The Impact of Email on Customer Service
Social media is said to be the most powerful and efficient tool used for both marketing and customer service. That is now a fact given that most people are into social media nowadays – talk about Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc. On the other hand, the power of email is still as effective, or better yet, more efficient than social media (especially in business). It all goes down on how you execute it, how to effectively use technology to improve customer service that is.
The Email is Dead. Long live the Email
Some people may say email marketing and customer service via email is dead. No, definitely not. Here’s a surprising fact – this year alone, it is likely that more than 3 billion email accounts would have been setup with estimated 70 percent of those are created by consumers. Statistics also reveal that almost 60 percent of consumers prefer email as a means to be in touch with customer support. This goes to show how email is an important part of customer service. There are several ways to improve your customer support and increase efficiency, and exceptional email management is one of these.
On the other hand, the obstacle nearly all businesses deal with is the sheer amount of emails sent and received on a daily basis. The majority of sellers online sell from numerous marketplaces, including their own web site and other social media accounts. Now this makes email management an overwhelming task that greatly affects reviews, feedbacks, and purchasing behavior of consumers. Slow response time can result to poor reviews or negative feedbacks since majority of customers expects a response in an average stretch of 6 hours. Consumers have high expectations on customer support as well, not only do they expect businesses to reply promptly to emails.
If these concerns are not properly and quickly attended, businesses might lose their customers to their competition. Most demanding consumers look for an alternative after reading a negative rating or review about a certain product or service. Here are some tips on how to improve email management for customer service:
Efficient Response – Customer service representatives often times spend a needless amount of time composing email responses to customers which are relatively duplicates. Writing down a regular response is a suitable approach to answer professionally to FAQs (frequently asked questions) such as product description, return policy, shipping etc. This will allow you to save up time and at the same time, you will sound consistent to the customers. There are agents assigned to handling email responses.
Email Consolidation – This is where the steps to effective email management begin. To start off, consolidate the entire incoming email into one location. This is very important especially for businesses that have stores on multiple marketplaces online. This eradicates the need to log in to multiple accounts to receive and reply to emails.
Report and Diagnose – Monitor response times, email resolutions and staff productivity in order to guarantee representatives are keeping the utmost level of customer service.
Categorize and Automate – Save time by automatically routing incoming emails into suitable folders or assigning them to specific customer service representatives.
Now that you already know the importance of emails in the customer service, now it is time to reinforce your business’s email management plans and continue to serve your customers with efficiency and excellence. Eventually, customers will keep coming and boost your sales drastically because of your efficient email customer service.
In this age of social networks, how can email help? Leave in your comments below.
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