Writing store policies an agent can read Free & Pro

When a customer asks their assistant "can I return this?" or "how long does shipping take?", the assistant asks your store for its policies and answers from what it gets. Agent Adapt sends three of your pages as plain text. If they are clear, the customer gets a straight answer. If they are vague, missing, or an image of a scanned document, the customer gets "I couldn’t find out", and probably goes elsewhere. This guide covers what is sent and how to write it.

What is sent

Any verified agent, signed in or not, can ask for your store’s policies. It receives:

• Store facts: your store’s name, address, currency and base country.
• Up to three pages, each with its title, its web address, when it was last updated, and its text:
  • your Refund and Returns Policy page (set under WooCommerce → Settings → Advanced → Page setup);
  • your Terms and Conditions page (same place);
  • your Privacy Policy page (Settings → Privacy).

A page is sent only if it is set, published and not password-protected. Its content is rendered (blocks and shortcodes resolved), then reduced to text, up to 20,000 characters, which is about 3,500 words. Images, videos and embedded PDFs contribute nothing.

Pages you have not set are simply left out. The agent then has no returns policy to quote, and will say so.

Write the returns page for a reader in a hurry

An assistant is going to answer one question from your page, usually within a sentence or two. Put the facts first and make them exact.

Lead with the numbers.

You can return most items within 30 days of delivery for a full refund. Items must be unused and in their original packaging.

Then the exceptions, as a list.

We can’t accept returns of: opened food, personalised items, gift cards.

Then how, who pays, and how long.

Email [email protected] with your order number. We’ll send a label; return postage is £3.95, deducted from your refund unless the item was faulty. Refunds go back to your original payment method within 5 working days of the item reaching us.

Then exchanges, faulty goods, and anything legal, in the same plain form.

What to avoid:

• Policy in a PDF or an image. It is not sent at all.
• "See our FAQ" with the facts somewhere else. The agent gets this page, not the one it points to.
• Hedged wording. "Returns may be accepted at our discretion" gives the assistant nothing to tell the customer. If that is your policy, say what the discretion depends on.
• Marketing copy before the facts. The first 500 characters are the most read, by people and by software.

Terms and conditions

Most of a terms page is legal text an assistant will not quote. The parts it will look for, because customers ask: delivery times and costs, what happens if an item is out of stock after ordering, cancellation before dispatch, and which country’s law applies. Give each its own heading, so the sentence the assistant needs is easy to find.

Privacy policy

Two things to do here.

First, keep it readable for the same reason as above. Customers ask assistants "what do they do with my data?" more than they ever read the page themselves.

Second, mention connected assistants. A sentence along these lines is enough:

You can connect an AI assistant to your account. It can then see what you approve on our sign-in page (such as your orders and saved addresses) for up to 90 days, and you can disconnect it at any time from My Account → Connected agents. We fetch an assistant’s published details to verify it; we send it nothing about you until you approve it.

See What Agent Adapt stores and shares for the facts behind that.

Keep them current

Each page is sent with its last-updated date, and a careful assistant will tell the customer how old a policy is. When you change a policy, change the page, not a footnote. If you change your return window in Pro’s policy settings (the days after completion within which an agent may send a return request), make sure the page says the same number.

A quick test

Open your returns page and read only the first paragraph aloud. Can you answer "can I return this, and how?" from it? If not, neither can an assistant.

Common questions

Does the agent see my shipping page?

Not through the policies call. It sends the three pages above. If your shipping rules are on another page, add a summary of them to your terms page, or to the returns page where returns postage is covered.

Can I send a different page, or more pages?

Not from the settings. The three come from WooCommerce’s and WordPress’s own page settings, so you set them once and both the storefront and agents use the same text.

What if my policy page is long?

Up to 20,000 characters is sent. Put the facts customers ask about in the first part; a long legal tail is fine after that.

Do agents read the policy text on my product pages?

No. Product details are sent separately, from the product’s own fields. Returns conditions that apply to one product only ("final sale") belong in that product’s description as well as on the returns page.