The 5 questions every pet brand gets, and how to stop answering them

Most small pet brands get the same five questions over and over: where is my order, what size should I get, what's your returns policy, what's in it, and how long will delivery take. The way to stop answering them is to write each answer down once, clearly, where customers look first.

While building Hope AI I read the shipping, returns and FAQ pages of a lot of UK pet shops. The wording varies from shop to shop. The questions hardly change at all. These are the five, with what I'd do about each one this afternoon.

1. "What size should I get?"

This is the big one for collars, harnesses, coats, beds and anything a dog wears or sleeps in. It comes in because the size guide is vague, hard to find, or measures the wrong thing.

Size by the dog's measurements. "Medium" means nothing on its own. "Medium: for a neck of 38 to 48 cm, usually a Cocker Spaniel" tells someone what to buy. Put the size table on the product page itself, where people are deciding, and say how to measure ("measure around the neck where the collar would sit, with two fingers of room"). Then add one line on what to do between sizes.

2. "How long will delivery take?"

People ask this before they buy, so a missing answer loses you sales as well as time. Give the dispatch time and the delivery time separately, because they're different things. Something like this, with your own times swapped in:

Orders placed before 2pm on a working day are dispatched the same day. Standard delivery takes 2 to 4 working days after dispatch. Orders to Northern Ireland and the Scottish Highlands can take 1 to 2 days longer.

Then say what delivery costs, where the free delivery threshold sits, and whether you ship abroad. Get those four facts down and you've covered nearly every delivery question.

3. "What is your returns policy?"

People want to know how long they have, what condition the item has to be in, and who pays for postage. Leave any of those out and they'll email you to ask. I wrote a whole guide on this: how to write a returns policy a support bot can use. Short version: use numbers and plain conditions, and treat food, hygiene products and personalised items as separate cases.

4. "What is in it?" (ingredients and materials)

For food and treats, that means the full ingredient list, the analytical constituents and any allergens. For accessories it's the fabric, the filling, and whether it's machine washable. For supplements it's what's in each serving, and nothing more.

Stick to plain product facts. Say what's in the product and leave out what it will do for an individual animal. Once a customer asks "will this help my dog's ...", the right answer is to suggest they ask their vet. I cover that in handling "is this safe for my dog?" questions without giving vet advice.

5. "Where is my order?"

This is the most emotional of the five, and the hardest to get rid of completely. You can sort out two parts of it in advance. The third you can't.

Before dispatch, say when orders ship, so people know what "processing" means. After dispatch, make sure the shipping confirmation email carries a tracking link, and mention that in your delivery policy. What you can't fix in advance is the individual parcel. Only you, or a tool connected to your order data, can say where one particular parcel has got to.

That's worth knowing if you ever add a chatbot. A bot with no access to your Shopify orders can't find a parcel. All it can do is share your shipping policy and point the customer to your contact details. That still helps, because a lot of "where is my order" messages turn out to be "how long does delivery take?" in disguise. Just don't expect more from it than that.

Do it once, in one place

This is how I'd go about it.

1. Go through your inbox and count which of the five you've answered in the last two weeks. Put them in order.
2. Rewrite the answers to the top two so they include the specific numbers and conditions above.
3. Put each answer where the customer is when the question occurs to them: sizing on the product page, delivery in the basket and the footer, returns linked from the order confirmation email.
4. Collect all five on one FAQ page, with the questions worded the way your customers word them.
5. Look again in a month. If a question is still coming in, the answer needs to be clearer.

Once the answers are written down, a support chatbot can give them out at any hour, in the customer's own words. That's what I built Hope AI to do. I build each one from the store's FAQ, shipping and returns policies and catalogue, and it only answers from what you've given it. If you're not sure you need one yet, read whether a small Shopify store should use one, or see pricing and the FAQ. A clear FAQ page saves you the hours either way.