Crafting a better work experience

Customer service is the backbone of any successful business. Mastering the art of providing exceptional customer service is crucial for any growing company.

The email has emerged as the leading communication channel for customer service. A whopping 54% of consumers use customer support email, according to a study by Forrester.

As a result, it’s important to have proper email etiquette. It will help you provide timely and effective customer service to your clients. You'll also be able to set yourself apart from your competitors.

In this article, we'll explore some of the best practices for customer service and guidelines for email etiquette. Following them will help you provide excellent customer service and improve customer satisfaction.

Why Having a Proper Email Etiquette Is Important for Customer Service?

Email is probably the first point of contact your customers will have with your business. This is why proper email etiquette is essential for customer service. The tone and professionalism of your email can make or break your customers' impression of your company.

80% of customers think that their customer experience is as important as the products or services you provide. Customer service will help dictate their loyalty and if they repeat business. Another study from Microsoft stated that 61% of respondents have decided to use another brand due to poor customer service.

Having email etiquette in place will also help your team be more efficient, professional, and clear. They will also offer a uniform experience to all customers.

11 Email Etiquette Tips for Better Customer Service

Proper email etiquette is crucial for providing effective customer service to clients. Here are some tips for email etiquette in customer service.

1. Use Grammar & Spelling That Shows Your Professionalism

Nowadays customers aren't just looking for a solution to their problems. They also want to choose a brand that is aligned with their vision when making a purchase decision.

Having proper grammar and spelling in your emails will not only make your business look more professional but also help your recipients better understand you.

After all those rules are there for a reason.

Making sure that your team always sends spelling-free emails might be hard, but luckily for us, tools exist to make sure our messages stay mistake-free. Some shared inbox software, like Missive, even integrated with advanced tools like Grammarly to improve efficiency.

2. Take Advantage of Canned Responses

Let’s face it, some customer service inquiries are really common and need can be answered with the same email.

Using canned responses can help you and your team by providing a well-written and detailed answer every time without having to spend the whole time crafting the answer.

However, you should remember not to overindulge in using canned responses too often. Your customer will certainly appreciate the feeling that they are talking to an actual human being and not interacting with pre-determined answers.

3. Stay Human

As we mentioned in the last point, your customers probably want to be treated as human beings and not just as ticket numbers. You should make sure that every email interaction you have with your clients is personalized and tailored to its recipient.

A study from Zendesk shows that 76% of customers expect some personalization when interacting with a company.

By showing that you care about your customers you can make a difference in client retention. It can also help build a brand that will attract potential clients.

While you should always stay professional, you should provide personalized service to your customers.

4. Make Sure You Include Details, Images, and/or Links

We’ve all heard it:

A picture paints a thousand words

And while it can sound cliché, it could be more true. Including attachments in your email is probably one of the best ways to help your customer with their inquiry.

It's especially true for software companies. Providing a screenshot can help the recipient understand what you’re describing in your email.

The same can apply to any files that could help provide more detailed information.

Another great email etiquette to remember for customer service is to provide links to relevant articles, FAQs, guides, or videos. There’s no point in writing a lengthy email when the question or issue has already been answered in detail somewhere else.

The time saved by providing links to the information will let your team focus on emails that are of higher priority.

It can also be useful to go beyond the issue experienced by your customer and send them links to resources that can help them later on.

With that in mind, you should remember that 81% of customers attempt to resolve their issues themselves before reaching out to your team. So don't just send links to useful resources and call it a day. Try to bring value to every exchange.

5. Avoid Getting Emotional

We all experienced it:

You receive an email from an angry customer and you just want to reply on the spot.

While it might be tempting to respond immediately, doing so when you’re still emotional can lead to unprofessional answers. It can exacerbate the frustration experienced by your customers.

It’s important to remember that your customers are people too with emotional ups and downs and their problems. Empathizing with them and focusing on providing a solution rather than dwelling on the issue will help with your clients' interactions.

6. Use Professional Email Addresses

If you’re still using a @gmail.com (or any provider's) generic email address for your customer service, this should act as your last warning notice to make the switch to a business email address.

Your customers will certainly see your business email address as more professional and credible. It will help them take you seriously and trust you.

7. Make Sure You Follow-Up

Sometimes you want to take your customer service to the next level. Following up on inquiries you had in the past can be great email etiquette to adopt. It can bring many benefits:

• Customer satisfaction
• Issue resolution
• Customer feedback
• Reputation management

It could be as simple as sending a follow-up email to know if your customer resolved their issue. You could also take that moment to ask them if you could further assist them or if they could leave you a review.

8. Use Language That Is Easy to Understand

The goal isn’t to show off your wide vocabulary or use the most technical jargon to prove that you’re trustworthy. Your focus should be on being easily understood by your recipient. A good rule of thumb is to aim for a grade level equal to or lower than 8. this way you’ll make sure that the vast majority of your audience understands.

Of course, this tip needs to be adapted to your audience and industry. For example, if your business is in the tech industry and you're dealing with developers, you should be using technical terms when necessary.

9. Use Short Descriptive Subject Lines

Email subject lines are important when determining if someone will open an email or not.

Using a short but descriptive subject will help your customer understand what your emails are about before even needing to open them. In fact, 64% of recipients decide whether to open an email based on the subject line.

You should aim for a descriptive subject line that is less than 9 words (60 characters) and that doesn’t use too much punctuation.

10. Be Friendly

Depending on your industry and customer base, being friendly can make your customer go the extra mile. Let’s face it, having a more casual tone can make a whole difference in customer satisfaction. It will ensure that your clients leave the email interaction with the feeling that you’re helpful and kind. And as we know by now, keeping customers is a lot more valuable than acquiring new ones.

You should also try to be thankful instead of always apologizing. For example, instead of apologizing for the wait time, you could thank them for their patience. You’ll see that the conversation will get a whole new tone from there.

11. Respond to All Emails on Time

Just so we’re clear here, we are not talking about responding to all those spammy emails that end up in your shared inboxes every day. We’re talking about all those legitimate emails from customers you receive.

You should make sure you have an SLA in place and that you are respecting it. This will send a strong signal to your customer that you care about them and they’ll also get an idea of when they should be expecting a reply.

Conclusion

Following this email etiquette for your customer service will help you provide a great customer experience. It will set you apart from the competition.

Making sure that no email is left unanswered and that everyone gets the right answer to their inquiry can be a demanding task. But, using a shared inbox software like Missive you and your team will be able to offer better service by enabling all your team to collaborate on customer service emails.

In the world of real estate, email communication is a critical aspect of building and maintaining relationships with clients.

As a realtor, you need to ensure that your email address not only looks professional but also reflects your brand and expertise. While using your broker's email address may seem like a convenient option, it may not provide you with the level of control and flexibility that you need to effectively manage your email communication.

Plus, it comes with a major drawback that you’ll probably want to avoid.

Whether you're a new or an experienced professional, here’s how to properly set up an email address for your real estate agent business to succeed in the competitive world of real estate. We’ll also explore how to properly manage your communication to be able to achieve the holy grail of email; inbox zero.

Should You Use Your Broker’s Email or Create Your Own?

As a realtor, chances are your broker is providing you with an email address that uses their own domain. But should you use it?

The simple answer is:

Don’t use your broker’s email

Instead, consider creating your own email address that you have full control over.

Here’s why:

By using your own email address as a real estate agent you can keep the same email address even if you switch brokers. You’ll also have more control over your email communication with clients.

Some of the drawbacks of using your broker’s email address include:

• If you switch brokers, changing your email address can be a hassle for you and your clients.
• If your broker changes their domain, you'll have to update all of your contacts with your new email address.
• Your broker may use an email provider with limitations, such as a low sending limit or emails that aren't optimized for deliverability.

Creating your own email address can give you more control over your email communication with clients. This way, you can keep the same email address even if you switch brokers.

How to Set Up Your Own Email?

You might be tempted to use a free email provider like Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo and while it may seem like a great option, you might want to consider the fact that they don’t look professional. Do you really want to have another company name in your real estate email address?

As a client, you would probably think that yourname@yourdomain.com is a lot more professional and inspire trust than yourname@gmail.com.

There are many email providers that let you create a custom email address. You can find one that is easy to use, secure, and affordable.

Choosing Your Realtor Email Address

If you already have a domain, setting up your email address is straightforward. However, if you don't have a website yet, take the time to decide on your business name. Your domain will likely be the name of your business or a variation if not possible.

Before settling on a name or domain, be sure to check your local laws to make sure it's compliant. You want to make sure that the business name you choose suits you as it can be costly and hard to change down the line.

Your email address should be easy to remember and understand. One of the most common practices is:

yourname@yourdomain.com

It’s short, professional, and gives all the relevant information. Since it’s a really popular formula it also is really remembered by your clients or prospects.

You have many variations of this. Let’s use John Doe as the name in the example:

• First name: john@yourdomain.com
• Using your only first name is a great solution for an email address that is easy to remember and friendly, however, if you start having more people joining your company and someone else with the same first name joins, you’ll need to rethink the format
• First name and last name initial: johnD@yourdomain.com or john.d@yourdomain.com
• Using your first name and last name initial is a great solution if you have more than one person at the company with the same first name.
• First name initial and last name: doeJ@yourdomain.com or doe.J@yourdomain.com
• Using your first name initial and last name can be another great solution if you have more than one person at the company with the same first name. However, this format may look less friendly.
• First name and last name: johndoe@yourdomain.com or john.doe@yourdomain.com
• Using your full name can be a great solution if you consider that it represents your brand.

Choosing an Email Provider

Google Workspace

Google Workspace (formerly known as G Suite) offers a professional email service that's easy to set up and use. Prices start at $6 per user per month and include a custom domain, 30GB of storage, and access to other Google apps like Drive, Docs, and Sheets.

To set up your own email with Google Workspace, follow these steps.

Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 offers an email service called Exchange, that integrates with other Microsoft apps like Office and OneDrive. Prices start at $12 per user per month for access to a custom domain and 50GB of storage.

To set up your own email with Microsoft 365, follow these steps.

iCloud

iCloud offers a simple email service that's free with an Apple ID. However, to take advantage of custom domain names, you’ll need to subscribe to iCloud+ which starts at $0.99 per month with 50GB of storage.

To set up your own email with iCloud, follow these steps.

Your Web Hosting Provider

Many web hosting providers offer email services along with their hosting plans. Prices and features vary depending on the provider.

To set up your own email with your web hosting provider, make sure your web hosting provider offers email services and follows their instructions.

How to Manage Your New Email Address

Once you've chosen an email provider and created your own email address, it's time to think about managing your inbox effectively. Using one of the best email clients for your new Google Workspace (Gmail) or Outlook email address will help you follow email management best practices.

Here are some tips to help you get started:

Use an Email Client Designed for Email Management

Whether you choose Google Workspace (Gmail) or Microsoft 365 (Outlook), using a dedicated email client will make managing your emails much easier. These clients offer features like labels, folders, and search functions to help you keep your inbox organized and find important messages quickly.

Missive, for example, is one such email client that can help you manage your emails more efficiently. With its unified inbox, you can see all your emails in one place, including your Gmail and Outlook emails. Additionally, Missive allows you to collaborate with your team, or delegate to an assistant, assign tasks, and leave comments within your emails, making it easier to work with others.

Create Rules

Rules allow you to automate the process of sorting and filtering incoming messages. You can set up rules to automatically move messages from specific senders to designated folders or apply labels to certain types of messages. This can help you keep your inbox organized and reduce the amount of time you spend manually sorting through your emails.

Rules can also be useful to send out-of-office replies whenever you are not available.

Set Up a Signature

A professional email signature can make a big difference in how you're perceived by others. It's an easy way to provide contact information and add a personal touch to your emails. Most email clients allow you to create a signature that will automatically be added to the bottom of every email you send.

You can include your name, job title, company logo, and contact information, among other things. This can help establish your brand and make a good impression on your clients or customers.

Set Up Response Templates

If you find yourself writing the same responses to certain types of emails over and over again, response templates can save you a lot of time. Most email clients allow you to create templates for common responses, which you can then insert into your emails with just a few clicks.

Some of them, including Missive, let you create a custom template using variables so they can dynamically change depending on the recipient. You can create a template for any type of email, such as a welcome email, a thank you email, or a follow-up email, among others. You can also customize each template to suit your specific needs.

Set Up Auto-Follow Up

It's easy to forget to follow up on emails that you send, especially if you send a lot of messages each day. From leads to potential buyers passing by clients s, setting auto-follow-up reminders can help ensure that important messages don't fall through the cracks.

Most email clients allow you to set reminders to follow up on emails after a certain amount of time has passed. But, some more advanced ones let you create a follow-up email in advance to send in certain conditions that are met. This can help ensure that you don't forget to follow up on important emails.

Connect Your Social Media

If you use social media for business purposes, you may want to consider connecting your accounts to your email client. Some email clients come with advanced features like the ability to connect your social media accounts to receive and respond to your DMs and new posts alongside your emails. This can allow you to receive notifications and respond to messages directly from your inbox.

Connect Your Calendar

Connecting your calendar to your email client can help you stay on top of your schedule. Some email clients allow you to view your calendar events directly within your inbox, and some even allow you to schedule meetings and events from within the email client.

Organize Your Inbox

Keeping your inbox organized is key to effective email management. Consider using labels or folders to group related messages together, and be sure to archive or delete messages you no longer need.

Set Up Collaboration

If you work with a team or an assistant, you may need to collaborate on emails from time to time. A few email clients allow you to share access to your inbox or specific folders with other users, making it easy to work together on important messages. Some of them even let you chat and comment directly in an email conversation on collaborating on drafts like you would in Google Docs.

Add All Your Aliases

If you have multiple email aliases, make sure to add them all to your email client so you can send and receive messages from each of them. This will ensure that you don't miss any important messages that are sent to one of your alternate addresses.

Conclusion

In conclusion, as a real estate agent, having a professional email address is essential to build credibility with your clients and ensuring effective communication. While your broker may provide you with an email address using their domain, it is important to consider the potential limitations and risks of using it.

Setting up your own email address can provide you with more control and flexibility, and there are various options available, such as Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, iCloud, and your web hosting provider.

Once you have set up your email address, using an email client such as Missive can help you manage your inbox more efficiently and effectively. By creating rules, setting up signatures and response templates, using auto-follow-up, and connecting your social media and calendar, you can save time and streamline your email communication.

Remember, your email address is an extension of your brand and should be treated as such. With the right tools and strategies, you can ensure that your email communication reflects your professionalism and expertise in the real estate industry.

You can try Missive for $0 by downloading the app.

Offering an amazing customer experience to your customers plays a crucial role in the success and growth of your business. But, even when following the customer service best practices, top-notch service can only be achieved with collaboration between your teams.

By the end of this blog post, you'll have a better understanding of the value of customer service collaboration and how to put it in place in your business to improve customer service and retention.

Table of Contents

• What Is Customer Service Collaboration?
• Why Is Customer Service Collaboration Important?
• What Are the Benefits of Collaboration in Customer Service?
• How to Provide Exceptional Customer Service Through Collaboration?
• How Can Customer Service Teams Collaborate on Emails and Calls?
• Conclusion

What Is Customer Service Collaboration?

Collaborative customer service is the practice of having many customer service team members work together to address customer inquiries, complaints, and issues.

Team members share information, coordinate efforts, and communicate to ensure that customers' needs are met in a timely and satisfactory manner.

Overall, collaborative customer service is a valuable practice for any business looking to provide exceptional customer service and meet the needs of its customers.

Why Is Customer Service Collaboration Important?

Not all customer interactions are the same. Businesses often receive varied customer queries making collaboration within a service team crucial for providing exceptional customer service. It allows team members to share information, knowledge, and resources with one another.

Collaboration can help ensure that customers receive timely, accurate, and helpful help and that their needs are addressed in the most efficient and effective manner possible.

Now, more than ever, customers are looking for fast and accurate information at the tip of their fingers. That means that your company needs a unified front to be able to speak to all customer touchpoints, including sales, onboarding, success, and support.

Maintaining each department in the loop throughout a customer's lifecycle helps ensure your customer feels valued. Service team collaboration helps build trust and loyalty that your customers can rely on and lean on. Increasing retention time by earning that trust is more cost-effective than having customers churning and having to bring on new clients. Studies have shown that it's five times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to retain one.

What Are the Benefits of Collaboration in Customer Service?

1. Increased Knowledge Sharing

Since requests can be so varied and nuanced, knowledge sharing is imperative. Most of the time, there is a resolution in place that exists somewhere, and similar workarounds that solve the same issue.

Sharing knowledge also helps create self-help guides so your customers can try to solve their problems or answer their questions before contacting customer service. A study from 2017 by Harvard Business Review revealed that 81% of customers attempt to resolve issues themselves before reaching out to an employee.

2. Improved Resolution Time

In support, each team member has their own unique set of strengths they bring to the table. Some agents are stronger in resolving certain customer inquiries, as teams work on different client request types. What takes one person 30 min to work through, may take another 5-10 minutes. With constant communication, collaboration, and a knowledge base, you’ll be able to reduce those gaps in knowledge.

As agents build on their experience in solving customer requests, they start becoming subject matter experts. They are the go-to people within the team and company for specific areas of expertise that can help reduce time to resolution by helping increase the knowledge of the whole team.

3. Improved Customer Satisfaction

No one individual is more important than the collective group. Promoting collaboration and teamwork helps drive efficiency and a better end-user experience.

4. Improved Work Environment

Collaboration within a service team can help to foster a positive and supportive work environment. It can improve morale, team bonding, and motivation among team members, leading to better service.

Since better collaboration often translates into better customer satisfaction it can also mean better employee experience. Indeed, a recent study published by the National Library of Medicine has shown that positive interactions with customers during service interactions had a positive effect on employees.

Using the right collaboration tools will also insure that the work environment encourages teamwork.

How to Provide Exceptional Customer Service Through Collaboration?

Exceptional customer service requires collaboration between all members of your business, from the front-line staff to the management team. By working together, everyone can ensure that the customer experience is positive. Even small businesses following customer service tips need to collaborate to provide exceptional customer service.

Encourage Open Communication Between Teams

One way to do better customer service through collaboration is by encouraging open discussion. It can be done by building strong cross-departmental relationships through shadowing opportunities and combined team meetings.

A format I’ve found useful is having retro-style meetings—a structured format that gives both teams time to reflect on what went well, what didn’t go well, and what we can improve on. This helps establish clear expectations and goals to strengthen internal relationships between teams.

Collaboration can be promoted in recurring meetings with such topics as customer spotlights or team showcases to highlight some of the exceptional recent interactions colleagues have had to share their takeaways with the wider group. Showcases help inspire what going above and beyond means and it also helps uncover some knowledge gaps in resources and training.

Encourage Collaboration Between Sales & Customer Service Teams

Sales teams set the right expectations early on and customer support teams make sure to deliver on the expectations and promises made to the customer. It’s all about working together to agree on what those expectations should be and product limitations.

Customer service teams are crucial and important for sales teams. It’s important to discuss escalations, trends, and ways they can work better together.

Having a recurring meeting with an agenda for top-of-mind items that come across either team helps get both departments on the same page to improve customer transitions and handoffs between one another.

Another effective method is shadowing one another. It can help each team gain a new perspective while learning about the product and taking a page from each other's book.

Personalizing and setting the right expectations from the start will help build trust and loyalty your customers can rely on.

Share KPIs

Another key factor that helps promote customer service collaboration is sharing the same KPIs across teams and departments. Customer support teams are only as good as what the cumulative scores indicate (CSAT, Median Resolution Times, Productivity, SLAs, etc.).

While it’s great to have top performers on your teams, the impact isn’t as powerful when there are other performers also contributing to the team’s reputation.

Encouraging team-wide goals to hit certain metrics embodies a one-team mentality through collaboration. We’re only as good as our team KPIs are.

Fail Fast, but Learn Fast

Encouraging an autonomous environment allows us to encourage failure as an opportunity to improve. Within a no-judgment zone, we can all learn from each other’s failures and foster a healthy environment where, as a team, we uncover what went wrong and how we can all learn from the takeaways.

Make it known it’s a lesson for the entire team, as we’re all in the same boat and, more likely than not, a similar interaction will be coming around for the team to handle. We don’t know what we don’t uncover, so sharing both the good and the bad will help identify and uncover roadblocks along the way.

How Can Customer Service Teams Collaborate on Emails and Calls?

Customer service teams need to be able to collaborate on emails and calls to provide the best possible service to clients.

A system for assigning responsibilities to each department in the company is important for emails. Your customer service team should also have a structure to guide them on how to follow up with customers after sending an email and who will be responsible for it.

Calls should be recorded and shared among departments so they can all learn from each other's customer interactions.

Choosing a great shared inbox software and good call center software can be the key to better real-time and asynchronous collaboration. Integrating both inside one powerful platform like Missive and Aircall via the Aircall integration can help your teams communicate without having to jump between multiple apps. With features like assignment automation, Missive becomes an essential communication tool for your business.

When Should You Call a Customer?

Calls are a great way to communicate with customers when the interaction can go a couple of different directions or if the interaction will require multiple back and forths (customer needs to do A and after that, you’ll need them to do B for solution C).

Most of the time, it’s easier to explain your intent and demonstrate the best options over the phone than by following up via email.

Customer service agents should get in the customer’s shoes and call a customer when they anticipate a lot of questions coming, have to explain something complicated, or when it’s of urgent priority.

It’s also important to note that it’s always best to call early when the customer is most engaged and least frustrated.

When Should You Email a Customer?

Contrary to a phone call, emails should be the preferred method of communication when there’s less urgency. It’s also efficient when you need to keep multiple parties involved and want to allow the responsible parties whether that be from the customer’s side and/or other internal teams to respond with the most thoughtful impact.

When you need to break down complex, thorough concepts into bite-size pieces, it’s best to offer a call afterward to go over them.

Emails are also a great way to provide direction and purpose and drive the conversation in the right direction after phone interactions.

How Can You Collaborate on Calls?

Even if only one agent was on the call it’s important to keep everyone on the same page. The agent on the call is the primary point person and is the lead for providing the customer with the right information. This person is also in charge of delegating and leading the situation to the desired end result.

That sequence of events should be communicated to the relevant internal parties. Whether that be transferring the call to another internal team, taking detailed notes, asking critical investigation questions, or creating a follow-up customer service email ticket to document the interaction.

With calls, it can be tough to create a structure and assign team members to conversations. To solve this routing problem, most businesses either round-robin incoming calls or ring multiple agents simultaneously. There is no right solution. It all depends on the team, the number of agents available, and the expected volume.

Round-robin helps ensure fairness amongst the group. It’s great for reporting purposes and keeps the team honest. However, it can also lead to an increase in abandoned calls and current workflows being interrupted.

Ringing simultaneously to all team members is an approach that relies on team autonomy so that the agent with the best availability can pick up the phone (which helps limit distractions amongst ongoing investigations and workflows).

Conclusion

Customer service collaboration is key to offering a great customer experience. It involves sharing information, coordinating efforts, and communicating between your team members to ensure that the customer's needs are met in a timely and satisfactory manner.

Collaboration allows team members to share knowledge, resources, and expertise to provide timely, accurate, and helpful assistance to customers. It also helps to improve resolution time, customer satisfaction, work environment, and team bonding.

By effectively implementing collaboration in customer service, businesses can provide exceptional customer service, build trust and loyalty with their customers, and improve retention rates.

Customer service has become an on-demand industry. Consumers expect a business to provide self-service options, live chats, and a social media presence. That's on top of traditional channels like email and phone contacts.

Research from Hubspot tells us that 90% of customers expect an immediate response to a customer service email. That means a response in 10 minutes or less. With multiple channels bringing in hundreds or thousands of queries, that's a difficult task.

That's why many businesses have turned to customer service automation to assist. Automating simple tasks is great for efficiency, freeing up human agents for more complex queries. Yet, the personal touch can often be lost with automated responses.

We'll cover what response templates are, some tips on how to create your own to reply with, and we'll even share some of our favorite and most usedemail templates.

What is a Response Template?

A response template is a tool that customer service teams use to bridge the gap between automation and personalization. If you work in customer service, then you know that a lot of simple questions with the same answer get asked every day.

Sometimes, we use automated email responses to tell a customer their customer service email has been received, send out-of-office messages, and so on. They're not very flexible, though.

(And although we love email, they can go way beyond just email templates).

Response templates also use pre-written text to answer frequently asked questions. The critical difference is that a human agent can select a response template, then customize details to personalize it for the customer.

This saves a lot of time writing out similar messages, while still giving the customer a personalized response. Templates can be set up in email clients like Gmail, third-party inbox management apps, messaging services, and more.

We'll be focusing on their applications in customer service. They're not exclusively used for customer communications, though. Managers and trainers also use templates to share information like coaching techniques with employees and trainees.

What is Customer Service Automation?

When we say customer service automation, we're talking about using technology to automate services. Whether it's an helpdesk, a CRM system or a live chatbot, it comes under the same definition if it's automating a customer service function.

Email response templates, or canned responses, can assist your automation efforts.

How Response Templates Benefit Customer Service

Canned responses can be highly effective customer service tools when they're used correctly. Sticking to your customer service best practices will help you design satisfying responses.

Use the principles of customer psychology to anticipate customer needs. Established patterns like reciprocity and the desire for instant gratification can help you predict user behaviors. You can use this to build and refine your solutions over time.

1. Efficiency Savings

Response templates help customer service teams reach peak efficiency. You can use well-tailored responses to improve your automation. This will, in turn, streamline the workload for your human agents.

Using responses that answer questions thoroughly and provide additional resources can cut down on repeat queries. For example, answering the customer's question and then also providing a link to your knowledge base.

When you combine well-designed responses, great customer service agents, and a reliable knowledge base, you can optimize your response times. Your agents can provide solutions to time-consuming, complex, issues while your automation helps with immediate answers.

2. Customer Satisfaction

These faster responsetimes will go towards improving customer satisfaction. So will getting accurate answers the first time. Customer satisfaction relies on more than this, though. Knowing when to use automation and when to switch to bespoke service is vital.

Recent studies from comm100 and Userlike into CX trends and automation tell us some interesting facts. Average Satisfaction rates for bot-chats are 87.58%. Yet, many customers feel bots lack understanding and 60% prefer to wait in a queue to deal directly with a human

There's an opportunity there. The more friction you can remove between automated and human service, the more you can improve customer satisfaction. The customizable nature of response templates is one way you can help bridge the gap.

3. Personalization

Personalized service is something that customers value highly. When customers feel like their issues are being listened to, they're more satisfied. Response templates can help your agents provide fast and efficient support while giving them room to personalize the details.

Delivering proactive support to your customers that is personalized to their needs will help you engage them. This can be important when you're looking to foster customer loyalty and create brand ambassadors.

If you reply to a lot of support emails, here's how we create email templates within Missive to save you a lot of time.

Tips for Creating Customer Service Responses

These are just a few potential applications of response templates. You can use them for a wide variety of customer responses. The important part is making them sound personal and relevant. These are the best tips for crafting your response templates for a better customer experience.

Pro tip: Because customer service emails are most common form of support, we recommended you start with email templates first, then retrofitting them to fit other channels that your support team manages.

1. Keep it Conversational

The whole point of a template is to be useful for as many people as possible. That means you must use simple and clear language when you write a response template. Avoid jargon and sales-speak, and keep the tone conversational.

2. Address the Issue

Make sure that your response addresses the core customer complaint. If there are several issues, address each one. Giving a response that only solves half of a customer's complaint or problem will only lead to unnecessary follow-ups and angry customers.

3. State the Next Steps

Always include what happens next in your reply. Whether that's something you have to do internally or something you need from the customer. Reassurance on timeframes and next steps can cut down on repeat queries, increase perceived product service, and remove anxieties for your customers.

4.  Be Flexible

Using response templates is a balancing act. If you use them for every response, it can start to feel robotic to the customer. A conversation can go many different ways and you can't have a template for every scenario. Make sure you still treat every customer as an individual.

A question like "what is the pricing?" is easy to answer. A template response can still feel more personal than an auto-response with a link to some FAQs. If a customer follows up with a more complex use question, though, it's probably time to start a real dialogue.

5. Test & Improve

Collect feedback from customers, if you have the capability use behavioral data too. You can monitor the performance of your responses. Using KPIs like their impact on customer satisfaction, you can see which responses work and improve those that don't.

Customer Service Email Response Templates

Here are some examples of customer service email response templates that will help with everyday queries.

"How To" Answer & Helpful Follow-up Email

Customized Instant Support Response

Request for Feedback

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Using Templates in Inbox Management Apps

Business is using more remote support than ever. Enabling inbox collaboration through third-party apps is now a common practice. These kinds of apps can help you collaborate with your remote teams and contractors.

Using apps like Missive, you can share your response templates with remote teams, too. This means you can provide a consistent tone of voice and service across separate support channels.

Once you've added your templates to the app, it's as easy as selecting from a drop-down menu to add them to your responses.

Final Thoughts

When it comes to customer service, the most important part is putting the customer first. Data analytics can give you insights into trends, but they can't tell you what customers are feeling. Following these customer service tips for small businesses can help ensure your clients have a great customer experience and turn any angry customer into a potential advocate.

Being open to communication with your customers is the best way to get real feedback. When you have a better understanding of your customer's emotions, you can create more meaningful interactions. Response templates are just a tool to help facilitate those interactions.

As a small business owner, you are probably aware of the importance of offering first-rate customer service to the development and success of your enterprise. It can enhance your entire reputation and brand image in addition to helping you to retain current consumers and draw in new ones.

In today's competitive market, it's important to go above and beyond in meeting the needs and expectations of your customers. In fact, a recent study from American Express showed that 33% of people would consider switching companies immediately after receiving poor customer service.

This article will explore customer service tips for small businesses to provide a top-notch client experience.

Why Is Customer Service Important for Small Businesses?

Most of us know that providing good customer service is important, however, it might be a little harder to express why this is true. By understanding why customer service is important you'll be able to better understand why investing in it is a good idea for your business.

There are 4 principal reasons why investing in customer service might be a good idea for your business.

1. Customer satisfaction & revenue: Providing high-quality customer service leads to increased customer satisfaction, which can lead to loyal customers and repeat business. It can be particularly important if your small business has a limited customer base. A study found that 89% of businesses with customer service that is significantly above average had better revenues than their competitors.
2. Competitive advantage: It would be surprising to learn that your business is in a competitor-free space. Providing exceptional customer support can differentiate your small business from your competitors, giving it a competitive advantage in the market.
3. Brand reputation: Providing high-quality customer service can improve your business's brand reputation, making it more attractive to potential customers.
4. Improve product or service: Providing excellent support can provide valuable customer feedback that can be used to improve your product or service.

Good customer service is essential for providing assistance and support to customers before, during, and after they purchase your products or services. And happy customers are not likely to switch to your competitor.

In fact, a recent study showed that a bad experience will almost make your customer switch to your competitor. The same study showed that 64% of consumers think that pricing is less important than their experience.

While it might be hard as a small team to provide a good customer experience and it can be tempting to automate your customer support, it's important to make sure the interactions you have with your clients provide value and respond to their needs.

Creating a positive reputation for your business is an amazing asset to develop. Indeed, study showed that 72% of customers will share their positive experience with others. After all, word of mouth from happy customers is one of the most powerful forms of marketing.

It's well known by now that keeping customers is better in the long term than continually attracting new ones.  and clients who had a good experience are more likely to stay and repeat their purchase over and over again.

Another aspect of customer service that is less talked about is the fact that it provides a great communication channel with your clients. It can be valuable to gain insight into your product or service from people actually using it and to discover new segments or use cases that you didn't think about in the first place.

What Makes Good Customer Service?

Great client service is only as good as the people delivering it. After all, they are responsible for managing customer interactions and ensuring that clients are happy with their experiences.

To make it efficient, helpful, and personalized, you should follow some key aspects:

• Communication: Being able to effectively communicate with customers, both in terms of listening to their needs and expressing information clearly.
• Empathy: Understanding and being able to relate to the customer's perspective, and showing genuine care and concern for their satisfaction.
• Responsiveness: Being able to efficiently address any issues or concerns that your customer may have, and providing timely solutions. all the new communication channels, people expect faster response time than ever before.
• Problem-solving: Being able to identify and resolve issues and challenges and to provide solutions that are satisfactory to the customer.

But you might be wondering how can you make sure the service you provide actually answers these questions. Well, it has been proven that we're not good at analyzing if the service we provide is good or not. So why not use your interactions with your clients to gain some valuable feedback and work on the parts that could be improved

Overall, great customer care is about making your clients feel valued and satisfied and going above and beyond to meet their needs and expectations. With the customer service best practices, you can ensure that you’re offering a great experience to your clients.

The Best Solutions for Your Small Business Customer Service

A great way to ensure you can offer a great customer experience to your customers is by using customer service software to manage all inquiries. We've already covered the best customer service email software in another article, but here's a summary of the 5 best solutions to help you offer the best customer support.

14 Tips for Successful Customer Service in Your Small Business

As we’ve seen, offering great support is crucial for any small business. We've gartered the best tips that we've observed from our own experience to help you bring your customer service to the next level.

While our goal isn't to help you build a customer service plan from the ground up. We think these strategies will provide a way to implement a consistent and effective way to manage interactions with your customers.

We also recommend you have a look at our best practices for customer service guide to learn more.

Here are 14 small business customer service tips you should start using.

1. Show Love and Care

Showing love and care helps to foster a positive relationship with clients. This can lead to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty, which can ultimately result in repeat business and positive word-of-mouth advertising for your business. Additionally, showing love and care can also help to reduce the likelihood of negative customer experiences, which can damage the reputation of your company.

In a small business, where every customer matters, demonstrating love and care can be a valuable tool for building and maintaining a successful customer service experience.

2. Use Feedback to Improve

It can be beneficial that the feedback from your customers is used by your company to help improve the overall customer experience but also your product and/or service. Your clients are in the best place to let you know what works and what doesn’t with your offer.

You can also use their feedback to develop new features, new products, or new services as you will probably learn what are the limitations they are facing.

3. Offer a Comprehensive Self-Help Resource

According to an article published in Harvard Business Review, 81% of customers attempt to resolve problems themselves before contacting customer service. Creating resources your users or future clients can access 24/7 to solve and answer their basic questions or problems can help your business, no matter what you’re offering.

A comprehensive and easy-to-navigate self-help section on your website can bring many benefits:

• Provide customers with immediate answers to their most common questions, which can save them time and effort to reach out to support. This can also free up your customer service team to focus on more complex and urgent inquiries, allowing them to provide better service to customers who do need to contact them.
• Improve the overall customer experience by making it easy for customers to find the information they need quickly and efficiently. This can reduce frustration and improve customer satisfaction, leading to higher levels of customer loyalty and retention.

A well-designed self-service section on your website can provide numerous benefits for both your customers and your customer service team. However, you should make sure that your knowledge base content stays accurate and that it is updated regularly.

4. Be Effective

Being able to efficiently and effectively solve your customers’ problems and meet their needs is important for small businesses because it helps to improve customer satisfaction and retention.

According to a study done by Statista, 27 percent of the respondents cited lack of effectiveness as the primary cause of their customer service frustration.

When customers feel like their issues are being addressed in a timely and satisfactory manner, they are more likely to continue doing business with the company.

Try focusing on effectiveness in your customer interactions instead of just trying to resolve the most tickets in the least amount of time. This way, you can avoid frustration from your clients.

5. Give the Same Level of Support to All Customers

Giving the same support to the smaller clients as you would for the bigger ones can be beneficial for your business. Often the smaller ones are the most public in their praise and love for your product.

Small businesses often rely on word of mouth for their reputation, and if a small customer feels neglected or not valued, they are more likely to speak negatively about your business to others. On the other hand, if a small customer feels valued and receives excellent customer service, they are more likely to spread positive word of mouth and potentially bring in more business.

Giving the same level of support to all customers also shows a level of fairness and consistency, which can improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. Customers are more likely to continue using a business if they know they will receive the same level of support every time.

Furthermore, as a small business, you probably have limited resources and may not be able to offer different levels of support based on the size or value of a customer. Treating all customers equally allows your company to utilize its resources efficiently and effectively.

6. Follow-Up with Customers

Following up with customers has been a big win for us at Missive since the very beginning. When you’re small, you don’t have all the features that some of your bigger competitors might have.

We’ve followed up on emails 2+ years old. People were a lot more impressed that we did follow up after all this time than annoyed, especially since we were shipping a feature they wanted or that blocked them to try Missive to begin with.

7. Be Honest

Honesty is a crucial aspect of excellent customer service because it helps to build trust and credibility with your customers. When you are upfront and transparent about your products and services, customers are more likely to feel confident in their decision to do business with you.

If one of your customers has a problem or complaint, it is important, to be honest about the situation and take steps to resolve it in a timely and satisfactory manner. It demonstrates a commitment to customer satisfaction and can help to prevent negative reviews or complaints from spreading.

At the very beginning of Missive, we weren’t afraid to refer people to competitors. That is also when follow-ups are important. You have some leads that you have redirected somewhere else, but you know you can eventually reach back with a good chance to convert.

Being honest means being upfront about your products and services, including any potential limitations or restrictions. It also means being open and honest about any mistakes or issues that may arise and working to resolve them quickly and fairly.

8. Be Responsive and Available to Customers

According to HubSpot Research, 90% of customers say “immediate” responses to customer service questions are important or very important. In addition, according to 60% of customers, "immediate" means within 10 minutes.

While answering all customers’ questions within 10 minutes might be hard for a small business with limited resources, it is still important to be responsive and available to your clients.

When customers feel like they can rely on a company to quickly and efficiently address their needs, they are more likely to return and recommend the business to others.

Additionally, being responsive and available can help small businesses to identify and resolve customer issues more quickly preventing small issues from turning into larger problems that may be more difficult and costly to fix.

At Missive, we rarely have emails sit in the team inbox for more than a few hours. The right balance between immediate (a lot of questions get answered by themselves if you give people a bit of time and good self-help resources) and too long (you do want your customers to feel like you’re dedicated and responsive) has to be found.

Overall, being responsive and available to customers is an essential part of providing good customer service, and it is especially important for small businesses that rely on customer loyalty and repeat business to thrive.

9. Don’t Get Overwhelmed

Getting overwhelmed by the support of customers’ requests can result in poor communication, slow response times, and a lack of attention to detail. This can lead to frustrated customers who do not feel valued or heard, which can ultimately harm the reputation of your business.

At Missive, it’s been a tremendous weight off our collective shoulders when we started using assignments to stop receiving replies that were assigned to someone else. We know we’re all always a single @mention away.

With good customer service collaboration, team members are not overwhelmed. They can take the time to fully understand customer needs and provide personalized, efficient solutions leading to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

10. Know Your Product

As a small business owner, you probably know your product or service down to the last detail. But by making sure your team is knowledgeable about your product or service, they will be able to better understand and address customers’ questions and concerns. This can help to build trust and confidence with clients.

Knowing your product also allows you to be proactive in addressing potential problems or issues that may arise. If you are familiar with the product or service, you can anticipate potential issues and work to prevent them from occurring. This can save you time and resources, as well as improve the overall customer experience.

In addition, having a deep understanding of your product or service allows you to better tailor your customer service to the needs of your customers. You can offer personalized recommendations or solutions based on your knowledge of the product or service, helping to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.

11. Offer Personalized Service

By treating your customers as individuals rather than just a transaction, you can differentiate yourself and stand out from competitors. This means going above and beyond to ensure that each customer feels valued and appreciated. Taking the time to understand a customer's unique needs and tailoring the service to meet those needs can help build strong, long-lasting relationships.

When a customer feels like they are being treated as an individual rather than just a transaction, they are more likely to return to your business in the future. This helps to increase customer retention and can ultimately lead to increased profits.

12. Be Present on Multiple Communication Channels

Having a presence on multiple communication channels allows customers to choose the method that they feel is most comfortable and convenient to use.

A study from Statista found that 42% of customers prefer calling, 20% prefer emailing, and 38% prefer digital channels to contact customer service.

Depending on the industry, these numbers can change. And chances are, if you’re a SaaS, emails will be among the preferred methods to get support.

Being available on multiple platforms, like email, SMS, live chat, phone call, and social media is a great way to build a good relationship with clients.

13. Use Canned Responses

Adding a response to a draft is really easy with the search option.

You are probably getting a lot of the same questions over and over again and manually answering all of them can be time-consuming, especially for a small team. Canned responses are a great way to make replying to these emails a lot faster.

Templates also allow you to ensure that all responses to common questions are consistent and that your customers receive the same level of service and information no matter who they are interacting with within your business.

Using canned responses can also free up time for your team to focus on more complex or unique customer inquiries, allowing for better and more efficient customer service overall.

However, as we’ve seen in the previous tip, personalized service is the key. It’s best to personalize these templates with variables to make your reply more friendly.

14. Use the Right Tools

Using internal tools for customer service can greatly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the support provided. With good collaboration software for small businesses such as Missive, you and your team can easily work together to track and respond to customer inquiries, resolve issues more quickly, and improve overall customer satisfaction.

Overall, using technology can help you provide better, faster, and more personalized service, which can lead to increased customer loyalty and ultimately, more business for your small company.

There are many tools and platforms available that can help your business improve its customer cares, such as live chat, a customer relationship management (CRM) system, and a messaging system.

These tools can help you to respond to customers quickly and efficiently but having to switch between all these apps can be counterproductive. With Missive, you can gather all your communications channels in one collaborative communication tool that integrates many other tools you might already be using.

Conclusion

In order to maximize customer satisfaction, gain a competitive edge in the market, build a favorable brand reputation, and develop your products or services, exceptional customer service is crucial for your company. Effective communication, empathy, responsiveness, and problem-solving are all key components of a positive customer experience.

By implementing the 14 tips discussed in this article, you can improve customer service and provide a top-notch experience for your clients.

Have questions on how can Missive help your business? Read how LANDR is using Missive to solve customer inquiries efficiently or book a demo!

Technology has provided us with an array of channels through which to communicate. But this has given rise to a very modern dilemma: which one should you use when contacting your customers?

Today’s customers are hit with a barrage of information on a daily basis.

We all know the feeling of plowing through a bulging inbox each morning. We’re often selective about which to respond to, which to send straight to junk, and which to consign to the ‘do later’ stack.

Inevitably though, those never get done later. By the time you get around to it, there’s another stack of fresh emails to sift through. Sound familiar?

With that in mind, as a business, you must ask yourself whether adding to your customer’s neverending inbox is the optimum way of contacting them.

Maybe a quick call would be better? Or perhaps a text message?

The method of communication you choose could be the difference between a positive customer experience and a negative one.

In fact, a study by McKinsey & Company showed that one organization that redesigned its customer experience culture identified opportunities to improve profits by 15 to 20%.

Choosing the right method of communication plays a key role in creating a positive customer experience. So which one should you choose when contacting your customers?

Let’s take a look at the benefits and drawbacks of each.

Business Communication Methods

You might be wondering whether you even need all three types of communication today. In short, the answer is yes.

While methods such as phone calls and text messages may seem outdated, they still have a big part to play in today’s business world, especially when it comes to communicating with your customers.

It’s true that anyone under the age of 20 may snigger at the very idea of email – sarcastically referring to it as ‘snail mail’, perhaps throwing in a comment along the lines of “nobody uses that these days”. But it still plays a leading role in business communications.

Text, emails, and calls all have specific functions and, at least in the short- to medium-term, are here to stay.

The key is to learn when best to use them!

This may feel overwhelming at first. So rather than spending hours stewing over email best practices, let’s take a look at the different options for using each when contacting your customers.

Text vs Email vs Call

When considering the debate of text vs. email vs. call, a good place to start is by taking a close look at the pros and cons of each.

You may realize that there are far more pros than cons with all of these methods of communication. Even if you get things wrong, it’s unlikely that they will be terribly wrong.

Text Pros and Cons

While text messaging may seem unfashionable – something associated with a phone the size of a small car and performed by someone wearing very 1990s attire – you may be surprised to learn that its popularity is actually increasing.

Why? Because of its convenience, high response rates, immediacy, and scalability.

Texts are also fast, easy to reply to, inexpensive, and allow the customer to respond in their own time. Plus, the majority of customers read text messages.

What’s not to like?

Well, the cons include a limited character count, difficulty in conveying voice, and lack of security.

What’s more, it’s tricky gaining a positive reaction from a limited text message, and they can come across as very impersonal, particularly if sent in bulk.

That said, there are ways to overcome this. You may want to consider getting a text messaging service for businesses that can help with how your organization handles this part of your operations.

Email Pros and Cons

As you’ll know from your daily business interactions, email is a huge part of professional communication today.

Emails are excellent for record-keeping, which can be vital as evidence in case of a dispute. They’re also scalable, have unrestricted timing, and are cheap.

If you send out a lot of emails, a good email management software will help your teams collaborate efficiently. This is particularly important for staying on the same page when more than one person may have to contact the same customer.

Missive’s team inbox and chat app allows teams to collaborate around email

But it’s not all a bed of roses. As a consumer, you’ll no doubt have found yourself frustrated by an email. They can be impersonal, get buried in your spam, or arrive at an inappropriate time.

As a business, you may face the same challenges. When contacting customers, you cannot be sure they’ve received the email until they respond. Plus, if you send them too often, many people will stop paying attention.

Call pros and cons

While phone calls may seem like old news, they remain the ultimate form of personalized communication.

Depending on the nature of your business, it’s likely that not all of your customers will be tech-savvy millennials. So maintaining a healthy level of customer contact over the phone remains vital.

If you need to explain complex issues, nothing beats a phone call. Once you have the customer on the phone, you can have an immediate back-and-forth to ensure all details have been fully understood.

Phone calls are also less intimidating as they’re more like ‘real-world’ conversations. They’re also safer; you can verify exactly who is receiving the message.

But as with everything, calls do have their downside. They’re not scalable, are time-consuming, and are easy to ignore. Plus, the customer must be available and will have to stop what they’re doing to take the call.

With that in mind, if you’re a bigger organization that handles large volumes of calls, a strong VoIP for enterprise phone system is essential.

When to Use Each Type of Communication

A large part of deciding which type of communication to use is selecting the one that is most appropriate for each circumstance.

Let’s take a look at when (and when not) to use each method.

Quick and Concise

As mentioned earlier, business texting is actually increasing in use. It’s brief, to the point, and crystal-clear. It’s unlikely that a text message has left you scratching your head, right?

This ease of use means texting is most appropriate for short communications, such as sending out passcodes or informing a customer their online payment has been received.

When considering whether to send a text, determine if the message requires a response. If your answer is no, a text is probably your best bet. If the message requires a simple yes or no response, then texting is also appropriate.

Texting is best avoided when contacting new customers as it’s impersonal. Keep in mind as well that due to the lack of security, texting is inappropriate for sending confidential or sensitive information.

Elaborating on a Message

Emailing is such a big part of our daily business communications that we barely give a second thought as to whether it’s appropriate or not in any given situation.

So what is the ideal situation? Emails are great when you don’t need an immediate response. For this reason, many customers favor them as they can reply in their own time.

Emails also give you a chance to showcase your brand. You could even create a dynamic email signature to create a clear and memorable brand identity.

Emails are also appropriate if you need to send links or attach files. They are far more detailed than texts and will leave a lasting record that both you and your customers can refer back to.

So you could consider using emails to send documents, engage with leads or provide customers with delivery updates.

On the flip side, if your communication requires an urgent response, an email shouldn’t be your first port of call.

Additionally, if the communication is confidential or your previous emails have gone unanswered, consider a call instead.

Making it Personal

In the high-tech modern environment with its plethora of communication channels, it may seem surprising that an old-fashioned phone call is still in vogue.

But sometimes people just need to hear another human voice. As a result, those old-fashioned phone communications remain relevant in the age of multimedia.

In the business world, phone calls are still the optimum method of communication for when you need an immediate answer or to convey an urgent message. For example, if you need to change or even cancel an appointment, phone calls are your friend.

There’s no limit to a phone call and you can more clearly convey your message. For that reason, calls are great for clarifying points that your email communication has failed to get across or following up on unanswered emails.

Given their personal nature, phone calls are also the optimum way for conveying confidential information, taking customer feedback, or persuading leads to take that vital next step.

However, calls can also be inconvenient, particularly if they come out of the blue. So be sure to call people at appropriate times of the day and keep calls concise to avoid wasting customers’ time.

Contact Your Customers the Right Way

When deciding which type of communication to use for a given scenario, it comes down to a three-pronged attack.

1. Evaluate the pros and cons of each method.
2. Consider which is the most appropriate for each scenario.
3. Confirm your communication method based on the findings of your appraisal.

Maintaining contact with your customers is an integral part of any business. By choosing the best method for each individual situation, you can ensure a positive customer experience.

Taking Advantage of Emails, Texts, & Calls in One PlaceThere's no need to juggle multiple communication apps when you can take advantage of emails, texts, and calls all in one place. With Missive and the Dialpad integration, you can take advantage of Missive's intuitive UI and the powerful Team Inboxes to manage and collaborate on all your communications without having to constantly switch between different apps.

Being able to easily keep track of all your conversations and messages in one place and collaborate with team members on customer communication is a major productivity boost.

Interested in seeing how can Missive help your teams collaborate better and be more productive? Book a demo today!

Most people reading this article probably have had poor interactions with automated customer support services. Many are badly designed or try to delegate a lot of the work to bots and other forms of automated support. True artificial intelligence is still non-existent and inferior levels of it are very costly to develop. So, how do you fully automate customer support?

Well, you probably shouldn't. At least not entirely. You should aim to automate repetitive and predictable tasks, and leave the tricky stuff to humans.

By doing so, customers will be happier and employees too, since we all know repetitive work is the worst part of most jobs and it's also what machines excel at.

Customer support automation done right

Here are five ways that will help you scale customer support without compromising the customer experience.

1. Use canned responses

Canned responses or templates help you write and reply to emails faster with pre-written snippets. This alleviates the stress of having to type the same text multiple times per day. Employees can start replying to a customer with a customized message and insert blocks of canned responses.

This is probably the most efficient semi-automation method. As far as the customer knows, they got a personalized answer to their question.

It is important to properly name canned responses and be familiarized with the contents. Otherwise this method easily backfires on you if you send unrelated information.

With Missive you can share canned responses with everyone in the company or specific teams! This reduces the danger of sending sales related info to a technical support enquiry.

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We also support variables. With them you can easily customize response with dynamic content like your recipient's name.

For example:

Hi {{ recipient.first_name | default: 'there' }},

… if it matches a recipient.first_name would render something like this

Hi Philippe,

… and if it didn't match anything something like this:

Hi there,

2. Triage support queries automatically

Routing messages to the most appropriate responder or team can be time consuming. This is why you should automate this. The sooner the customer's question is received by a competent team member, the sooner it will be replied to.

It requires some initial work, but after you've finely tuned the parameters, your team won't be wasting time sorting out queries.

In Missive this can be achieved with the creation of Rules. Here are a few of examples of automated routing:

Job inquiries should be directed to HR.

Refunds should be directed to John at the Finance team. He should process all refund requests within 24 hours of reception.

Shipping issues should be directed to Customer Support and show shipper's phone number.

3. Create a robust knowledge base

This is your first line of defense. You should build an extensive repository of frequently asked questions and tutorials on your website. Ideally you can solve 80% or more of the customer's questions by simply directing them to the knowledge base.

At first you will need to think of these questions, but soon it will become user-generated. People will be fast to let you know they can't find this or that in the knowledge base. You simply need to label these conversations and upload new content to the FAQ sections once or twice per month.

In Missive you can label things in a matter of seconds, thanks to user actions. For example, whenever you spot a potential FAQ, simply type "#faq" in the comment bar and the conversation will be labeled "FAQ".

4. Get customer feedback

The best way to improve customer support is by gauging your support experience. This can be easily done by adding a simple satisfaction survey in your email signature.

Missive offers a powerful signature management system. With it, you can easily add customer satisfaction surveys to each of your teammates' signatures in just minutes.

The dynamic data comes from your team's editable member profiles. Some survey collection companies let you generate embeddable HTML code. In this case, you can copy the code and paste it into the managed signature editor.

You can also add custom field variables like in the example above. Learn more about managed signatures.

5. Auto-reply customers with relevant information

Let's face it, customers aren't patient, most want immediate responses. While big companies can offer 24/7 support, most businesses can't. This doesn't mean you have to leave your customer flying in the dark. Auto-replies can reduce customer anxiety and sometimes solve issues without human interaction.

Outside business hours + link to knowledge base

Let people know they've sent an email outside of business hours. It's the best way to manage expectations and let the customer know they won't receive an immediate or same-day response.

You should also include a link to your knowledge base. People might find an answer by themselves.

Outside business hours + suggested articles

If you want to up your level a little, you could create multiple auto-reply responses that trigger with different keywords.

Customer feedback is an integral part of a customer-centric business strategy. Along with excellent customer service, getting feedback from the people who use your product/service is key to achieve customer success.

In this blog post, we share with you four ways you can use Missive to easily acquire, manage and store customer feedback.

We will be relying mostly on User Action Rules. These are triggered by an action defined by the user. For example, you could create a rule that sends a conversation to the trash whenever you type trash in the comment bar.

Let's get started!

Get social reviews

Send links to multiple review platforms in under 3 seconds. How?

1. Create a Response

Here's the copy if you want to use it. Make sure to add the logos of the platforms you use and add the respective links.

Hey {{ recipient.first_name | default: "there" | confirm }}!

Thank you for trying out our product. If you want to share your experience with others, you might want to review us on:

G2 - Facebook - TrustPilot - Yelp - Google

Cheers!

2. Create a Comment User Action rule for #reviews

Now, when you type "#reviews" in the comment bar, the Platform reviews canned response will be sent automatically to the customer.

Manage Email Customer Feedback

With Missive you can easily manage customer feedback received in emails. You can even have it sent to a spreadsheet in order to categorize it and put words into action. This can be done with Zapier webhooks and Google Sheets.

Although it might sound like a daunting project, it's not. Let me show you.

Create a Zapier account and click on Create Zap.

Select "Webhook" as the trigger > "Catch hook" as the Trigger Event > Continue

To test the trigger, open your Missive settings > Create a "New comment" rule > Set the condition Text is "#feedback" > Add the webhook URL provided by Zapier

Add the comment "#feedback" to any email thread in Missive.

Go back to Zapier and click on Test. You should get something like this:

In the action menu, select "Google Sheets" > "Create Spreadsheet Row" as the Action event > Add your Google account > Continue

Note Before you continue creating the Zap, go to your Google Drive > Create a spreadsheet and add column names. It could be as simple as having two columns: Email and Feedback

Select your Drive > Select a spreadsheet > Select a Worksheet. In our spreadsheet, we have two columns: Email and Feedback. We are going to match them to the pertinent data from the webhook.

In this case, we want:

Email -> Latest Message From Field Address

Feedback -> Latest Message Preview

Test it and click on Turn on Zap.

From this point on, whenever you get customer feedback in an email, you can simply type "#feedback" in the comment bar and information will be sent seamlessly to the feedback spreadsheet.

Show satisfaction surveys in signature

Missive offers a powerful signature management system. With it, you can easily add customer satisfaction surveys to each of your teammates' signatures in just minutes.

The dynamic data comes from your team's editable member profiles. Some survey collection companies let you generate embeddable HTML code. In this case, you can copy the code and paste it into the managed signature editor.

You can also add custom field variables like in the example above. Learn more about managed signatures.

Implement proactive follow-ups

One of the most straightforward ways to stay in contact with a customer and to ensure a successful relationship is to follow up after a determined period of time. If you work in a sales environment, it's crucial to follow up on leads. Missive makes it easy for you.

You can create a Rule that snoozes all outgoing emails sent from your account that contains the label "Warm Lead".

You'll never miss the opportunity to close a deal!

People prefer businesses they can communicate with through messaging.

Facebook Messenger is one of the biggest online messaging platforms in the world. It has over 2 billion monthly active users globally and is one of the most downloaded apps as well, with over 2 million monthly downloads.

For most companies, being able to connect with leads, customers or followers on social media is crucial, especially in omnipresent platforms like Facebook Messenger.

In this post we're going to explore how your business can harness the power of Facebook Messenger to connect to customers throughout the sales funnel.

The golden rule

Facebook says "We know people expect businesses to respond quickly, and businesses who respond to users' messages faster see better business outcomes." And they enforce this in a few ways.

The most important thing to remember when using this channel of communication is to respond fast.

There's actually a 24-hour response window, once passed you can no longer reply to the customer. You have to wait for them to contact you again or pay to send a Sponsored Message. This applies to third-party apps that connect Messenger.

Facebook also displays how fast you reply to messages. There's a coveted "very responsive to messages" badge, which people like because it is perceived as sign of attentiveness and superior customer support. We'll talk about how to get this badge a bit later in this post.

Setting up Facebook Messenger for Business

It's a simple process. You need to have a Facebook Page. To create a Page you need a personal Facebook account. Both are free, and most people already have a personal account.

Enabling Facebook Messenger in your Page

The option to receive messages privately is on by default. If for some reason it isn't, you need to visit your Page's General Settings and find Messages. Click on Edit and make sure the "Allow people to contact my page privately by showing the Message button" checkbox is selected.

Encourage customers to reach out to you

You can achieve this by letting people know you're open to receiving messages. You can:

• Share your Messenger link: You can create a unique Messenger link for your page by adding m.me/ in front of your Page's username. Share your link anywhere, for instance: your website, app, flyer, SMS, etc.
• You can find your Page's username below your Page's name. For example, our link is m.me/missiveapp.

• Add Send Message button: This is an excellent way to drive people who visit your Page to get in touch with your company.
• To add a Send Message button, click + Add a Button below your Page's cover photo.

• Add Send Message Button to posts: Whenever you post something on Facebook, you can choose to add the message button.

• Add Customer Chat plugin to your website: Facebook offers a webchat that can easily be installed in your site.
• To enable it, go to Page Settings > Messaging > Add Messenger to your website. You can read more about it here.

Managing messages from Facebook Messenger

There are a couple of ways to do this. You can use the basic Page Inbox system Facebook offers or opt for a collaborative inbox tool like Missive, designed to manage customer inquiries by a team.

Messenger's Page Inbox

It's a good solution for low message volumes and businesses that use Messenger as their only communication channel.

It offers basic assigning features, labels and notes. But once your company starts growing, adding new team members and having people contacting you through email, SMS, etc, it's better to look for another solution to centralize comms and distribute the work among employees.

Missive: Collaborative team inbox tool

Missive is a team inbox and chat app that helps businesses stay on top of all their communication channels in a single app. All while enabling collaboration between coworkers.

In Missive you can reply to customer inquiries coming from emails, SMS, Messenger, WhatsApp in a centralized app.

One of the best features is the ability to collaborate inside messages. For example, if a customer sends a Facebook message, and you don't know how to respond, you can @mention another team and instantly give them access and ask for help.

You can also create team inboxes and assign certain messages to specialized teams. Maybe a customer has a sales question. Then you can assign it to the Sales Team manually or through automated rules.

Teams can't go back to Facebook's Page Inbox system once they use Missive!

Adding Facebook Messenger to Missive

It will take you 5 minutes or less. Just follow these quick steps:

1. Go to Accounts > Add Account
2. Select Messenger Business
3. Login to Facebook as a user who manages the Page
4. Back on Missive, click the Facebook account you just added
5. Click Import on the Business Page(s) you want to manage in Missive
6. Share the account with the relevant team or people

That's it; you're ready to start replying to Messenger inquiries from Missive!

The importance of responsiveness

Timing matters, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post. People are always looking for quick results, they expect the businesses they message to respond fast and accurately.

Very Responsive to Messages badge

You can get the "Very responsive to messages" badge in your Facebook Page. This will let people know that you consistently respond quickly to messages.

People contact more Pages that have this badge.

The badge will show automatically when you have:

• A response rate of 90% or more
• A response time of less than 15 minutes.

Get your badge faster with Missive!

With Missive you can create alerts that trigger when a message has been sitting in your inbox for a determined period of time.

You can notify a team when a Facebook message is getting close to that 15 minutes window.

Here's how to do that:

Go to Rules > Create a rule > Incoming messages > Messenger

Automated responses

Using the rules feature, you can create a whole array of impressive automated flows to win the Messenger game. Here are a few ideas:

• Greet your customers instantly after they contact you
• Auto-send support responses based on keywords
• Auto-assign refund inquiries to your accountant
• Send an out-of-office message during off-hours
• Auto-label urgent messages

You can explore more ideas here.

If you think Missive could be a good fit to your business, don't hesitate to contact us with questions and be sure to check out all our amazing features!

When dealing with customers, doing it fast is almost always better. People expect to receive a diligent and competent service at all times. Without the proper tools, meeting customer expectations can be hard.

Whether you have an SLA (Service Level Agreement) in place or you simply want to offer the best customer service possible, Missive can help you cut and sustain a proper response time through Rules.

Your customers will stay happy, your team will have an automated helping hand, and you will wish you would have implemented this sooner.

What is an SLA?

A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a commitment that defines the level of service that is expected to be given to a customer by a supplier. Possible penalties can be agreed upon when failing to meet the expected standards of service.

An SLA can be a written formal contract between companies, but it can also be an internal arrangement between teams or departments. Likewise, an SLA can exist simply as a company policy intended to improve and excel in the service given to prospects or current customers.

Why do you need an SLA?

Apart from the fact that some companies will ask for an SLA instituted before signing a contract with you, freely implementing one is a great way to improve your team's service level, whether in customer support or sales.

By having guidelines and cues in the escalation path, the level of service will get better naturally. You can also use it as a selling point for your company.

What is an escalation path?

An escalation path is a process for quickly bringing unresolved issues to the appropriate level of responsibility for resolution when they cannot be resolved within a specified time frame.

A breach happens when the escalation path has been exhausted, and any of the preventive measures did not manage to contain the problem.

You can create three types of escalation paths:

• Time-based: the message climbs the path every x amount of time.
• Customer-based: the message is escalated based on the value of the customer.
• Complexity-based: the message is triaged based on the difficulty or specialization-level of the issue.

How to set up an SLA?

Unlike rigid and complex help desk software, Missive allows you to integrate an SLA in the form of automated rules. The level of granularity it offers is outstanding. You can apply distinct SLAs to different teams, groups, or even individual employees.

Time-based escalation path setup

We will be creating three rules. The first one triggers a warning after 30 minutes of the message being left unreplied.

The second one will trigger after another 30 minutes later but in this case the message will be labeled with Respond ASAP

After another 10 minutes and on this next step of the escalation path, the message will be assigned to a supervisor. It will be labeled with ⚠️ SLA BREACH

Customer-based escalation path setup

In this case, let's imagine we have a valuable customer named Elisa Clark (eclark@company.com)

We will set up three rules. The first one will mark all incoming emails from Elisa with a 👑 VIP label.

A second rule that triggers a note after 15 minutes if the message is still unreplied. A manager will also be notified of the imminent breach.

A third rule will apply the label ⚠️ SLA BREACH after 30 minutes of the message staying unreplied.

Complexity-based escalation path setup

This last scenario works well when your team is segmented in different levels of expertise.

In this case, all incoming emails could arrive at a centralized team inbox. When manually labeling depending on the difficulty (Level 1, Level 2, Level 3), the message is assigned to a particular team member. This is achieved with a user action rule.

If after 30 minutes the message sits unreplied, the message can be automatically assigned to another member with the same level of expertise.

If, after 1 hour, the message is still unreplied, then the message is labeled with ⚠️ SLA BREACH and assigned to a Level 3 member.

Are you tired of customers complaining about unreplied emails? Or long response times? Are you ready to enhance your customer's experience? Then it's time to try Missive and adopt an SLA to achieve your response time goals.