Question handling
Returns questions, and the two processes hiding inside them
Every returns question is really one of two questions and they arrive in the same words. Somebody who changed their mind is asking about your policy. Somebody whose item broke is asking about something your policy does not control. Answering the second with the first is the characteristic mistake here, and in many markets it is also wrong.
What they are really asking
Can I send this back, what will it cost me to do it, and do I end up with money or with a different item.
- how do i return something
- how long do i have to return it
- do i have to pay for return postage
- can i exchange it for a different size
- it arrived broken
- can i return it without the box
- do i need a returns label
- can i return a sale item
- how long until i get my money back
- i opened it, can i still send it back
The material that answers it
An assistant is only as good as the document behind it, and for this question the document usually exists but is written in the wrong shape. What each one has to contain to be answerable:
| The window, and what starts it | The number of days, measured from delivery or from purchase, and whether it is calendar or working days. Measured from what is the part that gets left out, and it is the part every dispute turns on. |
|---|---|
| Condition requirements, written concretely | Unused, tags attached, original packaging, seals intact. Say what happens when one of these is not met: refused, restocking deduction, accepted anyway. As new is not a condition, it is an argument. |
| Who pays for return postage, in each case | Unwanted, wrong item sent, faulty. These often have three different answers and customers assume the most favourable. Include how a label is obtained and whether the cost is deducted from the refund. |
| Your exclusions list | Personalised items, perishables, unsealed hygiene or intimate products, made to order, downloadable content already accessed. Publish it as a list rather than burying it in a clause, because the assistant answers best from a list. |
| The exchange process, described separately | Whether you exchange at all, whether it is a return plus a new order, who pays which postage, and what happens if the replacement is out of stock. Most policies describe refunds thoroughly and exchanges not at all. |
How to handle it
Split faulty from unwanted in the first reply
These are different routes with different costs and different rights, and the split has to happen before anything else is said. An assistant that answers every returns question with the standard window is going to quote a short returns window at somebody whose item failed months later.
Index the two routes as separate documents so a fault matches its own material rather than the general policy page.
Give the window with its starting event attached
A window measured from delivery and the same window measured from the order date are different deadlines, and a customer who waited for a slow delivery may have lost a week without knowing. Always state the trigger in the same sentence as the number.
Where you trade may also give consumers a separate cancellation period on distance sales that runs on its own terms and is not the same thing as your returns policy. If that applies to you, index your published wording for it and let the assistant quote that rather than blending the two.
Answer the postage question before it is asked
Who pays to send it back is the deciding factor in whether somebody bothers, and it is the most common reason a returns page gets read twice. Put it in the same answer as the window.
If the cost comes out of the refund, say the amount. A refund that arrives smaller than expected produces a second complaint on top of the first.
Describe the exchange path as its own thing
Exchange is what a lot of people actually want, and it is usually handled as a return followed by a new order. Saying that plainly manages the expectation about timing, because the customer is waiting on two movements rather than one.
Cover what happens when the replacement is unavailable, because that is the case that becomes a support ticket.
When it stops being an answer
Anything faulty, damaged or not as described
In many markets statutory rights on faulty goods sit alongside a shop's own returns policy rather than being limited by it, and they can last longer and cover more. That is not something to have an assistant adjudicate from a policy page. Route it to a person and let the policy answer only the unwanted cases.
Requests to return outside the window or against an exclusion
These are discretion questions and discretion belongs to a person. The assistant should state the rule without softening it and hand over, avoiding any wording that hints at the outcome, because a hint reads as a yes.
High value items and anything needing collection
Furniture, appliances, anything a courier will not take as a parcel. The process is different, it costs money to get wrong, and it usually needs arranging rather than explaining.
How this one goes wrong
The policy answer that overrode a legal right
Somebody says an item stopped working after three months. The assistant matches the returns page, quotes the standard returns window, and tells them the return period has passed. In a lot of markets that is not the law, and the customer either knows it or will be told by somebody who does.
What it costs is a case that becomes formal instead of routine. A fault handled in the first message is usually a replacement; the same fault after a wrong refusal is a complaint, sometimes an escalation to a consumer body, and a public review that quotes your own assistant. Separating the two routes in the indexed material is what prevents it.
The same question, trade by trade
The pattern above holds everywhere. The wording, the escalation line and the material behind it do not, so there is a page per trade.
- For a opticianMade to order lenses sit outside the usual change of mind rules. What a practice offers instead, and the adaptation period.
- For a pharmacyTwo returns positions run in one shop: ordinary retail at the front, and medicines that are destroyed rather than put back on a shelf.
- For a online storeWindow, start date, postage, condition and exclusions. Five facts hide in one question, and a reply missing any of them gets asked again.
- For a fashion retailerMost clothing shops refund and ask you to reorder rather than swapping. Saying so plainly is the highest value line on the page.
- For a furniture retailerA 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.
- For a electronics retailerSeals, cables and an account registration decide this rather than the calendar. What has to be undone before the box travels back.
- For a garden centreA tool comes back under a returns policy. A shrub that has been in soil for a month is a guarantee claim with different evidence.
- For a bike shopRidden once makes it a used bike, so a size swap is really a resale. Helmets, fitted parts, and a scheme bike nobody owns yet.
- For a car dealershipA car bought without seeing it sits under different rules from one driven off the forecourt, and neither of them is a change of mind policy.
Questions
- Can it issue a returns label?
- No. It does not write into any system and cannot generate anything. It explains how a label is obtained, quotes the conditions, and takes a name, an email and a message when somebody needs the team.
- How do we stop it quoting the policy at a faulty item?
- Index the faulty goods route as its own document with its own vocabulary, and set the caution level so a weak match refuses rather than falling back to the general returns page. Every answer cites the passage it came from, so a wrong route is traceable to a specific document.
- Should our exclusions be public?
- They already have to be findable in most markets, and hiding them does not help you. An exclusion delivered before somebody posts an item back is a fact; the same exclusion afterwards is a dispute you will probably concede.
Keep reading
- Handling order statusThe most asked question in retail support and the one a document-based assistant cannot answer. What it can do instead, and where handover sits.
- Handling shipping and deliveryCut-off times, zones, timescales, public holidays and duties on international orders. The material exists on most sites, it is just buried.
- Handling lost or damaged goodsThe claim window, the photographs needed, the carrier's role, and why this reaches a person sooner than almost anything else in support.
- Every question typeHandling patterns for the questions every support inbox gets.
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.