Online sellers are constantly battling with the need to speed up response times and delight their customers.
When it comes to customer support, response templates are one of the easiest ways to speed up response times, resolve issues quickly and make customers happy. Each and every email interaction holds great value to every business. Each email is received by an individual who has a whole network of potential customers with whom they can share their experience of your company.
One single interaction is likely to form a customer’s opinion of a company and how they speak about you afterwards.
The result could go one of two ways:
- With a great experience, they could be a loyal customer for life
- Experience a negative interaction and they share their story with a wide network of potential customers
The Value of a Great Customer Response
Crafting an effective template is worth the effort and here’s why:
- Cut response times by over 50%
- Customers who received great customer support will spend a further 20-40% with your company
- Negative reviews are shared twice as many times as positive reviews.
What Customers Expect
- Speed
- Personalization
The Customer Need for Speed
Online sellers need to respond faster to grow their business.The faster the response time, the better the customer feedback.
With new social platforms and live chat, there are multiple points of contact that are raising customers’ expectations for speedier responses.
We recently researched customer response rates and found that 74 percent of customers expect a response in under one hour through social support. This expectancy is now spreading to other points of contact where the rate of response is expected to catch up - over email and marketplace channels.
Our insights show that automating support responses with templates, can speed up response times by over 50 percent, when the business uses a minimum of five templates.
Personalization - Make the customer feel special
Customers expect eCommerce businesses to recognize them as an individual and treat them with respect. There has been a significant shift in the last few years towards creating personalized experiences for customers. The trend for personalization has evolved so much so that customers will no longer respond or react to a generic email that has not acknowledged them.
Not every online business has adopted an approach yet, but this can be achieved by simply acknowledging the customer name and having knowledge of their details.
Endless Benefits to Great Customer Support
- The short-term benefit of Personalization is that transaction rates increase six times with personalized emails.
- The long-term benefit is the customer loyalty that springs from having a great experience.
A personalized experience will make your customer feel happy, or even loved, according to a study by trendwatching.com. When receiving a great support experience, it was found that it triggered the same cerebral reaction as feeling loved for 53 percent of the participants.
How to Exceed Customer Expectations
- Respond quickly
- Personalize the response
- Show gratitude for the customer’s query or feedback
- Arm your agents with customer interaction and order history
- If you are unable to help with the query, assign an agent who has the required skills
- Whatever you do, don’t ignore your customer.
Speed Up Personalized Experiences with ReplyManager
We are currently migrating ReplyManager customers over to our new look ReplyManager, which includes new and improved features like Templates and SmartTags, among many others that will dramatically speed up response times.
With ReplyManager SmartTags, you can automate personalized details like order numbers and addresses. These tags can also be used in the message subject field for an even more personalized interaction. Automating templates that include all the helpful details a customer might need, like expected delivery time and confirmation of the delivery address, will help to exceed your customer’s expectations.
The components of an effective response are outlined in the template below. We have made five pre-defined templates available for use in the new ReplyManager message dashboard.
The example incorporates SmartTags to automatically create a personalized experience and I will highlight the other elements that define a successful response template.
1. Using SmartTags to personalize the email. It’s really important to respond with the customer’s name and your own name. With these tags, you can also automate details like order numbers and addresses.
2. Apologize. If you are wrong, admit it, don’t be afraid to apologize. The customer will identify with you as a human being and will be more understanding of a mistake - it will also show them that you care about resolving their problem.
3. Explain the order status. If you don’t know, be honest and reassure them that you are looking into it and will revert with details as soon as possible.
4. Showing that this problem is a rare occurrence reassures your customer. Demonstrate confidence in your service and this will inspire confidence in you.
5. A key factor in your communications, is to advise your customer of possible solutions to the problem. Be transparent and give them visibility on the next steps to a resolution.
6. Make the customer a part of the solution. Involve them in the elimination process. This will give them an element of control over the problem.
7. ‘With your help’ transfers the power to the customer. Giving them status is particularly effective when you want a person to change their attitude towards something.
Write it once so that you don’t have to write it a thousand times
When crafting your response template, it is extremely important to spend time considering all the necessary components for the response. Remember the difference between an email response and a template response - with an email, the agent is present in the interaction and can make judgements on the clarity of language and format in the response. With a template, this will be automatically sent out to the customer, so it is extremely important that all components of a successful email have been considered when creating the template.
Although it may seem like a huge effort to craft the perfect template, think about it in the long term - write it once so that you don’t have to write it a thousand times.
In the coming months, ReplyManager customers will be invited to migrate to the new interface with fantastic new features.
We hope that our new look ReplyManager will exceed your expectations.
If you have any questions about these updates, please get in touch with us at support@replymanager.com.