- 22.07.2015
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Maciej Krol
- Categories: technology
Long, confusing, riddled with attachments and graphics, without key information – such e-mails are a disaster when dealing with customers. They leave a terrible impression and effectively discourage purchase. Which errors in e-mail correspondence with customers should be avoided at any cost?
Customer A, interested in making a purchase, sends a request for product details. Client B reports a fault in a unit. Customer C asks about wholesale discount when ordering. All of them need a quick, substantive, clear information in an individualized form. Unfortunately, quite often e-mails from sales, customer service or order processing departments do not meet these criteria. Below we describe the most common errors made in e-mails to customers (note: we write about e-mails targeted at specific issues to specific individuals – not about newsletters and other forms of mass mailings).
- Undescriptive subject line – The subject line of an e-mail should describe the provided information.
If you reply to a question about a product, do not write “to Mr. Jerome Smith“, even if this is the person you’re replying to. The subject line should read “Information about ….. [product name] [brand or company name]”.
If you are writing about a fault in a unit, do not use internally handy titles such as “Report No. 379 status AD20“. This doesn’t mean anything to the customer. A title such as “Air conditioning defect – repair, Tuesday, 3rd of August“.
- Wall of text – The best method to discourage the customer from reading your e-mails. And then abandon the intent of making a purchase or continue cooperating with the company. How to avoid it?
- short paragraphs. Each information transmitted in an e-mail should be in a separate paragraph. A paragraph shall contain not more than three or four sentences. If it contains only one, it’s still good. There should be breaks between paragraphs.
- titles. If you must provide such an amount of information that they will take three or more paragraphs, each a few sentences long, try to give titles to each paragraph. Titles facilitate reading and remembering information.
- numbered and bulleted lists. Use them whenever you can. Are you listing product features? Do it in a list. Are you asking questions in order to solve the problem? List them. Are you providing several forms of payment? A list will be correct.
- Unnecessary fillers
Avoid graphics (photographs, pictures, tables). You can’t know how they will look in the customer’s e-mail client. Visual appeal of the message is important in mass mailings aimed at attracting new customers. In the case of messages addressed to a single person, and particularly, responses to their requests, they are completely unnecessary.
However, if you need illustrations in order to, for example, show the customer the product or how to use it, provide links to graphics or clips.
Avoid visually rich e-mail templates. The returning problem is the uncertainty about how such a template will look in the customer’s e-mail client, especially if the customer reads e-mails in text format, rather than HTML. There is yet another issue. Messages in the form of lone text (not counting the logo in the footer) are perceived by customers as more individual, written just for them, and thus – more likely to be read. Messages based on complex HTML templates, especially if they contain information about products, are often considered as sent by a machine. The customer does not have the impression that he has been handled properly and is less inclined to make a purchase.
- No tips for the customer
If the customer is interested in making a purchase, the end of the e-mail has to contain a call to action. This may be encouragement to place an order, an invitation to a free product test, or a downloadable e-book containing a description of the product’s benefits. Bonuses increase conversion (“10% discount if you submit the order by the end of the week”)
If the case involves repairs, complaints, payments or similar topics, the end of the e-mail has to be clear whether we expect some action from the client, or do we ask them to be patient while his case is being handled – even if we have mentioned it already in the e-mail.
Each e-mail must end with an invitation to contact (“I will gladly answer your questions“, “If you have questions, please contact us by phone or e-mail” etc.).
- Lack of e-mail author
It is a terrible mistake to sign an e-mail only with the name of the company or the relevant department (e.g. Accounting Department). This does not facilitate relationship building and negates the chance of forming such an attitude as “I have bought a plan from X company, because there’s such a nice lady there, who always explains everything so well“.
The necessary elements of a footer include name and surname, position or department, phone number, company name and its website. Optional information includes the hours when you’re available, as well as a redirection to other people outside these hours.
If you use your logo in the footer, make sure to insert the image with an alt attribute, for persons who receive e-mails in text form.
In general, the footer, like e-mail – maximum information, minimum length. Your customers can manage without information such as the share capital of your company…
- Attachments – Downloading attachments is troublesome and there’s little chance that your customers want to do it. Provide links to additional materials, not attachments.
- Sending without proofreading – Typos and punctuation errors are nothing. It’s worse if you have already sent the e-mail and realized just now that you forgot important information or made a mistake in calculations. ALWAYS read an e-mail before sending.
- Unofficial information.
“Just between you and me, all parts from the last delivery keep breaking down.” “We have a bit of a mix-up at the company, because the president is getting divorced and we can’t reach him”. Even if you’re writing to a well-known client, never provide unofficial information about the company in the e-mail. The risk that someone else gets to read them is far too high.
- Politeness and formality – lack of intuition
“We are extremely pleased that you were so kind to spend your precious time on browsing our offer“.
Too long, too little information. Do not use overly elaborate style. Keep a balance between politeness and brevity.
“Hey Michael! ….. Between these two laptops, better get the DX12. It’s totally rad.”
Style only acceptable when communicating with young peers. However, both too much and too little informalities in the e-mail can be badly received. You have to adjust the language to the way your customer is communicating. If you lack intuition, follow the criterion of age.
- Too late – Replying to e-mails later than on the next day shows disrespect to the customer. Replying to e-mails later than within a few hours usually means the loss of sale opportunity.
Message templates in customer service
How to make sure that no e-mail sent from your company has the aforementioned errors? Improve the skills of your employees and provide them with tools to facilitate communication with customers. Message templates not only help unskilful consultants, but also accelerate the work of experienced employees. Their creation is simple with the use of templates tools available on the Focus Contact Center communications platform. The system automatically inserts customer data from the database, e.g. a name after the words “Hello”, which significantly reduces the risk of making mistakes.
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