Provide detailed contacts with names and pictures, not faceless forms
Set up guidelines for responses
Make the subject line mean something
Start off recognizing what they said
How to answer customer email
Sure, automate a reply saying you will get to their questions as soon as you can. Good practice: reply within an hour. Best: reply within a second.
But what do you say when you actually get around to responding to the person's question, complaint, confusion?
You have a few moments to think, and you can write a reasonably personal response without having to dial, wait, go through an extension, interrupt the consumer at work, exchange pleasantries about the weather, and listen to a long historical narrative leading slowly up to the problem itself.
So E-mail lets you answer a lot more questions than you could handle on the phone or by regular mail.
That's why you should invite e-mail questions from your guests.
In this module, we walk you through a pattern that will help you solve your customer's problems, while ensuring that they come back and buy again.
Resource:
E-mail responses to customers, chapter from Hot Text, Web Writing that Works (PDF, 995K, or about 18 minutes at 56K)
