Customer email response time matters as customers are the major source of revenue. For this purpose, customer satisfaction is important, which can be assessed through customer email response time. We have found the 5 tips to improve customer email response time.
- Send an immediate response
Customer satisfaction is key to any good business and a vital aspect of it is customer response time. Market surveys indicate that the customer expects a reply within an hour; earlier the better. Else, they don’t want to do business with you. Apps like Zomato are consistent in keeping you informed in a structured way. The customer receives an acknowledgment of his order, almost instantly. This creates a positive perception that a team springs into action the minute he places his order. An immediate acknowledgment of a customer’s order, query or complaint reveals that you believe in servicing them well.
And all it takes from your end is to send out a personalized automated reply, which is relevant to the situation. Doing this also means you are preventing them from reaching out to you through another mode of communication. This leads to both unpleasantness as well as extra work for your team. Hence, keep the First Response Time short and make your customers trust you better. Client engagement is high. When the time is managed well, or the product is delivered even before the promised time, the customer’s expectation is more than met.
The media company CNBC states that swift responses accomplish more than just ensuring customer satisfaction – they also underscore a business’s commitment to valuing its customers, a crucial factor for maintaining their loyalty and continued patronage. When clients are aware that they can easily contact a business and anticipate timely replies, it fosters a sense of assurance in their interactions. This confidence significantly contributes to cultivating a favorable and enduring rapport with customers.
- Aspects you need to consider to set the TRT
You need to consider a few aspects before setting the turn round time. It can be evaluated reasonably well when you know the complexity of the issue on hand. You also need to know, what the response time given to the customer in earlier instances with similar issues, was. That would be the baseline for your customer’s expectations. Implement a good customer service software that will help extract all the previous mail exchanges with each client so you’ll ascertain this without a sweat.
Communicating with your support staff to know what is a reasonable time they’ll need, is a vital aspect to consider. And finally, you also need to know how urgently, your client needs your assistance, so you can accordingly flag it. An important aspect of customer satisfaction is quoting a realistic timeline and then doing all it takes to deliver ahead of time. This makes you consistent and reliable in your customer’s eyes. He will feel valued by your promptness.
- Use Autoresponders Responsibly
You can streamline responses by creating autoresponders for FAQs, and for the different types of queries or orders, you get. It saves you both time and the trouble of not having to respond to follow up queries. The prompt and well-written response will add credit to your brand image. Let the message be engaging, tapping into feelings while also being clear and precise. Creating as many as you need to, based on the kind of issues you encounter, helps stay on top of the communication game. At every stage of service, you can send one out.
That way, your customer is kept in the loop throughout the wait. An autoresponder can also contain other useful information such as a phone number to contact customer service or even a number for an ASAP scenario. Only, do not use an autoresponder when your clients are elite or few. And if you do use autoresponders, make them personal and keep the tone warm and sincere.
As per a post featured on the Campaigner blog, skillful utilization of autoresponder emails ensures the timely delivery of essential messages, cultivates confidence in your brand, and enhances sales figures. Due to their predetermined timing, autoresponder emails are tailor-made for every subscriber, resulting in remarkable pertinence. Notably, nurtured emails lead to purchases 47% larger than those attributed to non-nurtured emails.
- Use an App that lets you effectively deal with a high volume of emails
Some apps can assist you with auto-sorting, standard replies, detailed reporting, tagging categories, etc. Apps or plugins like Yesware, If No Reply, Boomerang Respondable, etc can make work simpler. Using an app like Text Expander is greatly useful to send out quick replies when you have to deal with bulk emails. With a few keyboard shot cuts, it can guess the kind of message you want to send. It will copy a response you posted previously.
You may just need to edit it a bit before hitting send. The wait is always longer when you are silent. Use technology to quickly and efficiently reach out to your client at regular intervals. Silence indicates that you either don’t care or you are not aware of the turn round time. But when you use the right apps, you will create the time to ensure you update them with relevant information, making the customer experience more positive.
According to Help Scout, the utilization of email management software empowers support teams to provide quicker and more effective responses to a high volume of customer inquiries. Functions such as automated responses, email templates, and collaborative inboxes equip support teams to manage customer emails with heightened efficiency, guaranteeing swift and responsive customer assistance. This software also reduces the burden of email organization, processing, and prioritization, ultimately enhancing productivity and concentration.
- Create an excellent page for FAQs
Devoting time to create detailed answers for FAQs is an excellent measure to reduce queries. There will always be a percentage of customers who are bogged down by technical terms to figure out simple fixes. And there is another lot – the ‘fix it yourself gurus’ who, with a set of detailed instructions, can do the work themselves. Both these groups would benefit from the step by step instructions for simple fixes. Keep the language simple and direct. Explain technical terms wherever possible.
Make your page relevant to most. Identify and segment the types of queries that come in. Check what the bulk of your queries are about. And identify queries that clients can handle with a bit of information. Add a link to lead them to a page that tutors them on solving those issues. Also, vet the ease of following your instructions by getting a team to test it. And don’t forget to add a number they can reach out to in case they still need your technical team to assist them.
Bonus Tips Submitted By Viewers
- Create a Customer Service Software
Besides an app, the software does wonders in improving email response time. And it’s fast-growing.
This means that more companies are considering using customer-friend software to help sort and address customer care issues quickly and comprehensively.
Many software supports efficient customer service. The software archives all customer service conversations and interactions. Thus offers a great document to undertake a postmortem analysis of issues affecting customers and how well they are usually resolved.
Tracing the various customer components,c you can deduce from previous interactions how to better manage frequent complaints about service or products.
These data are vital not only from customers’ point of view but also for designing better products or implementing improved service delivery systems.
Further, having software simplifies the steps of capturing and analyzing customer queries. If you can identify and resolve the complaints fast from a centralized location, the response time improves significantly.
- Use time-based email alerts
Sometimes, some customers may prefer email to communicate. Yet people usually check emails when they are free or have dealt with pressing issues.
This means that if you receive a critical email, you may set your attention to resolving it. Meanwhile, an even more critical email may be sent soon afterward.
The problem is that you get engaged in the previous correspondence to even look at what is streaming in. So the subsequent emails get less attention are remain in the mailbox for hours, or even days.
Unfortunately, if those emails are considerable, attendants may even miss one or two in the maze. But these could be some of the prominent issues.
So how do you ensure you view and capture all the incoming online correspondences? Well, try setting up time-based email alerts.
Alerts are essential. They remind you that more issues need your attention. They also provide you the opportunity to chart a response and follow-up mechanism so that emails are well and promptly attended to before they become a clatter.
To conclude, we provided people with five tips that can help improve customer email response time. We are confident that the tips we offer can quickly increase your email response time and help you grow digitally.
