Customer support isn’t as simple as it was 20 years ago. Heck, it’s not as simple as it was just five years ago.
To provide the best customer experience in 2022, you need to reach your customers where they are at any given time. This means providing CX support on the phone, via live chat, on social media, within your mobile app, through community forums, and on review websites – the list seems endless.
Email remains one of the oldest and most popular customer service channels. But like other non-voice support channels, a lot of communication might be lost when you remove the ability to hear and see the other person.
For most people, creating a helpful and informative CX email starts with the email content.
But stop ✋
If you’re already thinking about the content, you’ve gone too far. Start by looking at your subject line and your email’s from name.
Today’s email inboxes are overflowing. And that’s not even counting the number of emails that fall into spam filters or separate inboxes. (Yes, we’re looking at you and your Promotions inbox, Gmail.)
There are a couple of ways to help combat the battlefield of email deliverability. Start by writing an email subject line that clearly shows this is related to your support issue, not just another sales or promotional email.
Here are a few sample customer support subject lines:
Beyond the subject line, you want to look at what sender name or from name is used.
People don’t like opening emails from senders they don’t know or from accounts that could be malicious or spam. For instance, if your customer support messages display a from name like “Customer Support” or just “support@abchealthcare.com,” you might be hurting the open rate of your emails.
The more you customize your sender name, the better the email open rate. Consider from names like Kate at AB&C Retail, or if you want it to stay more general, a name like AB&C Customer Support.
It’s 2022 – it’s no longer okay to send generic emails without personalization.
Use your customer’s name when you start your email. Using their name helps verify that the information you’re providing is personalized for them. But above that, it’s just a nice gesture and helps to show that your company cares.
But using your customer’s first name in the copy is the bare minimum.
Many people think personalizing their communication means dropping in details for the sake of dropping in details. In a world where people are increasingly more worried about their privacy, sharing too much might come across as more creepy than helpful. (Hello, Susan! We can see you live at 17 Mulberry with two dogs, a cat, and a bird. How’s your grandson, George?)
Instead, personalize your email based on their question. You could just copy and paste your response from your company’s collection of auto-responses and snippets, but taking a few extra seconds to tweak the response to their question shows you listened.
One of the benefits of email over other methods of communication is that you have time to consider and compose your message. This means your customers have certain expectations from email over something like live chat or phone.
If you have a lot of information to share with the customer, compose your email utilizing sections and bullet points. This makes it easy for customers to skim the email to find the information they need most.
For issues that require a significant amount of explanation, consider putting a brief summary in the email and including a link to your site with more information. Not everyone is going to want to read all those details. But for those that do, this will give them the opportunity without overwhelming others.
Check out the layout of this example customer service email:
Remember the person you’re writing this email for – your customer.
Your CX processes may require a support ticket number, an account number, an agent number, a confirmation number – all sorts of different numbers. While it may make sense for you and your team, all of these numbers can be overwhelming to your customer.
Additionally, while you may have an internal system that tracks support issues, don’t include links to this internal system unless the customer can access them. Clicking broken or inaccessible links can frustrate the customer and decrease their trust in you and your company.
If you must include internal reference numbers or links, put it below all the information relevant to your customer and label it as internal use only.
You might be the best conversationalist… But most likely, the customer isn’t opening your email for the conversation.
When you create your email, clearly outline the next steps – for your customer and for you. There’s nothing more frustrating than reaching back out to support a month later only to find out the support team was waiting on you to send them something.
Lay out what the next steps are, who is responsible for those, and how long they expect that process to take.
Remember. Just because you’ve dealt with these CX issues a lot, your customer (hopefully!) hasn’t. Assume they likely don’t know how this process goes and definitely don’t know how much time might be needed for each step.
One of the most difficult aspects of working with customer support is the wait time.
When you talk with a customer, it’s important to provide a follow-up as soon as possible. The follow-up is your way of confirming (in writing) what was said in your conversation, outlining the next steps, and setting the expectation for future communication.
Support tickets vary in size. Some will be resolved quickly, but others may drag on for quite a long time. While it’s not ideal, sometimes you won’t have an update on the progress. Not having an update is not an excuse not to send a follow-up email.
Send the follow-up email even if you don’t have the update the customer wants.
For those longer support issues, send a follow-up email to let the customer know your company is still actively working on a resolution and include details on when they can expect to get another update from the customer service team.
While this email might not make the customer happy, it can help to prevent an angry customer from claiming your company has done nothing to help.
Even after connecting with customer support, it’s surprising how many barriers the customer has to jump to keep that communication going.
Take a look at your email. Does it give the name of whom they should contact? Does it give multiple methods of contact? Just because you’re communicating via email doesn’t mean you must only use email.
Let’s say your email does provide instructions for communication. Whether it’s email or phone, is the associate giving the customer a direct line to a support agent, or is the customer just entering the same generic cue they were in when they first contacted your company?
Giving them a direct way to reach support about an existing ticket can go a long way.
Stop using ‘do not reply’ email addresses.
The most natural way to respond to an email is to hit the reply button. Even if you provide an alternative email address, phone number, or live chat link, people will still hit that reply button and get frustrated when it doesn’t go through.
While your customer service emails may need to be sent from a generic account, make sure you have someone monitoring the emails that end up in this inbox and routing them to the correct person.
Each customer is unique. Providing great customer service means treating each customer with a slightly different approach – even if you’re dealing with the same technical issues. Read their emotion and choose language and words to match.
This is not an excuse to be rude to a rude customer (even if they probably deserve it!)
But you do need to consider how your response might sound. Someone who’s incredibly frustrated might take offense to a customer service agent’s bubbly and happy responses. While another customer may take an associate’s calm or relaxed tone as not taking their issue seriously.
Check out the image below to see how Andy answers the same question for two different customers with different tones.
There are a few language rules to follow regardless of working with customers who are pleased or frustrated. One of these rules is to always make positive language choices.
Identifying positive language choices can be tricky. Positive language focuses on telling your customers what you can do instead of putting a focus on the things you can’t.
Here are a few examples of changing negative language to positive language in some common customer support email responses:
One of the benefits of email is that you aren’t expected to reply immediately. You need to be quick, but you should still take the time to review and proofread your email for accuracy.
Start by reviewing spelling. Most email providers have a spellcheck tool, so be sure that’s enabled if possible. However, even with spellcheck enabled, some words can be missed. This is especially true with people’s names. Double (and triple!) check you’ve spelled your customer’s name right – spelling it incorrectly is a great way to get a relationship off to a bad start.
Next, review your email for any informal language. Sometimes when we’re rushing, it can be easy to forget we’re writing to our clients, not our friends. Look through your email to ensure you’re eliminating any informal text lingo like BRB, BTW, or other common acronyms you might use when texting.
Speaking of acronyms, text lingo isn’t the only type that slips into our emails. The companies we work for have a lot of internal terms and acronyms. While these terms might make sense to you and your colleagues, they will likely confuse your customer. In this case, reconsider if that acronym or term is necessary to tell your customer – it’s probably not.
While we’ve listed a bunch of different ways to improve your customer service emails, the thing to remember above all else is to be kind and helpful.
Saying “thank you” and “I’m sorry” mean a lot to a frustrated customer. If you cannot provide a resolution, be honest about it, and then explain what you’re going to do to get them the resolution they need.
Once you think the customer’s problem has been resolved, always ask what else you can do to help them. This is a great way to make sure your customer is satisfied with the resolution and help you nip any future customer service calls in the bud.
Before sending your emails, ask yourself if they’re helpful and kind. If the answer is yes, feel confident that you’re being a great representative for your company.