We're turning our focus this new year to customer
service e-mail messages, those "answers" we receive in our
inboxes when we write to customer service representatives
(CSRs) for help. Our research method: Send hundreds of
customer service questions and requests via e-mail. We've
e-mailed everyone -- from Fortune 500s to
ma-and-pa companies, from public corporations to
nonprofits and government agencies. We've solicited
customer service e-mail from clients and colleagues. What
we've learned so far: (1) Lots of customer service
representatives lack the basic writing skills they need to
communicate with customers. (2) Lots of companies are
sending out embarrassing, inaccurate, business-damaging
e-mail disguised as "help."
As we analyze the e-mail responses in our huge
collection, we discovered that the unsatisfactory e-mails
shared one of several traits. We present these to you now:
Five E-mail Errors to Avoid.
Error #1: Don't Write Us, We Won't Write You
The Mayor's website urged us to send an e-mail. ("Let me
know how you think our city is doing...") The website
assured a "timely response." So, we sent an e-mail
complaining about a garbage pickup. That was three months
ago, and we haven't gotten a reply - an untimely response
by any measure.
The mayor was not alone in ignoring our e-mail. A
surprisingly high number of our e-mails got no response.
Our inquiries were about products we wanted to buy, places
we wanted to visit, organizations we wanted to join and
problems we had with existing products or government
services. The no-response not only annoyed us, it puzzled
us. Didn't this company want our business, the politician
our vote? They won't get it. We exercised our consumer
options and went elsewhere. The no-responders lost our
business and, if we had been their customers in the past,
our loyalty. We'll be doing business with the competition
from now on.
Error #2: Sending The Wrong Canned Response
We acknowledge the practicality of auto responders and
canned (or knowledge database) responses. We appreciate a
machine-generated response that acknowledges our e-mail
and gives a timeframe for a "human" response. However, we
were quite irked when the response didn't meet the
promised timeframe, or didn't come at all.
Canned responses are a practical solution to customers'
frequently asked (and frequently answered) questions. But
often the canned response didn't answer our question. Or,
if we asked several questions, one or more went
unanswered. That meant we had to contact the company
again.
Sometimes we got a one-size-fits-all response that
probably fits no one. For example, we sent the following
question to a financial aid information service: "I have a
daughter, age 8. I would like information about saving for
her college costs. " We received a 1200-word answer that
told us everything we DIDN'T want to know about the
necessary forms and the filing deadlines for scholarships.
The message even included this useless information: "Once
your daughter makes 24 on-time payments and meets the
minimum co-borrower release credit requirements, she may
apply to release her co-borrower." The e-mail said nothing
about SAVING for college.
Three months later we e-mailed the same organization a
new question: "I would like information about scholarship
assistance for the grandchildren of veterans." We got the
EXACT SAME 1200-word off-topic response we had received
the first time.
Error #3: Giving Customers The No-Answer
Run-Around
A particularly annoying type of response not only failed
to answer our question, it sent us to the company's
website where, most likely, we hadn't found the
information in the first place! For example, we sent an
online travel service this e-mail: "I'd like to rent a
Chrysler PT Cruiser on my next trip. How do I find out
which company rents them and how do I reserve one? I don't
want to end up getting a Ford Explorer!" Instead of
answering our question, the e-mail response explained how
to make reservations online and referred us back to the
website's unhelpful FAQs.
In another query, we asked a senior citizen's
organization "Do you have summer camps that grandchildren
and grandparents can attend together?" We were sent back
to the website for a keyword search. The customer service
representative wrote "With our enhanced on-line services,
you can now search our catalogs by topic or other key word
via our Web site." Is it too much to expect that customer
service do the search to find the information or know
their products well enough to answer the question?
A variation on the "run around" was a response from a
large catalog store to our question about whether a
particular hand-held computer could be used for PowerPoint
presentations. The response: "Contact our mail order
department, or visit our website."
Error #4: Giving Customers No Satisfaction
Sometimes the company did an adequate job of answering our
question, but the response did not acknowledge our pain
and suffering or our value as a customer. For example, we
sent this e-mail about a bill we'd received for a magazine
subscription: "You have sent me three bills for your
magazine since I made my payment. There must be a MAJOR
problem in the way you process payments. Would you please
make sure that I don't receive another bill?"
The subscription company finally solved the problem
with the bill, but the e-mail response it sent us did not
satisfy. The company wrote: "We have your payment. You do
not expire until November 2001." Not only did the response
sound ominous (you do not expire!), it didn't acknowledge
or apologize for our pain and inconvenience. Each customer
service e-mail is an opportunity to build a relationship
with a customer. Each response should make the customer
feel valued.
Error #5: Sending A Sloppy Response
Some companies that sent us e-mail had clearly adopted the
"it's only e-mail" attitude. They decided somewhere along
the line that e-mail was so casual that spelling and
grammar don't matter. But spelling and grammar do matter,
and not only to aging English teachers. Here's the e-mail
response we received to our question about a product
guarantee. "Our product quarantee is Gauranteed Period."
This response made us wonder. Is the company as sloppy
about shipping as it is about spelling? Would the package
arrive by Christmas, as promised?
What do these five e-mail errors tell us? Many
companies need an attitude adjustment when it comes to
customer service e-mail. Perhaps the benchmark of a
successful customer service e-mail effort should be the
quality of the response, not how many are answered per
hour. Did your response serve your customer? If not, you
risk alienating your customer and hurting your bottom
line.
What are companies doing right? Our next article will
look at good examples. We'll discuss the traits of
excellent e-mail, and tell you how to elevate your
customer service e-mails from adequate to excellent.
Well, that's the end of this article. This time we'll
close by quoting the motto of retail chain Macy's: "Be
everywhere, do everything, and never fail to astonish the
customer." What does this motto have to do with customer
service e-mail? Well, it's never a good idea to astonish
your customer by writing badly.
