- December 17, 2021
- by Last expert
- Blogs, Email Support
- 0 Comments
Irrespective of the size of the business you run, following customer service strategies help you in serving the customer effectively and efficiently. It doesn’t matter you have in house customer service team or you outsource the email support, by following these steps you serve your customer better.
Improve your email response time
Accelerate the time you respond to customer concerns, this has a huge impact on customer satisfaction. Customers look for responses at the earliest, even if you can’t resolve all the queries, responding to their concerns gives relief and satisfaction to the customer. They acknowledge the fact that you show seriousness in addressing their issues. It can set a stepping stone for more quality conversations ahead of time.
Respond to customer queries within one business day, if not for within an hour, if you stay consistent in this manner, you give a positive impression in the mind of the customer.
Have a casual, friendly tone
Depending on the business industry, choose to refer people, Eg. The Banking industry refers to their clients by their titles. Most businesses refer to their customers in a casual, friendly tone throughout the email. Act as per the situation demands. To sound casual is also considered professional.
Templates can be useful, do not completely depend on them
In a scenario where the customer queries are the same, answering it with a template may be helpful, keeping in mind all customer questions may not be identical too.
Sending a personal message are more productive rather than an automated message.
Salute with personal greetings
Using personal greetings is one of best practices if your brand is allowed to do that. You can get even more personal with this.Saluting your customer with the first name is one of the best practices for some businesses taking into account the customer demographics, yet most businesses refrain from doing so. It may also declare your tone in branding your business among a particular segment of people.
Create a connection
Creating a connection with a customer based on the product they bought will make the customer feel personal and better, in some cases it may even calm down the customer.
Making them feel comfortable saying,” I’m sorry you are having trouble with Product Y, I have bought the same for myself ,it’s an awesome choice you made,” right away makes you more connected.
Compassion
To sense an emotion through email is sometimes hard, it may lead to an embarrassment for both the agent and customer. When you come across such a situation, forge your feelings to establish a connection with the customer. We never know what kind of hardship they are undergoing.
Use some wisdom to understand the customer feelings and acknowledge them in writing, there can be umpteen number of reasons a customer may be disappointed example the product they bought didn’t work to their expectations, or they may be frustrated they didn’t receive the customer service through phone or they may be anxious that their account didn’t exist.
Using statements like,” I’m sorry you’re experiencing trouble with Product Y. I’d be frustrated too!” it can make the customer feel relieved to an extent. To achieve this you need to have the skill of emotional intelligence to identify yourself with customer feelings, it is an art of customer service skills to master.
Be Short
While drafting an email for customer resolution certain points to be kept in mind such as customers are busy or they might not be interested in long essays describing the whole response. Keeping this factor in mind the email should be concise.
Having said that, it doesn’t mean to miss the information which is of utmost importance, but avoiding information of least importance is recommended.
Avoid complex explanations
There might be situations where it is necessary to explain the resolutions which requires complex explanation. Resort to much simpler ways to put forth your message. By choosing this way you may avoid back and forth conversations to arrive at a conclusion or clarity.
Stay positive
Customer service is the assistance and guidance a company provides to people before, during, and after they buy a product or service, and when the customer contacts a customer service after the purchase, it may be that your customer is unhappy or unsatisfied in some way. That means it is a negative aspect for customers from your business. But keeping this in mind the customer service agent must be positive. Here the email should be focusing on the solution, rather than the problem.
Give assurance
Giving assurance to the customer that their problem will be sorted out, sets an expectation for the future.For example, let’s say your customer attempted to cancel their subscription to your service, but they were still charged for this month.
You can say something like, “Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to immediately refund this month’s payment—you won’t owe anything for this month—and cancel your subscription going forward. I’ll also send you an Rs100 coupon you can use to purchase anything you’d like from our store, as an apology.” Make the assurance to the point.
Provide links for further reading or help
List the possible links to the customer, if a customer enquiries about a complex question that may need elaborate explanation in the email, you can divert the customer to specific links in which all the solutions for the customer query is available, but in a manner that the customer feels that you didn’t dismiss his request rather gave a piece of supplementary information on his query. For example, if a customer is asking which keyboard shortcuts are available in the latest release, it may not be efficient or wise to list them all in your customer service email response. , you could lead into a link with something like, “if you want to learn more about keyboard shortcuts, we have this step-by-step guide…”
Show gratitude
In positive psychology research, gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness, so express some gratitude in your customer service emails.The customer may sound annoyed, frustrated, irate but thank them for the investment they have done to your business.
Followup without failure
If your business thinks that customer service is the key factor to having repeat customers, never wrap up the interaction with a single message, think out of the box and create a rapport with the customer to ensure that you’ve resolved the issue as desired.
In a few cases, the customer may follow up, in that case, be prepared to provide more information or help.
Double check the email before sending
Rechecking the message for spelling, grammar, links you include are working, check the advice, recommendations, instructions or other details are currently accurate. Bad spelling and unclear wordings may lead to further confusion and back–and–forth messages that are a waste of time for both the sender and receiver.
Measure customer satisfaction
To evaluate your email strategy, you must survey to gather information from the customers who received your service and request them to rate their overall satisfaction, in addition, prompt them to comment additionally for further improvement.
Analyze high–level data.
Constant improvement through measuring your customer service email best practices is one of the best tools to excel in customer service. Study your general email metrics, such as your average email response time, the average length of your messages and threads, email length, and whether there are customers who contact you more frequently than others. These are a few metrics to understand if you are travelling in the right direction of customer service.
Change to improve
Matching your email metrics with your customer satisfaction data will demonstrate your current level of success. Use this as a tool to improve the areas where you lack perfection and initiate new tools and methodology to improve the standard of service you provide in customer service. For example, you can incorporate new types of email templates, or experiment with different greetings, to see how your metrics eventually change.
If you are committed to constant improvement there is no doubt that your email support will be the best in the industry for dealing with customer service. A firm understanding of the Do’s and Don’ts, in addition to the optimal course of action, will provide you credibility in your business.
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