Question handling
Do you have it in stock, and what you may honestly reply
Stock is the second question in this family that looks answerable and is not. A number on a shelf changes by the hour and no document holds it. What documents do hold is whether you carry a line at all, how restocking usually works, and what else does the same job, and those three answers are worth more than most people expect.
What they are really asking
Can I get this thing, from you, soon enough to be worth my effort.
- do you have this in stock
- when will it be back in stock
- how many do you have
- do you have it in a different size
- can you hold one for me
- do you carry this brand
- is it in the shop or online only
- can you order it in for me
- whats the closest alternative
- will you get more before the weekend
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:
| What you carry, as ranges rather than as items | Brands, categories, size runs, the services or product families you stock at all. Ranges are stable and individual lines are not, so a range document stays true for months while a product list is wrong within a week. |
|---|---|
| How restocking actually works here | Whether you reorder automatically, how often deliveries arrive, typical lead times from your suppliers, and whether discontinued means gone. This answers when will it be back better than a date would, because it is true. |
| Special order and backorder terms | Whether you will order something in, what that costs, how long it takes, whether a deposit is needed and whether it can be cancelled. Frequently the actual answer somebody wanted, and rarely published. |
| Where the live availability lives | The product page, the store finder, the phone number for the branch. Pointing at the place that does know is a real answer, and it is the one the assistant should give instead of a guess. |
| Substitutes and equivalents | What is comparable to what, in your own words. This is the material that turns an out of stock disappointment into a sale, and it is knowledge that usually lives only with your counter staff. |
How to handle it
Work out which of the three stock questions it is
Do you sell this at all, is one available right now, and when will more arrive. Only the first and third are answerable from documents.
Sorting them properly is most of the work, because customers use identical wording for all three. Do you have the blue one can mean any of them.
Answer the range question confidently
Whether you carry a brand, a category or a size run is a stable fact about your business and one of the most useful things you can publish. It saves a journey, a phone call or an abandoned basket.
This is also the answer people most often cannot find. Most sites let you search a catalogue but never say plainly what they stock.
Refuse the live count, and say where it lives
The assistant should be explicit that it cannot see stock levels, and should not use hedged wording that implies it half can. Then it points at whatever does know: the product page, the branch, the phone.
Unless you separately connect a source that holds stock, this limit is permanent and it is better acknowledged in one sentence than worked around in three.
Convert the no into something useful
The restock process, the special order route, the closest equivalent, and whether you can notify them. Any of these keeps a customer who would otherwise go elsewhere.
Give a process rather than a date. We usually receive deliveries weekly and can order this in within a few days is honest and actionable; back next Tuesday is a promise nobody in the conversation can make.
When it stops being an answer
Any request to reserve, hold or set something aside
The assistant does not write into any system and cannot hold anything. Somebody who believes an item is being kept for them, and then travels for it, has had a worse experience than if nobody had answered at all. Take the request and hand it to a person who can actually do it.
Quantities beyond ordinary retail
Bulk, trade, wholesale, anything where the answer depends on what a supplier can supply. These are commercial conversations with pricing attached and they belong with a person from the first message.
Anything tied to a date the customer cannot move
Needed for an event, a job, a gift with a deadline. The cost of being wrong is much higher than usual, so the assistant should be more cautious than usual and route it to somebody who can check.
How this one goes wrong
The confident yes that sent somebody across town
A customer asks whether you have something. The assistant matches a product page, a category description or an old news item, and answers as though the shelf were in front of it. Somebody drives over, and it is not there.
That is a worse outcome than any refusal. They have spent an hour on your say-so, and the thing they will remember is not that a tool was wrong, it is that your shop told them something untrue. Wrong stock answers cost trust at a rate out of all proportion to how minor they look, which is why this is the intent where being explicit about the limit matters most.
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 veterinary clinicPrescription medicine and prescription diets are not shelf stock. What may be said about ordering in, repeats and a written prescription.
- For a opticianWhich brands an opticians carries is stable. Whether one frame is in the practice today is not. Separating the two.
- For a pharmacyWhat is in the dispensary today is invisible to the assistant, and a confident guess sends somebody on a wasted trip.
- For a estate agencyA listing stays up after an offer is accepted, so visibility proves nothing. Three truthful answers, and the branch may not know yet.
- For a online storeA live count is the number an assistant cannot see. What it says about restocks, discontinued lines and the notify button instead.
- For a fashion retailerFashion stock is a question about one size inside a line, not about the line. Why the middle of the curve goes first.
- For a furniture retailerAvailable can mean on the warehouse floor, coming in on a shipment, or a production slot. Three different waits behind one word.
- For a electronics retailerIn stock here is a number somebody was given, not a shelf they control. A back order has no date because the factory does not publish one.
- For a garden centreLiving stock is seasonal rather than sold out. Bare root, bedding and Christmas lines are absent for months by design.
- For a bike shopHaving the bike is not having it in the size that fits. Floor stock, allocation from the brand, and why a restock is a season not a date.
- For a restaurantA dish sells out by eight, the board changes daily, and an old menu still lists something dropped in March. Never say it is on tonight.
- For a holiday rentalThe one question the assistant genuinely cannot answer. The calendar is the only truth, and a wrong yes puts two families on the same doorstep.
- For a car dealershipA crawled listing is a photograph of yesterday. The assistant can describe a car in detail and still must not say it is unsold.
Questions
- Can it check stock if the number is on our website?
- A crawl reads the page as text at the time it was indexed, which is not the same as reading a live number. Treat anything time-sensitive on a page as a snapshot, and configure the assistant to point at the live page rather than repeat what it saw.
- What is safe to answer then?
- Whether you carry a line, how your restocking works, whether you will special order, and what the alternatives are. Those cover a large share of the intent and none of them go stale by the hour.
- How do we word the refusal?
- Short, and ending in a route. It cannot see live stock, the product page or the branch will know, here is how to reach them. The fallback message is yours to write, so it can name the exact place you want people sent.
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 returns and exchangesWindow, condition, who pays postage, exclusions. Faulty and unwanted are two different processes with two different sets of rights.
- 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.