Phone confirmation: what to say on the call, and when

The first thirty seconds decide the rest

A Moroccan customer taking a call from an unknown number expects cold selling, and hangs up quickly. The agent therefore has one sentence, not three, in which to be recognised: their first name, the shop or the product ordered, and the reason for the call. 'Hello, I am calling about the order you placed for this product' is enough, provided the product is named straight away.

Many orders arrive from an advert seen on social media or from a direct message. The customer does not remember the shop's name, but does remember the product and the photograph. Naming the product before the shop is therefore more effective, even though it feels back to front. Language follows the same logic: the agent switches to the customer's as soon as they hear it, because pressing on in a language they handle poorly produces misunderstandings about the amount and the address.

Stating the total out loud

This is the most profitable sentence of the call, and the one most often skipped. The customer must hear a single sum: the one the courier will ask for, delivery included. Not the product price on one side and delivery on the other, not 'plus the fee' — one amount, clearly spoken.

The reason is easy to verify in any list of returns: a customer who discovers an extra charge on their doorstep refuses, even when the extra is small. They are not refusing the amount, they are refusing the surprise. And a refusal costs the seller the delivery, the return and the advertising on the lead, over a disagreement of a few dirhams that one sentence would have settled.

Good practice is to have it repeated back. The agent states the total, then asks the customer to confirm it in their own voice. A customer who has said the amount aloud will not dispute it on delivery. If they hesitate, that is the moment to discuss it — not in front of the courier.

Pinning down a Moroccan address with no street name

Across much of the country, the useful address is not the one on a form. Many neighbourhoods have no readable street sign, numbering is patchy, and two buildings side by side can carry the same number. Asking for 'your full address' gets an answer nobody can use; asking how one gets to the customer's door gets an address that works.

What makes an address deliverable in Morocco comes down to four things: the city, the neighbourhood, a landmark visible from the street, and the final direction in the customer's own words. The landmark is the decisive one — a pharmacy, a mosque, a school, a café, a petrol station, the neighbourhood bakery. It is what the customer would tell a taxi driver, and it is precisely what should be written down.

The city, by contrast, is picked from the list of served cities and not copied as typed: a name attached to the wrong city sends the parcel on the wrong round.

• The landmark before the number — 'Next to the X pharmacy, opposite the Y café' beats a street number nobody displays.
• The floor and the door — In a block of flats, the floor and the name on the door or the bell save the courier a second climb.
• A second number — A backup number — a relative, a neighbour, the shop downstairs — saves the delivery on the day the customer is in a meeting.
• A realistic slot — Not when the customer would like to be delivered, but when they are genuinely at home, or who can take the parcel instead.

When to call, and how many times

Calling at the wrong moment is a quiet way of losing a sale. Very early in the morning, in the middle of the lunch break or late in the evening, the customer either answers in a bad mood or does not answer at all; either way the order degrades. Late morning and late afternoon are the slots where a conversation is possible, and they should be kept for the freshest leads.

Lead freshness matters as much as the hour. A customer called within hours of ordering still remembers the advert and the impulse; called two days later they have forgotten, or bought elsewhere. That is why the call queue is worked newest first, with promised callbacks taking absolute priority.

The number of attempts is a question of cost, not patience. On CODFamilia unanswered calls are counted in successive stages, with an automatic delay between them, and the last attempt is backed by a written message giving the customer a chance to call back. If no stage succeeds, the order is closed without dispatch: better to lose the cost of the lead than to add a delivery and a return to it.

Writing down what was said, for the next person

A call that is not written up has served only the person who made it. The call note has three different readers: the agent who will ring back tomorrow, the seller who wants to understand a refusal, and the team that has to settle a dispute over a return.

A useful note says what the customer said, not what the agent thought of it. 'Wants size L, not M; home after five; does not answer in the mornings' can be acted on. 'Customer not serious' cannot: the next person knows neither what to say nor whether to ring at all.

It is also the seller's only protection when one account contradicts another. If a customer claims they ordered a different model, or never agreed to the amount, the call record keeps the outcome, the timestamp and the notes. Without that trail, the disagreement is always settled against whoever paid for the delivery.

• The outcome first — An outcome chosen from the list, never left blank: it is what decides whether the parcel ships. And a callback with no date is not a callback, it is a lead lost in the queue.
• The customer's own words — Corrections to the address, variant or quantity carried onto the order itself, not just left as a comment.
• Anything promised — A lead time mentioned, a free item hinted at, a discount discussed: anything that could be claimed at the door has to be written down.