Question handling
Delivery answers that are already written down somewhere
This is the pre-purchase half of delivery, asked by people who have not bought yet and are deciding whether it will arrive in time. It is almost entirely answerable, the material usually exists, and it is usually sitting in a footer page written as prose when it needed to be written as a set of rules.
What they are really asking
Will it get to me, in time, for a price I am willing to pay, and what happens if it does not.
- how much is delivery
- do you deliver to my area
- whats the cut off for next day
- do you ship internationally
- will it arrive before the weekend
- do you deliver on saturdays
- is there free delivery over a certain amount
- will i have to pay customs charges
- can i choose a delivery day
- do you deliver to a pickup point
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:
| Options, prices and speeds in one table | Every service you offer, what it costs, how long it takes, and any threshold that changes the price. One table beats four paragraphs, because the assistant answers from the passage it matched and a table keeps the related facts together. |
|---|---|
| The cut-off rule, including when it does not apply | The time, the timezone, which days it operates, and what happens to an order placed after it or on a non-working day. The exception is the question: everybody knows the cut-off, nobody knows what a Sunday afternoon order does. |
| Zones and anywhere you treat differently | Islands, highlands, remote postcodes, addresses that carry a surcharge or a longer lead time, and anywhere you do not deliver at all. Somebody in one of those places will find out eventually, and finding out at checkout is worse than finding out now. |
| Your public holiday and peak calendar | Which days nothing dispatches and where the last order dates fall in a busy season. This is the material most likely to be out of date, so point the assistant at a page you maintain rather than uploading a copy you will forget. |
| How duties and import taxes are handled | Whether they are collected at checkout or charged on arrival, who pays, and roughly what triggers them. Getting this wrong produces a refused parcel and a return, which costs far more than the order. |
How to handle it
Answer with the option that fits the deadline they mentioned
Most delivery questions contain a date hiding in them: before the weekend, in time for Friday, for a birthday. The useful reply picks the service that meets it and names the cut-off that has to be met to get it, rather than listing everything you offer.
Where the deadline cannot be met by any service, saying so plainly is the answer. A customer who orders anyway on a misread timescale becomes a refund and a complaint.
Treat the cut-off as a rule with exceptions attached
An order placed at four in the afternoon on a Friday is the case that matters, and it is the case almost no shipping page covers. State the rule, state what happens on weekends, and state what happens on a public holiday, in the same passage.
Never let the assistant calculate a delivery date. It does not know today's date reliably in the way a customer assumes, and a specific date produced in chat reads as a commitment.
Handle international as its own answer
Whether you ship there, how long it takes, what it costs, and who pays import charges. That last one is the part that goes wrong, because a customer who was not warned refuses the parcel at the door.
Say who is responsible for duties in your own terms and be direct about it. Hedged wording here is worse than none, because it leaves people assuming the outcome that suits them.
Point at the tracking process rather than a status
The follow up to almost every delivery question is how they will know where it is. Explain when the dispatch email arrives, what it contains and where the tracking lives, which is answerable, rather than anything about a specific parcel, which is not.
When it stops being an answer
Anything where a date is the point of the order
Weddings, events, birthdays, a part needed for a job on Monday. The assistant can state your timescales but it cannot guarantee one, and a customer who says they need it by a date is asking for a guarantee. Get these to a person while the order can still be influenced.
Address changes and redirections
The window on these is short and it is different for every carrier. The assistant should explain whether it is possible at all and hand over immediately, rather than describing a process the customer then works through slowly.
Anything held in customs
This involves documentation, charges and often the recipient acting personally. It needs somebody who deals with your carrier, and generic advice about import processes is more likely to delay it than help.
How this one goes wrong
The estimate that was read as a guarantee
Delivery within two to three working days becomes arriving Wednesday somewhere between your shipping page and the customer's head, and once the assistant has repeated it in a sentence with their order in it, the two are the same thing to them.
The cost is not the apology. It is the refund on an order that arrived perfectly well, one day after the date somebody was allowed to believe in. Keep the material in ranges, keep the assistant away from calendar arithmetic, and put the word estimate in the source text so the answers inherit 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 pharmacyA delivery round covers set areas on set days, and some items cannot be left on a doorstep at all. What to publish about both.
- For a online storeCut-off times, zone pricing and who pays the customs bill. What a shop can state as a fact, and where a fact turns into a promise.
- For a fashion retailerThe deadline is an event, not a preference. Cut-offs, pre-order windows and a collection counter that closes before the shop does.
- For a furniture retailerFurniture delivery is a lead time in weeks plus an access survey. The assistant runs the checklist and never reaches the verdict.
- For a electronics retailerValue forces a signature, cells restrict the route, and a large screen is a booked appointment with two people and an old unit to remove.
- For a garden centreLiving goods and half a tonne of aggregate are two promises on one van. Weather holds, kerbside drops and minimum orders.
- For a bike shopBoxed or built, and the battery that is restricted freight. Plus the collection that fails because a bike will not go in a small car.
- For a restaurantThe collection window, the platform that draws its own radius, and the shorter menu, because some dishes do not survive a box.
Questions
- Can it tell somebody whether an order will arrive by a specific date?
- It should not. It can quote your published timescales and the cut-off rule, and let the customer apply them. A specific date produced in a conversation is treated as a promise, and the assistant has no visibility of your dispatch queue or the carrier's.
- What is the highest value thing to index here?
- The cut-off rule with its exceptions, and the delivery options table. Between them they answer the pre-purchase questions that otherwise end in an abandoned basket, and both are short documents.
- How do we keep the peak season dates current?
- Put them on a page you already maintain and let the assistant read your site rather than a copy you uploaded once. A crawl follows your sitemap and respects your robots rules, so the material moves when the page does.
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 returns and exchangesWindow, condition, who pays postage, exclusions. Faulty and unwanted are two different processes with two different sets of rights.
- 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.