point a person takes over
Furniture has the longest gap between purchase and possession in retail, and that gap is where all the questions and all the complaints live. Somebody asking when a sofa will arrive at week three is polite. The same person at week eleven is not. An assistant earns its place by making the lead time honest and visible from the first conversation.
What people actually type
Not the questions on your FAQ page. These are the phrasings that arrive in a chat window, lowercase and unpunctuated, and the material has to answer them in those words rather than in yours.
- how long is the wait for this sofa
- is it in stock or made to order
- will it fit through my front door
- do you deliver upstairs
- is there a lift charge
- do you take the old one away
- does it come assembled
- can i cancel a made to order item
- how long is the guarantee on the frame
- can i get a fabric sample
- do you deliver to a flat with no lift
- what happens if it does not fit
What to feed it
In rough order of how much work each one takes off the front desk. Every one of these is a document you almost certainly already have.
| Current lead times by range | Stated in weeks, per range, with the date the figure was last reviewed. This is the highest value and shortest lived document in the trade. An assistant quoting a lead time that was true in spring is generating the complaint you will handle in autumn, so treat this as a page you maintain rather than a file you upload once. |
|---|---|
| The distinction between stock and made to order | Which ranges ship from a warehouse and which are put into production when the order is placed. It changes the wait, it changes the cancellation position, and it changes whether a fabric change is possible after ordering. Customers do not know the difference exists until it matters. |
| Your delivery access checklist | The measurements a customer needs to take before ordering: doorway width, hallway turns, staircase width and rise, ceiling clearance, lift internal dimensions, and the packaged size of each item. Publishing the checklist lets the assistant walk somebody through it, which is a real deflection and a real reduction in failed deliveries. |
| What the delivery crew will and will not do | Whether it is a two person delivery, whether they take it to the room of choice, whether they assemble, whether they remove packaging, whether they take the old item away, and any charge for stairs above a certain floor. Every one of those is a separate expectation that goes wrong on the day. |
| Fabric, finish and care guidance | Rub counts, whether a fabric is suitable with pets or in direct sunlight, how a leather will age, what can be cleaned at home and what needs a specialist. Care questions arrive months after the sale and answering them badly turns into a guarantee claim. |
| Guarantee terms in full | What is covered, for how long, whether the frame and the upholstery and the mechanism differ, what voids it, and whether the cover transfers if the item is sold on. Furniture guarantees are layered and customers read the headline number only. |
What has to reach a person
Whether a specific piece will fit a specific home
This is the question underneath most access enquiries and it cannot be answered from a catalogue. The assistant can give the packaged dimensions and the access checklist, and it should. It must not conclude that a sofa will get up a described staircase, because a failed delivery costs the shop the crew, the vehicle and usually the sale.
Route it to whoever does your access surveys, and take the customer's details so somebody can call and go through the measurements with them.
A delivery date for an order already placed
Lead times are ranges and a placed order has an actual slot in a production schedule the assistant cannot see. Quoting the published range to somebody who is already waiting reads as evasion, so hand it to the person who can open the order and give a real answer.
Damage found on delivery or after
Damaged legs, a torn cover, a mechanism that does not sit right. These need photographs, a decision between repair, replacement part and full replacement, and often a conversation with the manufacturer. There is also usually a reporting window, and the assistant should say what it is rather than resolve the claim.
Cancelling or changing an order in production
Whether a fabric can still be changed, whether the order can be stopped, and what it costs all depend on how far into production it has gone. That is a question for whoever holds the production schedule, and a wrong answer here creates a refund argument with real money in it.
The wording when it cannot help
This is the message the assistant returns when nothing in the material covers the question. It is written by you rather than generated, which matters here more than anywhere: it is the sentence a stranger reads at the worst moment.
I cannot confirm whether a piece will get into your home or give you a date for an order already placed. Leave your name, email and the room you are measuring and the team will go through the access details with you. I can help with lead times, what our delivery includes, fabrics and guarantee terms.
It names what it cannot do, gives the route that can, and offers to take a message. A refusal that only apologises leaves the person exactly where they started.
Rules and duties that shape the answer
Made to order changes the cancellation position
In many markets the statutory right to cancel a distance purchase and return it without a reason is narrowed or removed for goods made to a customer's specification, which in this trade means a chosen fabric, a chosen configuration or a bespoke size. Stock items generally keep the ordinary right.
Index the two paths separately and label them clearly. An assistant that quotes one blanket returns policy across both will either promise a cancellation you cannot honour or refuse one the customer is entitled to.
A quoted lead time is a term of the sale
Once a wait is stated in writing before the order, it forms part of what the customer agreed to buy, and a substantial overrun is a contractual problem rather than a customer service inconvenience. Indexing an optimistic figure is not a marketing choice, it is a liability.
Publish the honest range including the bad end, and let the assistant quote the range rather than the best case.
Guarantees sit on top of statutory rights, not instead of them
A shop guarantee is a commercial promise. Consumer guarantee rules in most markets give a separate right against the seller when goods are not of satisfactory quality or not as described, and that right is not cut short by the guarantee expiring.
Write the guarantee document so it says so, otherwise the assistant will tell a customer at year six that nothing can be done.
Never, whatever the documents say
Out of bounds
- Whether an item will fit through a described door, stairwell or lift.
- A delivery date for an order that has already been placed.
- Whether a made to order item can still be cancelled or changed.
- Whether a specific damage claim will be accepted.
- A lead time other than the published range for that range.
Playbooks for this trade
One page per recurring question, written for a furniture retailer rather than in general. Each carries the phrasings, the material that answers them, a reply worth copying, and the line where it has to stop.
- Lead times in weeks and the measurements taken before orderingFurniture delivery is a lead time in weeks plus an access survey. The assistant runs the checklist and never reaches the verdict.
- Three things that arrive wearing the same three wordsTransit damage, a manufacturing fault and a missing fixings pack are three claims with three routes. The assistant sorts, and starts none.
- Made to order, already in production, and the right that narrowsHow far into production an order has gone decides everything. The assistant explains the fork and never says which side an order is on.
- Frame, covering and mechanism: three covers under one headline numberFrames, coverings and mechanisms carry different periods under a domestic use condition, and none of it replaces statutory rights.
- A handover with a clock already running against itA reporting window started when the crew drove away. The handover has to collect photographs and a delivery date, fast.
- Between the order and the van there is nothing to trackThere is no tracking number for eleven weeks. Status here is a production stage, a container month and a booking call the shop makes.
- There is no shelf to swap it for something offA piece built to one household's fabric choice cannot be resold. Even a stock return needs a vehicle, two people and a slot in the diary.
- Two payments, months apart, coming back separatelyA deposit and a balance taken a season apart, often on two cards. The money comes back in two movements and one card has usually expired.
- The ticket price is one configuration out of manyThe ticket is one size in the lowest cloth grade. Change the grade, the arm or the delivery zone and the figure moves with it.
- What a quote needs before anybody can write oneA quote needs the grade, the dimensions and the handedness, and it expires when a cloth does. The assistant gathers and never prices.
- One page decides what gets built, and nobody reads itIt carries the cloth code, the size and the handedness. Reading it in the first days is worth more than any invoice months later.
- Four meanings of available, and only one of them is nowAvailable can mean on the warehouse floor, coming in on a shipment, or a production slot. Three different waits behind one word.
- It fits the wall and still does not work in the roomFitting a piece is more than the doorway. It is the depth you sit at, the door that has to swing and which end the chaise is on.
- Getting into the showroom, and getting out of the sofaTwo unrelated requests arrive as one: getting into the building, and getting out of the chair. Neither is answered with a recommendation.
- The satnav takes them to the front of a unit with no doorThe clearance floor is not the showroom and the goods door is not the front door. Say which before somebody drives to the wrong one.
- The showroom is open. That does not mean anyone can load a wardrobeThe showroom, the collection bay and the delivery crews run on different clocks, and the busiest selling days are the ones nothing moves.
- Settling, creasing, and the sentence that must not come from a chat windowFlattened fillings and creased leather are the commonest complaint in the trade. Never be the one who says that is normal.
- Money down at the start, money due before it moves, and a wasted vanA deposit commits a production slot and the balance falls due before despatch. A missed slot costs two people, a vehicle and a day.
Questions
- Our lead times move every month. Is this still worth doing?
- It is, provided you point it at a page you maintain rather than uploading a document you will forget. Crawling your own lead time page means the assistant moves when you do. The alternative, a stale figure quoted with confidence, is worse than having no assistant at all in this trade.
- Can it do the access survey conversation?
- It can walk somebody through the checklist and give the packaged dimensions, which is most of the work. It should stop before the conclusion. The judgement about whether a two seater turns a particular landing belongs to whoever carries it, and the assistant's job is to collect the enquiry for them.
- What should we index first?
- Lead times by range, the delivery inclusions, and the access checklist. Those three cover the questions asked before the order and the questions asked while waiting for it, which between them are almost all of the volume.
- Can it check whether something is in stock?
- It can say whether a range is a stock line or made to order, because that is a property of the range and it does not change day to day. Actual warehouse quantities are a different thing, and unless you connect a source that holds them, it should not imply it can see them.
Keep reading
- 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.
- For a fashion retailerFit is both the most asked pre-purchase question and the biggest cause of returns. Here is what a clothing retailer can safely automate.
- For a electronics retailerCompatibility, warranty and returns on opened items answer well from your own terms. Firmware level setup advice does not.
- Every business typeWhat an assistant has to know before it can answer for a trade.
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.