Delivery times in your online shop: stop your agent overpromising

A customer messages you on a Tuesday night: "It's for my daughter's birthday on Saturday — will it arrive in time?" A sensible person on your team would check the order, think about the courier and answer carefully. An AI agent that has only been told "we ship in 24–48 hours" will very probably say yes. Come Saturday you have an angry customer, a one-star review and the feeling that the AI has dropped you in it. This piece is for you if you run a small online shop and want an agent to handle delivery questions without committing to dates you don't control. By the end you'll know what information to give it, in what shape, and which phrases it should never use.

Why agents overpromise

An AI agent doesn't fib out of malice; it fills gaps. If your site says "delivered in 24–48 h" and nobody has told it that the clock starts when the parcel leaves your stockroom, that you don't pack on Saturdays and that the Canary Islands take a week, it will do the simplest, most optimistic sum. The customer asks for a specific date, and the agent — built to be helpful — gives one.

The problem is almost never the model; it's the information. "24–48 h" is a slogan, not a fact. To answer well, the agent needs what a new hire would need on day one: how your fulfilment actually works, exceptions included. The good news is that it fits on a page or two, and you can write it in an afternoon.

Step 1: split handling time from transit time

The most common mistake is quoting one lead time when there are really two. One depends on you (getting the order packed), the other on the courier (getting it there). Write them down separately:

• Cut-off time. Until when an order still ships the same day. For example: "Orders paid before 1pm Monday to Thursday ship that day; Friday orders after 1pm ship on Monday."
• Handling days. With your own stock it may be same day. If you rely on a supplier or a third-party warehouse, write the real figure, not the ideal one.
• Non-working days. Weekends, national bank holidays and — easy to forget — local holidays where you or your warehouse are based. A local holiday on a Monday eats a day the agent doesn't know exists.
• Courier transit time per destination, in working days from collection.

With that, the agent can reason the way you would: "If you order today, Thursday, before 1pm it ships today, and standard delivery on the mainland is usually one to two working days, so Friday or Monday is typical." Notice there's no "guaranteed" anywhere in that sentence.

Step 2: lead times by zone and delivery method

Not every customer lives the same distance from your stockroom. List each zone you ship to with its usual lead time: mainland Spain, the Balearics, the Canaries, Ceuta and Melilla, Portugal or the rest of Europe if you sell abroad. For the Canaries, Ceuta and Melilla add a note about customs paperwork, because that's exactly where deliveries stretch and where customers get surprised by charges on arrival.

Do the same for methods: standard, express, pick-up point, click and collect. If the courier only guarantees express in major cities, write that down. If in-store collection is ready "from 5pm the next day", write that too. Every detail you add is one false promise the agent won't make.

Step 3: the cases that break the rule

This is where most conversations go wrong. Go through your catalogue and flag anything that doesn't follow the standard lead time:

• Out-of-stock or made-to-order items. If a product ships from your supplier, the agent needs to know the lead time is different and isn't firm until the supplier confirms.
• Personalised or handmade products. Engraving, custom sizing, pieces you make yourself. Give an honest range: "7–10 working days to make, plus delivery."
• Pre-orders. The expected arrival of the batch, and what happens if it slips.
• Mixed orders. If someone buys one in-stock item and one made-to-order item, do you wait and ship together or send two parcels? The agent needs to know so it doesn't quote the faster item's lead time.
• Peak season. Black Friday, Christmas, the sales. Add a dated note each year with the extended lead times and the last recommended order date for delivery before the 24th of December or Twelfth Night, then remove it afterwards.

If your agent can read stock levels and order status from your platform — Shopify, WooCommerce, PrestaShop — even better: it knows in each case whether the item is on the shelf. You still need the sheet, though. Stock tells you whether you have units, not how long the courier takes to Lanzarote.

Step 4: how it should talk about dates

With the data in place, tell the agent how to use it. A few rules you can copy and adapt:

1. Ranges, not fixed dates. "It will usually arrive between Friday and Monday", never "it arrives Friday".
2. Say what it depends on. "If you order before 1pm" or "once the supplier confirms". Customers appreciate knowing why.
3. Banned phrases. "Guaranteed", "definitely", "for sure", "I promise". Put them in an explicit list; an agent follows a written ban far better than an intention.
4. Hand over when a date really matters. If the customer mentions an event, a gift, a trip or the word "urgent", the agent gives the general information and passes the conversation to you. Whether to take the risk, suggest express or point them to something you do have in stock is your call.
5. On a delay, facts not excuses. If the parcel is already moving and has stalled, the agent reports what the tracking says and flags it to you. It doesn't guess at the cause or offer compensation.

Before you let it loose, test it yourself with ten awkward questions: "Will it reach Tenerife before Thursday?", "Can I have it tomorrow if I pay now?", "If I order the engraving today, will I have it by Sunday?" If any reply sounds like a promise, the fault is in the sheet or the rules, and that's where you fix it.

When it shouldn't quote dates at all

Sometimes the honest answer is for the agent to stay general and hand the conversation to you:

• Your stock isn't synced. If the site shows units you don't have, the agent will promise to ship products that don't exist. Fix that first.
• Your courier's tracking is unreliable. Without a real delivery status, the agent can only repeat theoretical lead times, and when something is late it has nothing useful to say.
• Your lead times change every week. If you depend on an unpredictable supplier, a careful "we'll confirm the date as soon as we have it" beats a date you'll have to take back.

One reminder that has nothing to do with AI: in Spain, unless you agree otherwise with the customer, consumer law sets a maximum of 30 calendar days to deliver an order (article 66 bis of the consolidated General Law for the Protection of Consumers and Users, in Spanish). If you sell made-to-order goods with long lead times, check that what your site says — and what the agent will say — fits with that.

What one afternoon buys you

A good lead-time sheet isn't just for the agent. It's the same information anyone covering for you on holiday needs, and writing it down usually surfaces things that only lived in your head. The agent applies it every time, at any hour, without the "well, I think so" that slips out of you at eight on a Friday evening.

If "when will it arrive?" takes up a good chunk of your day, our receptionist agent answers it on WhatsApp, web chat and email using your lead times and your rules — and passes you the ones with an important date behind them.