Playbook, online course
The money left the account and nothing arrived
There is no parcel and no tracking. Delivery on a course is one message reaching one inbox, which means the entire question collapses into whether an email arrived, and that is the part of the transaction the seller has the least control over. It is also the single highest volume message a course business receives.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for order status holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- There is nothing in transit, so none of the usual reassurance applies: no dispatch, no carrier, no estimated day. Either the message arrived or it did not, and the buyer is refreshing an inbox rather than a tracking page.
- The address it went to was typed into a payment form by somebody holding a card, which is the most error prone field on the page, and a mistyped address does not bounce back to warn anybody.
- Filters catch it more often than anything else, and a work address with a strict filter quarantines silently rather than delivering to a junk folder, so the useful instruction is to search rather than to scroll.
- Where an employer bought the places, nothing is sent to the learner until somebody assigns them, so the person waiting is waiting for a message that was never addressed to them in the first place.
How it arrives
- i paid and nothing has come through
- how long does the welcome email take
- what address does the course email come from
- i have checked my spam and it is not there
- my payment shows as pending is that why
- my company paid for me and i have heard nothing
What has to be indexed for this to work
| How long the welcome message actually takes | The real figure, including any case where it is not immediate. A buyer told it is instant and waiting ten minutes has already decided something has gone wrong, and that decision is what produces the message. |
|---|---|
| The sending address and the subject line it arrives under | Both, exactly, so somebody can search their mail instead of scrolling it. This one detail resolves more of these than every other sentence on the page combined, and it is almost never published. |
| What a buyer does if the address was mistyped | The route, what you need to identify the purchase, and how long it takes. Say what to send: the name on the card and the approximate time of the purchase are usually enough, and naming them means the first message contains them. |
| How an employer purchase reaches a learner | Who assigns the place, what the learner receives and when. Without this, every sponsored learner spends a day searching an inbox for something that was correctly never sent to them. |
The reply
There is nothing posted or shipped, so everything after a purchase happens in one email, and the address it goes to is whatever was typed at the checkout. It arrives from the address shown on our help page, and searching your mail for that rather than scrolling your inbox is the fastest check, particularly on a work address where filters hold messages without putting them anywhere you would look [1]. If your employer bought the place, nothing is sent to you until they assign it, so it is worth asking them first [2]. I cannot see a purchase or resend anything. Leave me your name, the address you think you used and roughly when you paid, and somebody will find it.
It explains that delivery is a single email before giving any instruction, because the buyer is imagining a system with more moving parts than exists. Search rather than scroll is the specific advice that resolves most of these. And the employer case is named early, since that person will otherwise search all afternoon for something that was never sent.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor says the message has not arrived after the published time, thinks the address was mistyped, or cannot find a purchase at all.
I cannot look up a purchase or send anything again. Leave your name, the email address you think you used, and roughly when you paid, and somebody will find the enrolment and get you into it.
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 say an email has been sent, resent or delivered, because nothing here sends one.
- Never confirm that a purchase exists, or that one does not, since no record is visible from here.
- Never tell somebody their payment failed, or succeeded, on the basis that no message arrived.
- Never suggest buying again to trigger the email, as that produces a second charge and an argument about refunding it.
Questions
- Why is this the highest volume message we get?
- Because the gap between paying and receiving is the most anxious moment in the whole purchase, and it is filled by nothing at all. Somebody who has spent real money and seen no confirmation assumes the worst within minutes, and the assistant is the nearest thing to ask.
- Can it resend the welcome email?
- No. It sends nothing except the enquiry that goes to your inbox. Which is why the sending address and subject line matter so much: they are the only self serve fix available, and they resolve the majority of these before anybody has to be involved.
- What is the one thing to publish?
- The sending address and the exact subject line, together, on a page the assistant can read. It is two lines, it takes ten minutes, and it turns the most common message you receive into something the buyer solves themselves in thirty seconds.
Keep reading
- Everything for a online courseWhat is included, how long access lasts, refund and cooling off rights, and the honest limit that it cannot see a learner's own progress.
- Handling order status in generalThe most asked question in retail support and the one a document-based assistant cannot answer. What it can do instead, and where handover sits.
- Six places, and a spreadsheet from somebody in securityA small training purchase can attract a full vendor assessment. What a course business can answer from published pages, and what it cannot.
- Course refunds, where your policy is not the only rule that appliesDistance selling rules and immediate access do not sit comfortably together. State both, and the exception you rely on.
- Cancelling a course subscription, and the access question underneath itThe question underneath a cancellation is what a learner loses and when. Answer that plainly and the churn conversation improves.
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.