Good customer service is important in any business. While many peopleare familiar with the basics of good face-to-face and phone service, theymay have less experience with translating those skills into effective,customer-friendly e-mails. At the basic level, you should be sure tocover these customer service concepts:Concept #1: Immediately acknowledge that you’ve received acustomer’s e-mail. Acknowledge all customer e-mails immediately(manually or with automation). If the initial e-mail response cannotresolve the issue in the sender’s e-mail, the acknowledgment shouldset time expectations for a complete resolution. Customers who donot receive an immediate acknowledgment are likely to send followupe-mails or call to track the status of their inquiries, which increasesservicing costs and complexity.Concept #2: Send answers to questions. It sounds pretty basic, butit often slips through the cracks. In fact, according to Jupiter MediaMetrix, the majority of consumers expect to resolve their customerservice inquiry within six hours, but only 38 percent of companies aremeeting this expectation. Another 33 percent are taking three days orlonger to do so or are not responding at all. In fact, Jupiter’s CustomerService WebTrack Survey found that the percentage of companies thatdid not respond to inquiries has risen from 19 percent to 24 percent.Concept #3: Send those answers, or at least updates, in a timelymanner. To motivate customers to use e-mail, which has the potentialfor being less expensive than agent-handled telephone calls, you mustprovide service that is at least as good as that a customer would receiveby phone.Concept #4: Answer the actual question. Templates make it easy tosend “almost right” answers to customers that don’t really answer theirquestions. Read carefully, reread and tailor customized responses when necessary. Templates also make it easy to send totally wrong answers.Be careful. Customers will judge the reliability of your company basedon the reliability of your e-mails.Concept #5: E-mails should be friendly. Most customers prefer e-mailsaddressed to them, rather than a “Dear Sender” e-mail even when therest of the e-mail is standardized. Personalization also includes signinge-mail responses with your name, and sometimes a phone number whereyou can be reached.Concept #6: E-mails should be accurate. Using standard e-mailresponse templates as the framework for personalized e-mails can helpeliminate some errors. So can running spellcheck before you send. Butthere’s really no substitute for carefully proofreading your work to makesure you’ve used proper grammar, proper usage and common courtesy.(For your convenience, we’ve included grammar and spelling refreshertips and quizzes throughout this book.) It’s also a good idea to buy adictionary or bookmark one online.Concept #7: E-mails should set the right tone. This will vary fromcompany to company. Your company may use emoticons (smiley faces)or it may not. Some companies opt for more formal English, others lessformal. Most companies have fairly set policies. You should followthem to ensure consistency of style. But, as a general rule, e-mailsshould be grammatically correct, polite and should use proper English,not “Internet English.”Concept #8: E-mails should be easy to read. Using a standard font(10– and 12-point Times New Roman, Courier and Arial are industrystandard), limiting the number of colors used, and avoiding all capitalletters are important. So is limiting the length of your e-mail. Manyeffective e-mails use short, one or two sentence paragraphs, separatedby an extra line space. This makes messages easier to read on screen.Concept #9: Customer e-mails should be screened for potentiallegal threats. Sometimes the threat of a lawsuit can be implied in aletter without being stated explicitly. These words should raise red flags:misrepresentation, fraud, liability, breach of contract. When you seethe
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