After the Purchase: Usage Questions Instead of Returns

The parcel is unpacked, the manual is somewhere in the box, and the new device does not do what it should. Whether this ends in a return is often decided in the next few minutes. Not every return has a defect behind it: sometimes a part was fitted the wrong way round, a setting was overlooked, or an accessory was bought that belongs to a different model. Questions like these can often be answered once the right passage of the manual is at hand. This article shows how a shop assistant answers usage questions after the purchase from manuals and product data, with a source reference to the passage. It also shows the boundaries: the right of withdrawal for distance contracts stays untouched and is named as the shop's withdrawal notice describes it, a defect goes to people, and re-ordering accessories is an offer, not a lever. Finally, it looks at how the questions asked after the purchase flow back as feedback into manuals and product data.

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Labels in the illustration

• Question after delivery
• Sorting and answer
• Outcome
• Typical questions
• How do I assemble it?
• Why is the display flashing?
• Does it fit my device?
• How do I clean it?
• I want to send it back.
• It will not switch on.
• A screw is missing.
• Usage question
• Answer from manual, data sheet and catalogue
• with a source reference to the passage
• Withdrawal: wish or declaration
• Name the way at once, ask for no reason;
• declared withdrawal: record, hand over
• Defect or missing parts
• Record the fault and the order details,
• hand over to the team, promise nothing
• Question resolved
• Passage cited,
• accessories on request
• Return
• Period and route from
• the withdrawal notice
• Review by the team
• Warranty rights or
• declared withdrawal
• Feedback from the analytics: three signals, three places to act
• Topics naming a product → Manual
• Answers without source → Documents
• Handovers per topic → Team, supplier

After the purchase: three paths for one chat question

Once the parcel is open: questions after the purchase

Before the purchase, visitors ask about features, prices and delivery times. After the purchase the question changes. Now the item is standing in the hallway, and the point is how it works: which screw goes into which hole, why the display is flashing, whether the cover can go in the washing machine, whether the filter fits the older model. For these questions the shop is often the first port of call, even when the product comes from a manufacturer, because that is where it was bought and its website is quickly opened. Anyone who finds no answer there late in the evening has three options: keep searching, write an email or tape the parcel shut again.

The third option is costly for both sides. The customer has a product she wanted to keep and sends it back because one small detail was unclear. The shop has the effort of taking back, inspecting and restocking an item that has nothing wrong with it. How returns can be avoided before the purchase, for instance with advice on size and fit, is covered in the article on size advice in chat. This one is about the time afterwards: the moment the product has arrived but has not yet been understood.

Five kinds of question that can turn into a return

Usage questions after a purchase repeat themselves. They fall into five kinds, and each has its own source the answer comes from. The split helps during setup because it shows which documents are missing before the first question is asked.

Often the answer to one of these questions is not missing at all. It is somewhere: in the middle of the manual, in the manufacturer's data sheet, in a feature of the item. The hard part is getting there. A manual in many languages, a data sheet as a download on another page, a compatibility list in a footnote: anyone looking for one particular sentence will struggle to find it there. An assistant can shorten that path, as long as it answers from exactly these documents and not from general knowledge about devices of this kind.

Answers from the manual and product data

The manual is more than an add-on. Under sales law it is part of what the buyer can expect: among other things, an item meets the objective requirements only if it is handed over with the accessories and instructions the buyer can expect to receive (Section 434 (3), first sentence, no. 4 BGB). For products that have to be assembled, a second rule applies: if improper assembly is due to a flaw in the instructions supplied by the seller, the item does not meet the assembly requirements (Section 434 (4) BGB). Two things follow for the chat. It does not replace the manual but leads to it. And where it turns out that the manual does not answer a question or is ambiguous, that finding belongs in the upkeep of the documents and should not be glossed over in the conversation.

With XICBOT, manuals, data sheets and care instructions go into the knowledge base as documents. A PDF is read through its text layer; if there is none, as with a scanned manual, the import reports exactly that instead of delivering empty text. In the Pro package the shop assistant also takes over the catalogue from Shopware Community Edition, with title, description, price and availability; features and accessory links do not come from this sync but are maintained on the item in the XICBOT catalogue. With the default setting, answers are bound to these sources and, as a rule, name the passage as a source reference; the operator can relax this binding per version. If no excerpt supports the answer, the assistant says that nothing is on file for it, and the question generally shows up as a gap in the analytics. A useful answer to a usage question meets five conditions.

• It names the model it refers to and asks back if the designation is ambiguous.
• It gives the steps in the order of the manual, not in an order of its own.
• It names the passage, such as document and section, so the customer can read it for herself.
• It includes warnings and safety notes from the manual instead of cutting them.
• It says what is not there instead of filling in a plausible way of operating the item.

The boundary: the way to withdrawal stays open

An assistant that helps after the purchase works during a period in which a deadline is running. Consumers have a right of withdrawal for distance contracts (Section 312g (1) BGB). The period is 14 days (Section 355 (2) BGB) and, for a consumer goods purchase, generally starts once the consumer or a third party named by them has received the goods (Section 356 (2) no. 1 (a) BGB). The first usage questions typically fall into these days too. Unless otherwise agreed, the right of withdrawal is excluded in the cases listed in Section 312g (2) BGB, for instance for sealed hygiene products unsealed after delivery or for goods made to the customer's specifications. Whether such an exclusion applies is not for the assistant to judge; it points to what the shop's withdrawal notice sets out on this. The law is brief on how a withdrawal is declared:

The last sentence is decisive for how the assistant is designed. A flow that requires troubleshooting before a withdrawal, asks for the reason before naming the way, or hides the way behind several offers of help sets conditions the law does not know. Competition law adds to this. Whether a commercial practice is aggressive depends, among other things, on onerous or disproportionate non-contractual barriers with which the trader tries to prevent the consumer from exercising their contractual rights (Section 4a (2), first sentence, no. 4 UWG, the German Act against Unfair Competition). Whether a particular conversation flow falls under this depends on the individual case and is a question for legal advice. For the assistant a simple rule is enough: anyone who wants to withdraw is shown the way first. An offer of help can follow, as a brief note and only once; if the customer does not ask for it, that is where it ends. Unlike an offer to stay when someone cancels a contract, which should only come on request, this note is not about a new contract but about using the product that has already arrived. If the customer has already declared withdrawal, it is dropped as well. How an assistant then accompanies the return is covered in the article on order status and returns.

Defect or operating error: when the assistant hands over

The hardest distinction after the purchase is the one between a usage question and a defect. “It will not switch on” can mean that the battery has to be charged before first use, or that the device is faulty. An assistant cannot decide this, but it can sort: it names the steps the manual gives for exactly this fault and stops as soon as the description points to something else. Otherwise a second and third round of troubleshooting quickly becomes the opposite of help. The following signs suggest that it is time to stop explaining and hand over.

• The customer has already followed the steps in the manual and the fault persists.
• Parts, screws or the manual itself are missing, or a different item arrived from the one ordered.
• The product is visibly damaged, smells burnt, gets unusually hot or leaks fluid.
• The manual does not describe the step where things get stuck, or describes it differently from how the product looks.
• The customer explicitly mentions a complaint, an exchange or a replacement.
• The customer explicitly declares withdrawal in the chat, for instance with “I hereby withdraw from my purchase”.

With the first five signs it is no longer about operation but about the buyer's rights in the event of defects (Section 437 BGB); what they are and which periods apply is covered in the article on complaints and warranty in chat. Whether there is a defect and which right applies is decided not by the chat but by the team, with legal advice where in doubt. The assistant records what that review needs: item and model, order number, delivery date, the fault in the customer's own words and the steps already tried. The last sign is about withdrawal. It is effected by a declaration to the trader (Section 355 (1), second sentence BGB); the provision names no particular channel for it. Such a message should therefore not get lost in the chat: the assistant records name and order number, does not confirm that the withdrawal is effective and hands the message over to the team with the conversation and the time it was sent, because sending the withdrawal in good time is sufficient to meet the deadline (Section 355 (1), fifth sentence BGB). Whether a chat message counts as a withdrawal in the individual case is for the team to clarify, with legal advice where in doubt.

Do not shorten safety notes

Many usage questions touch on safety: how is the kettle descaled, may the battery charge overnight, which cleaning agent does the coating tolerate, how is the shelf anchored to the wall? This is exactly where a short, friendly answer is tempting. A shortened answer, however, can leave out precisely the sentence that matters. For safety-relevant steps an assistant should therefore not summarise but reproduce the note from the manual, with the passage. What is not there, it does not fill in from general knowledge. Three rules for this can be set in the system instruction.

• Reproduce warnings and safety notes from the manual in full, without rephrasing or shortening them.
• With electricity, gas, heat, pressure or chemicals, suggest no steps that are not in the documents, and refer to the manufacturer or a specialist where anything is unclear.
• At signs of danger such as smoke, a smell of burning or leaking fluid, state the manual's note for this case, advise against further use and hand over to the team.

Re-ordering: consumables and accessories in the conversation

After the purchase a need arises that nobody had before it. The filter has to be changed after a few months, the spare blade is blunt, the wall bracket is missing. Anyone asking about this does not want advice but supplies, and this is exactly where a mention of accessories fits into the conversation: as the answer to a question that has just been asked. In the Pro package, the XICBOT shop assistant takes accessories and add-ons from the links maintained on the item in the XICBOT catalogue. If there is no such link, as a rule no suggestion is made, and the assistant is instructed not to name an accessory the catalogue does not list: it would hold out to the customer something the shop may not offer at all.

Without a connected merchandise management system, the assistant does not know by itself what someone ordered. It therefore asks for the item or model designation before naming accessories, and takes compatibility from the item's features. In the Pro package it can put the re-order together in the chat through the cart assistant; every change to the cart is carried out only after confirmation. One boundary matters particularly here: anyone currently considering a return or describing a defect should not get an accessory offer; this rule belongs in the system instruction. When an add-on fits into a conversation and when it comes across as pressure is covered in the article on cross-selling in chat.

Measuring: which products trigger questions

The real value of usage questions lies not in the single conversation but in their accumulation. If the same question keeps coming up for one product, a look at the documents is usually worthwhile: a sentence may be missing from the manual, a feature from the catalogue or a note from the product page. XICBOT's conversation analytics, included in the Pro package, gathers the most recent visitor questions into topics; each topic carries up to three key terms, written as visitors entered them. If a product name is among the key terms, that indicates which item triggers questions. Alongside are the knowledge gaps, meaning answers without a source reference, and the handover rate per topic. The table maps these signals to the places where something can be changed.

A good measure of how reliable the answers themselves are is the share of answers with a source reference. In our own measurement series, 42 of 48 answers carried a source reference; counted were questions whose answer is in the knowledge base, six had no source reference. For an individual shop it is not this value that counts but how it develops: if the share rises after manuals have been added, the documents have closed the gap. What the analytics does not tell you belongs here too: it does not show whether a return was actually avoided. That can only be tracked through the return reasons in the shop system.

Setting it up in six steps

An assistant for questions after the purchase needs little new technology, but carefully prepared documents. The following steps order the work so that the most important part comes first: the sources the answers come from, and the boundaries at which no answer is given.

• Collect the documents: manuals, quick guides, data sheets and care instructions per model, as PDFs with a text layer and with the model designation in the title.
• Check the product data: compatible models, dimensions, materials and replacement intervals as features on the item, accessories and consumables as links. Both are maintained in the XICBOT catalogue, even when title, price and availability come from Shopware Community Edition.
• Store withdrawal and returns: the withdrawal notice, the return route, the items for which the right of withdrawal is excluded and, where applicable, a voluntary returns policy as separate texts so the assistant can quote them word for word.
• Set the system rules: the way to withdraw first, no reason required, an offer of help at most once, safety notes in full, no accessory offer when a return or a defect is mentioned.
• Set up the handover: where a suspected defect and a withdrawal declared in the chat go, which details are recorded for them and who handles them.
• Write test cases: several real questions from the inbox for each of the five kinds, plus a withdrawal request, a withdrawal declared in the chat, a defect and a question no document answers.

Frequent questions