Handing over to customer support

Where the assistant sends whoever has a late order, something damaged or a return, and why this isn't a free text box.

Part of the conversations aren't about buying. It's somebody with an order that hasn't arrived, a dented box, a return to sort out. The assistant answers with what the shop wrote, and when the answer isn't there, it hands the case over to people.

Where it hands over is decided in Search → Stores → edit, the Customer support section.

The fields

• Preferred channel: contact form, WhatsApp, email or phone. With no preference, the assistant just says to contact the shop, which is a weak answer for somebody who's already annoyed.
• Address or number: the link, the number or the email of the channel above. The assistant writes it exactly as it is here, and never invents another one.
• Support hours and usual reply time: "weekdays, 9am to 6pm", "within 24 hours". An expectation stated is half a complaint avoided.
• Carrier and carrier phone: for the cases of an order on its way.
• Returns, in one line: only the short version ("14 days to return, unopened, shipping paid by the customer"). Everything else lives in the knowledge base, and that's what it reads first.

The choice that changes the answer

The send to the carrier first when there is a tracking code switch changes the sentence, and not just its wording.

Whoever has the code sorts it out faster by talking to whoever has the parcel in the van: it's the recipient who can give access instructions or agree another time. But there are shops that prefer to handle everything themselves, so as not to lose sight of the case, and that's a business decision. Switched off, the assistant sends everything to your support and you're the one who talks to the carrier.

Why there's no free text box here

Notice that these fields are values (a number, an opening time, a link) and not instructions. That's deliberate.

What you write in the knowledge base goes into the model inside a frame that tells it, in writing, that it's information and not orders. It had to be that way: the text is yours, but what chooses which passage goes in is the visitor's question, and a supplier document could have instructions inside it that nobody approved.

These fields are the way out on the other side of that. You decide the destination and the data; the sentence is written by us and goes into the system prompt with the authority of any other rule of ours. It's the same design as the tone of voice: you choose between the casual and the formal address, and both versions of the sentence are ours.

Reading the conversations

In Search → Conversations are the records, with the address of whoever spoke and the times. They're good for two things: auditing a disputed answer, and seeing with your own eyes what people ask.

The second is the more profitable one. Half an hour reading conversations usually yields more good entries for the knowledge base than an afternoon imagining them.