Potential interaction with your business has evolved to the point that you are now expected to accommodate all manner of customer. There are four key points of contact for customers to reach business: phone call, email, social media and face-to-face. Heerd intends to explore these channels in order to help your business develop the ever-desired omni-channel strategy for customer service. Part one of our series focuses on email interactions with customers, and the steps you need to take to keep your customers satisfied.
While the digital age has not meant the end of human interaction in customer service, it’s still true that many customers are happy to resolve their customer service complaint digitally. This means you can’t afford to be lacking in the email customer service department and the pains you go through to keep customers happy face-to-face must be matched when working over a digital space.
If you’re finding your interactions with customers over email tend to end negatively or that you’re always on the back foot, perhaps this list of the essential practices of email customer service can help!
Take it seriously
We understand that there are a lot of emails coming in, and maybe a recent one from a particularly angry customer (presumably demanding things you couldn’t possibly provide) could make you wonder why you bother… but you must always treat every email as seriously as the last! If you’re just skimming the information in their message and replying with what you assume they want to hear, they will sense your lacklustre enthusiasm.
Take customer emails seriously, and treat them with respect. Think about how you would be expected to treat your customers in person, and apply that to your email! Attentive, friendly and helpful! You don’t necessarily have to agree with a complaint, but you do need to display empathy for it.
Be grateful for the complaints
It’s the oldest customer service titbit there is, but you always need to smile, even when you’re dealing with a difficult customer. This doesn’t just go for face-to-face complaints, either. Despite them not being able to see your face, you need to show you appreciate your customers’ complaints.
They may be giving you criticism, but research suggests that, for a small to medium sized business, one complaint represents 26 customer experiences — 25 of which simply didn’t inform you of their problem. This means one person’s complaint, regardless of how friendly they are in the email, is actually giving you essential feedback. Rectifying a problem for this customer could retain the custom of 26 people! Yes, you owe them for telling you off. Now say thank you!
Know how to deliver the news
If your reply is all good news, then there’s probably very few ways you could mess it up! Alas, it is often the duty of the customer service manager to be the bearer of bad news — albeit a good customer service representative should be able to provide some good news to go along with it.
How you deliver this news will have an impact on your customers’ reaction to it. A study at University of California, Riverside, suggested that the reactions to good and bad news in a certain order would affect how the reader reacts. Receiving bad news, then good news will leave the customer happier, however starting with good news and then giving bad news will encourage the customer to ‘act’ fast. The latter is great when trying to get more sales with an email like, “The item you have been waiting for is in stock, however stocks are running out!” encouraging customers to take action to order that product. Meanwhile the former is better for customer service, so if your target is customer satisfaction, make sure you end your email on a high note!
Keep it simple!
When you’re talking to someone in person, it’s easier to grasp their level of understanding on a certain subject. You can usually adjust the amount of jargon or tech-talk to the appropriate level. In e-mails, you’ll want to keep it much simpler.
In verbal discussion, customers can get instant clarification on statements they don’t understand. In an email, reading a sentence that makes very little sense to a customer can be frustrating, especially when they know they won’t be getting an immediate response explaining what you mean.
Keeping things easy to understand will make the customer’s experience quicker and easier, so confirm you and your staff know how to talk about your business in layman’s terms.
Check your tone
According to a study, most customers (65%) prefer a relaxed, casual tone to keep the conversation light. But not all of them do, so take your time to properly establish the tone of each customer and match it. You can even use emoticons if you’re feeling confident, but be aware that 35% of the above study thought emoticons were too informal for a customer service email.
However, if your customer is requesting something you can’t give, regardless of how casual they were in their email, your response needs to be more formal. Being casually told no to your request will turn your casual customer into an angry one. You shouldn’t sound happy about denying them their request.
Check your vocabulary
There might be times when you really want to let a customer have it, right? Well, obviously, you can’t do that! But be careful to not also fall into passive aggressive habits. Your choice of terminology has a huge impact on the way an email is read. Much like how your intonation and tone can change the meaning of a sentence verbally, vocabulary has the same effect in email. You might not even realise you’re doing it, which is why it’s especially important to understand how language is interpreted.
Obvious examples are when you start a sentence with, “I think you’ll find…” or, “I’ll have you know…”, which are very aggressive phrases. Be wary also of language that sounds dismissive, such as ‘actually’. Just look at the difference between these two sentences:
“Actually, you’ll need to come to the shop to talk to the manager.”
“We’d be glad to help! The shop manager is in the store; if you’d like to pop down you’d be very welcome!”
There are many more examples — even seemingly innocent terms like, “See below”, “Let me clarify” or “Just wondering” can translate as aggressive. CXService360 goes as far as to call passive aggressive language a ‘destructive cancer’ of organisational cultures. So, actually, I’ll just clarify again, that passive aggressive language isn’t ok, got it? I’m glad you understand.
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