Refunds
How a refund request travels from a phone call to a decision your team makes, and what SIMCOAI will and will not do on the way.
Before you start
- A refund policy you can state in a sentence - SIMCOAI applies your policy, it does not invent one
- Somewhere for refund requests to land: a person or team who reviews them
What gets collected
A refund raised by phone or chat arrives as a structured record, not a voicemail someone has to decode.
| Field | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Order reference | Ties the request to something real. Required for order lookups. |
| Reason | In the customer’s own words, not a dropdown guess. |
| Contact details | So your team can reach them without listening back to the call. |
| Transcript | The full exchange, in case the summary missed nuance. |
| Verification state | Whether the customer confirmed their identity. |
| Evidence | Any proof uploads attached to the request. |
What SIMCOAI does not do
This is the most important paragraph on the page.
Careful. SIMCOAI never auto-approves a refund. It captures the request, verifies the customer, gathers evidence and summarises - then a person decides. Your refund policy governs the outcome, not the AI.
Verification and duplicates
- Verification. A caller claiming to be someone cannot trigger a refund on that person’s order. See verification codes.
- Duplicates. A second request for the same order will not silently create a second refund. Through the API this surfaces as 409
WORKFLOW_DUPLICATE- see idempotency. - Audit. Every state change is recorded against the record.
Reviewing a refund
- Open the recordRefunds appear in the dashboard with their full context.
- Check verificationAn unverified request is a request, not a confirmed customer.
- Review evidenceBarcode and document checks are flagged matched or unmatched - both are signals, not verdicts.
- DecideApprove, decline or ask for more. Your policy, your call.
- Tell the customerSIMCOAI can capture the outcome; communicating it stays a business decision.
Expected result
A refund record carrying the order, the reason, the transcript, verification state and any evidence - enough to decide without ringing the customer back for basics.