The importance of support emails
When you are in the process of building a product, you always want to hear out your users. You will be eager to know their queries, concerns, expectations and even feedback.
Why emails are preferred over calls? Emails being a convenient method, lets the user discuss their matter in detail. Emails are quick, you can keep track, you can attach files and most importantly you can send them as per your convenience.
Are they really important?
The answer is yes. Daily reports, trackers or any metrics are basically aggregation of the numbers. But the soul of all users getting in touch with you gets buried deep down the columns of spreadsheet.
One can perceive these emails as a simple query or use it as a piece of information. Even a simple query “How to fill this form?” can provide lots of information. What’s the pool size of such users? Is the pool size small enough to be ignored? What can be the reasons? and many more.
- Current affairs
In Journalism, Current affairs is a genre where the events are discussed immediately. Similar are the support emails. These emails represent your current state of service, product or company. These are not even a week old information related to a feature or product. These keep you aware about the things happening in the company and that makes it easier to deal before the real shit happens with your user.
2. How is your product being perceived?
Sometimes the user gets aggressive, sometime they are minimal with the information in the initial mail. Irrespective of the content be, you need to analyse them. If a user is willingly writing an email to the support, then they want to get into the conversation. And getting into a conversation can give you a much better understanding about how your product is being perceived in the market and the issues that the users are facing.
3. Knowledge regarding the product increases
Sometimes while going through the emails, you can find something that you are unaware of. It can be a new feature launch, a different kind of support related query or maybe even suggestion. And in the quest, you reach out to the concerned team and explore. This increases your awareness of the product.
4. Before it gets too late for the experiment or any other update
Whether you are a startup venture or an entrepreneur, you tend to roll out new features and even do A/B experiment. To conclude your experiment or A/B feature, you need to have a significant data size which might even take months. However, during initial days of experiment you can go through your support mails and check whether your inbox has any email regarding the same. These emails can give you a gist about the direction in which the experiment is moving. Also getting in conversation with those users can give you better insight about the experiment.
5. Explore new market
Achieving goals, noticing a jump in metrics are the end results of your efforts. They will never provide an overview of your user or even your product. Browsing through the support email will give everyone the idea about who their users are, how they feel and what are their expectations. Having knowledge about the expectations and demands of user, may lead to a new market to explore. A better understanding of users definitely helps you look for other opportunities.
6. Emotions
Numbers are good in terms of showing progress, but they don’t tell about the background story. Sometimes the users are enthusiastic, sometimes they complain. Few users are aggressive and then there are some who appreciate your effort. These mails are filled with emotions that may drive you to take bigger steps.
“Actually there is a lot of things ‘internshala’ is serving excluding internships , so it becomes difficult to tell one thing about your team & work. Your team replies us (mails and messages) on time , if there is any update regarding internship which we should be given , is served by your team. Now what extra we could expect ? The internshala team is working magnificent. Thanks a lot.”
“You guys are the best! Am not saying this cos you did a favour for me but I feel very much grateful for the kind gesture from you guys to investigate and then taking the step. Appreciate your kindness n happy to be part of such great platform.”
Please inform the students about the application procedure for internships properly, I have lost one opportunity because of improper information provided by you regarding the Summer Internship under Aniket Singh Internship program at Gandhi Nagar.
7. Makes you much more responsible
The responsibility increases when someone drops you an email. Whenever an email hits your inbox, the sense of urgency to clear that compels you to take action. Reading and analysing the actual problem triggers faster action than the numbers of your trackers.
Emails are still the central medium of communication and the volume is growing rather than shrinking. Dealing with the emails can be difficult as incoming information tend to be unstructured and can be complex sometimes, but it still is an information. And an email ignored is an information missed.
