Confirming a cash-on-delivery order by phone: call scripts in French and darija to download

A customer orders on a Thursday night on impulse, and the parcel comes back ten days later. Cash on delivery makes buying easy, and it makes refusing easy too. The confirmation call is the cheapest filter you have: one minute, before you ship. Here is a ready-to-use script, in French and darija, and what the law says about an online order.

Download the scripts

• Call script in French (.docx)
• Call script in darija (.docx)

They contain the opening, the seven steps of the call, answers to the usual objections, the call schedule and the written message to send if the customer does not answer. Replace what is in square brackets and adapt the phrases to your region: darija changes from one wilaya to another, and a speaker from your region should read the darija version.

The seven steps, briefly

1. Opening: who you are, why you call, “do you have a minute?”.
2. Check the person and the order: product, quantity, colour or size.
3. The total price, no surprises: product, delivery, total to pay the courier.
4. The address: wilaya, commune, neighbourhood, a landmark, a second number.
5. Delivery: the time, and the courier calling before coming.
6. The return policy, in one sentence, as written on the site.
7. The explicit “yes”, then the close. No “it’s confirmed” before that yes.

For objections (“I ordered nothing”, “I’m thinking”, “it’s too expensive”), the script gives a short answer, with no pressure. The principle: better to lose a doubtful order before shipping than to pay for a parcel round trip. The cost of a parcel that does not become a delivery is worked out with the real cost per delivered parcel formula and the COD profit tool.

What Law 18-05 says about the order

The e-commerce law (Official Journal no. 28 of 2018) frames the online order, and several of its rules feed the script.

• Three mandatory steps (art. 12): the contract terms are made available, the consumer checks the order details (products, unit and total price, quantities) and can change it, cancel it or correct an error, then confirms it, which forms the contract. Their choice must be explicitly expressed, and the fields they fill in must contain no data meant to steer their choice. In the call, that means: recap, allow corrections, get an explicit yes, and pre-tick or impose nothing. The call supplements these site steps; the law does not provide for it, and it does not replace them.
• Offer information (art. 11) and contract content (art. 13): prices including all taxes, availability, delivery costs and times, return and complaint terms. Hence steps 3, 5 and 6.
• No order out of stock (art. 24): check stock before calling.
• Product not ordered (art. 21): if you deliver a product the customer did not order, you cannot demand its price or the delivery costs. That is the reason for the first objection in the table: if someone placed the order with another person’s number, cancel it, do not ship.
• Payment on delivery (art. 27) and receipt (art. 17): payment on delivery is allowed, and the courier must have a receipt signed, which the customer cannot refuse to sign, and give them a copy.

For the conditions of trading online and the auto-entrepreneur status, read can they sell goods?.

And after the call?

A confirmed order is not a delivered order: delivery is still ahead. Choose and test the carrier with the comparison method, and read the four layers to reduce returns. For the ads that bring the orders, see the Meta Ads guide.

What we could not confirm

We did not check whether recording calls or keeping a list of numbers of customers who refuse a parcel respects Law 18-07 on personal data: if you do it, inform the customer and get advice. The call times and schedule in the template are our suggestions, not figures from a study. An acronym puzzles you? See the glossary.