How to Write a Customer Service Policy and Charter

Write a customer service policy by deciding what your staff must do, then turn those standards into a public charter customers can understand. Set the response times your team can meet and explain how customers reach a person. Keep the same rules in the documents your AI agent uses.

Before drafting, gather your contact channels, staffing hours and returns policy. Give one person responsibility for approving the service commitments and keeping them up to date.

Customer Service Policy Versus Charter

A customer service policy is an internal document that sets the standards staff must follow when helping customers. A customer service charter tells customers what service they can expect and how to raise a concern. The procedure gives staff the steps needed to carry out the policy.

Here’s a customer service policy example for a fictional online retailer. Its policy says that every complaint gets an acknowledgement within one business day and an assigned staff member. The matching procedure tells staff to log the complaint, record the customer’s requested outcome and send an acknowledgement naming the person handling it.

The public charter can then say, “We acknowledge complaints within one business day and tell you who is handling your concern.” That promise has a staff action behind it. An automatic receipt alone doesn’t meet the example’s promise to name a responsible person.

Service Commitments to Make

Choose service commitments from the work your team can deliver during a normal week and a busy period. Follow these steps before writing the public charter.

1. List the channels you monitor. Name the contact page, email or chat options customers can use, and say which channel handles complaints.
2. Define staffed hours and the time zone. Explain how weekends and public holidays affect business-day targets, including messages received outside those hours.
3. Set separate targets for acknowledgement and resolution. A first reply confirms receipt and ownership. A resolution means the customer has an answer or remedy.
4. Describe refund handling. Say what information helps staff assess a request and how customers receive a decision. Separate processing a refund from the bank completing it.
5. Assign complaint ownership and escalation. State when the first staff member passes the matter to a manager and when the customer receives the next update.
6. Check the draft against recent requests. If the team regularly misses a proposed target, change the staffing or set a target it can meet before publication.

Keep voluntary change-of-mind returns separate from remedies under the Australian Consumer Law. A store policy cannot remove consumer guarantee rights. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) explains this in its repair and refund guidance.

For a major product problem, the customer can choose a refund or replacement. A minor problem generally requires a free repair within a reasonable time. Avoid a charter promise that makes every faulty-product claim subject to a fixed change-of-mind window.

Use the returns policy template to develop the detailed rules your charter references. The charter can point customers to that policy without reproducing every returns condition.

Customer Service Charter Template

Use this short public charter as a starting point after choosing your own service commitments. The one-business-day acknowledgement and five-business-day update targets below are sample commitments, not legal deadlines. Replace the sample targets if your team needs different ones, and ensure your contact page lists the actual channels, hours and time zone.

You can contact our team through the channels listed on our contact page. That page shows our staffed hours and time zone. We acknowledge enquiries and complaints within one business day, excluding weekends and public holidays.

We explain who is handling your complaint and what happens next. Within five business days, we give you a decision or a progress update with the next expected response time.

We assess returns and refund requests under our returns policy and the Australian Consumer Law. Our policy does not limit your consumer guarantee rights. When we issue a refund, we tell you when it was processed and explain any payment-provider delay we know about.

You can ask for a manager to review a complaint if you disagree with our response. If you use our AI assistant and need a person, you can contact our team through the listed channels. Staff reply during the published staffed hours.

Keep the charter next to the contact details it relies on. If your store doesn’t use an AI assistant, remove that sentence before publishing.

Complaints and Escalation

Give each complaint an owner, an acknowledgement target and a next-update time. The following path uses the sample charter’s targets and keeps a difficult investigation from becoming an unexplained silence.

1. On receipt, record the order reference and the customer’s description of the problem. Assign a staff member and note the outcome the customer wants.
2. Within one business day, acknowledge the complaint. Explain who owns it and what information is needed to assess it.
3. Within five business days, give a decision or a progress update. If investigation continues, explain the reason and give a specific next-response time.
4. If the customer disputes the response, pass the record to a manager. Tell the customer when they can expect that review, using a target your team has agreed.

Move safety concerns and suspected misuse of personal information to the responsible manager immediately. Keep the customer’s account and earlier replies together so they don’t have to restart the complaint at handover.

If an internal review leaves the matter unresolved, explain the relevant state or territory consumer protection contact. Don’t promise that the ACCC will resolve an individual complaint: its consumer guidance explains its role.

Keeping Staff and AI Answers Consistent

Keep one approved set of policy documents for staff and the AI agent to answer from. Include the public charter and detailed returns rules, with the same contact channels and staffed hours in both.

Write each rule with its condition and action together. For example, explain when a change-of-mind return is accepted separately from what happens when a product is faulty. An agent answering “Can I return this?” needs that distinction as much as a staff member does.

Decide internally which requests require a person. A disputed refund decision, a safety concern or a customer asking for a manager needs a clear staff path. Set an out-of-hours message that describes when staff will respond without suggesting a person is available around the clock.

After a policy change, remove superseded copies from the agent’s active sources and give staff the replacement. Test the same questions with a staff member and the agent. Ask about a faulty item outside the change-of-mind window, a complaint sent after hours and a request for a manager.

Both answers must preserve consumer guarantee rights and give the same human contact route. If they disagree, inspect which document each answer used and correct the source before repeating the check.

Publishing and Reviewing the Policy

Publish the charter on a dedicated service page or beside your contact details, with links from the footer and help area. Keep the internal policy and procedures where staff can find them during a conversation. For the wider service workflow, read the ecommerce customer service guide.

Review the policy every three months as a starting schedule. Also review it whenever your staffing, channels or returns rules change. Give the review to a named owner who can compare the written targets with actual complaint records.

Before publishing, ask someone outside the service team to use the charter to find a complaint channel and work out the expected first-response time. Confirm that a staff member and the AI agent give those same answers. Publish once the contact route works, the sample commitments match your decisions and every active policy copy agrees.