The sudden outbreak of the novel coronavirus is requiring brands to shift their strategies to meet the demands and win the hearts of customers.
The term “contactless” has literally been prefixed to everything ranging from medical consulting to food deliveries.
When it comes to customer support too, they have to re-evaluate how their digital channels can be leveraged to deliver quality customer support services.
With the rise of remote teams and WFH culture in 2020, the humble Email has now become the communication tool of choice for employers, teams and most importantly customers.
Emails have a huge impact on customer experience as well as repeat customers, lifetime value and how your brand is perceived by people. Therefore, improving the way your business responds to customer emails is important, especially with the current scenario. Considering the central role that emails play in supporting the management and other crucial aspects of a business, here are 7 tips that a company or an outsourcing service provider can follow to enhance your email support services in 2020.
Deliver Personalized Email Interactions
The pandemic sure has stirred up emotions and induced anxiety within everyone. Everyone is on the lookout for reassurance and support of some kind. And this includes customers too. There could be nothing more detrimental to your business than sending automated robotic-sounding mails during these trying times. Whether it’s making queries or seeking out a resolution for an issue, your customers want to feel they are doing business with a human and not a machine. By personalizing your email interactions, you can increase email open rates, revenue as well as show your customers, your brand care for them.
It is easy to be personable when you are speaking to your customers over the phone. But how do you bring that emotional connect through email support services?
Well, you can start by using your name and theirs. Using names in emails is an excellent way to build familiarity. Start off by enquiring about their wellbeing and that of their loved ones. Also, mention your name and position in the company while signing off. The ExpertCallers’ team has the right expertise to create relatable customer experience so that your customers feel more confident about the information they are receiving.
Have a Defined Customer Support Style
The way you deliver customer support matters a lot. Make sure that you have well-defined standards for the tone, language, and voice you use in your emails and that is reflected throughout the whole team across every customer interaction. With mixed feelings of agitation and anxiety weighing on people’s minds following the pandemic in 2020, it is important that you adopt a supportive tone during these sensitive times by providing assurance at every step of the way.
Do you want to adopt a friendly tone, or do you think your customers will appreciate it better if you used a formal or business-like tone? Work along with your email support outsourcing team to decide how you are going to address issues and concerns when they come up. Sometimes, your customers may make demands and service requests that are beyond the normal provisions. Make sure that the team is well-informed, has access to the right resources/links/guides to include in the mail and most importantly, suitably trained to respond to emergency queries and resolve problems.
The tone you use in your emails will reflect the overall personality of your brand. Once you have set the rules, structure, and values in your customer support process, design a style guide that your team can refer to regularly while delivering customer support.
Show Gratitude and Say “thank you”
Emails don’t just have to be a means of closing a sale.The post-COVID era that we live in is not exactly the right time to be opportunistic and pitch a sale in the first line of your mail. Showing the customer that your business cares should take priority over direct marketing gimmicks. Thank your customers for being a part of your business and try to genuinely enquire about their personal and family safety.
Taking the initiative and saying “thank you” to your customers is a powerful way to build and nurture a good relationship with them. Make it a habit to thank them whenever they offer their feedback, inform you about a bug, or highlight a concern about something on social media. Acknowledging their issues will change the way they think and feel about your brand. So, let your customers know that their feedback is appreciated, no matter the tone or content. Understand that every complaint you receive from a customer brings an opportunity for you to fix something that can help you retain other customers who might be facing similar issues.
Businesses lose a lot of their customers because they feel the brand was indifferent towards them during challenging times (such as now). Personal thank you mails can work wonders to show them that you see them as people and not just a source of revenue during these challenging times. Thank you notes can be pleasant to receive, and your customers might even post a picture of it online for their followers to see while generating word of mouth advertising for your business.
Practice Automation and Acknowledgement
Response time is an important metric of customer service delivery right now. People are stuck in their homes and don’t have the luxury of stepping out to a physical customer support kiosk or inviting a support team indoors. Emails can be the perfect solution during these times. Sometimes, your customers will have issues with a particular aspect of your product or service that can be solved by simply redirecting them to a link without any manual involvement. In such cases, you can automate your replies to offer quick responses to their queries.
Another important aspect of Email communication is acknowledgement. Once your customers raise an issue, send them a clear confirmation saying that their query has been received and will be resolved shortly. This will prevent them from thinking that their message didn’t go through your support team. However, you still need to work on adding some personality and flavor to your auto-replies that reflect your brand. If the software has a feature that lets you use your customer’s first name, use it while replying to them. Also, thank them for bringing the issue to your notice either in the subject or the email body.
Finally, promise them a deadline by which they can expect their issue to be resolved. With social distancing, mounting safety guidelines and people working from homes, it can be a bit tough to promise them a right deadline. Be open about it and explain to them why there could be a delay in your response. Also tell your customers how you have planned to deliver faster responses. Make sure to connect them to one of the email support outsourcing representatives to follow up with the customer. That’s a definite way to increase customer satisfaction and earn their trust.
Use the ELI5 Technique
The ELI5 is an explanation technique that outsourced email support service representatives at Expert Callers generally use to simplify complex or technical concepts to customers. ELI5 stands for ‘Explain it Like I am 5’. This customer service technique isn’t intended to insult your customers’ intelligence. It is rather about offering them clarity and empathy during these trying times.
Unlike telephonic calls, where one can gauge the expertise level of the caller, Email support doesn’’ quite indicate the user’’ mastery of a service or tool.
When customers reach out to you because of an issue via email, there’s probably something that they don’t understand. It could be as simple as restarting a phone or disabling and reenabling bluetooth to fix a certain issue. But the sender could be a 60 year old who needs to be guided through in a certain way. Hence, it is the job of executives handling the email support outsource service to understand this and talk to them without presuming that the customer is familiar with the product or service that is being offered. They can follow the ELI5 technique to break down complex topics and provide simple and clear instructions to the customers.
Sometimes, the framework of a support email won’t fully allow simplifying the technical concepts. So, it is recommended to share images, links and screenshots to illustrate the instructions whenever possible.
Give guidance; take feedback
It is easy for a brand to get carried away and try to capitalize on the COVID-19 frenzy. But, in no way, you should be sending emails and flooding your customers’ inboxes unless you have a legit business need to do so.
Your customers would rather prefer reading your message that’s short and straight to the point on a mobile device. So, try to make your emails as brief as possible and add a link to the full list set of instructions. This will enable your customers to check your instructions whenever they have the time or have access to a computer. What’s more important, is you are teaching them to be self-sufficient. As a result, when they come across another issue regarding your product or service, they will try to solve it by themselves first without clogging up telephone lines or inboxes at a time when other critical priorities may need more attention.
Be proactive in asking your customers for feedback whenever you have the opportunity. Send them a survey when they make a purchase or right after your support team resolved an issue they had. To find out how satisfied they were your product or service, you can also run social media polls asking them about what they specifically liked the most and what changes they would further suggest.
If you are planning to roll out a new feature or product or service, always run surveys to gather the expectations and reactions of your customers. That’s a sure way to ensure your customers like it once it is deployed. Moreover, they will be happy to see that their inputs are considered valuable while they get something that is truly customized to their needs.
Outsourcing is the act of placing your goods or services with an outside entity. Companies engage in email customer service outsourcing for many reasons, from saving money to building a multilingual staff. Here are the four benefits of outsourcing email customer service.
1. Cost Savings
Outsourcing can save a company money because this leaves the costs associated with hiring and providing a workspace with another company. Outsourcing can leave your company with more funds to help build the company or improve other business aspects. Cost savings are one of the more enticing reasons to outsource email services.
2. Efficiency Improvements
When you outsource, you leave much of the training and management up to another company. This leads to greater efficiency because you do not have to train or manage the people performing a service, especially if it is a service that you do not know much about. This frees up your time to train your other employees and ensure that your in-person customer service is the best it can be.
3. Resource Management
Not all businesses, especially small businesses, have the resources to hire and train a lot of new people at one time. An email outsourcing agency will know of people who can already perform the skill you are looking for and are willing to do so at a given cost. Outsourcing allows a small business to have the same top-notch customer service that a large business would, while leaving on-site employees with time to perform duties that can only be done in person.
4. Risk Management
Because outsourced employees already know how to perform a skill, you can mitigate the risk involved in hiring and training a brand new person. Outsourced partners also know a lot about their business and how to avoid the risks associated with the service that they provide.
Consider these four benefits if you have a company that is considering outsourcing.
Conclusion
No matter what you do, customer complaints are bound to happen, even more so when general panic levels are at an all-time high. Providing compassionate support services when your customers need it the most, will result in positive brand image and increased customer loyalty once this crisis blows over. On the contrary, ineffective, uncaring and profit-driven support services will drive an equally negative reaction from your customers.
So, it is crucial that you know how to respond to them and leave your customers satisfied and valued.
The tips mentioned here can ensure that every single one of your support emails creates value for your customers and helps you build long-term relationships with them. Just remember to pay attention to details like using their names, saying thank you, using simple and straight-forward messages so that the conversation always ends on a positive note. Although an email interaction won’t yield the same results as a face-to-face conversation, it can still deliver a great experience that will make your customers happy and excited to be a part of your business.
Outsourcing your brand’s email support services to an expert is another alternative you can explore. When you outsource email support services to leading outsourcing companies like ExpertCallers, you can rest assured that all your email and support queries from valued customers are resolved with quick turnaround time. Email support outsourcing will also help you to save on precious time which could be used to concentrate on other core competencies of your organization and help provide your customers with the right support when they need it the most.
To learn more about our best practices and case studies about our Email Support Services, reach out to us an info@expertcallers.com
