Lets imagine sales are good, and your marketing campaign is
bringing in new customers and your business is growing. Chances
are your receiving emails about your service or product. So what
happens now?
To begin with, its a good thing to identify that a person who
emails you has an interest in your business. Allowing a gap of
time to response or even worse, ignoring this person email can
be detrimental to your business. This might not be apparent right
away but eventually the snowball effect of word of mouth would
get around that you do not care for your customers or potential
customers enough to provide good customer service. What happens
next is that this will then lead people to go somewhere else for
their purchases. To entirely avoid this here are some tips for
effectively dealing with email.
Its important for you, to answer email within 24 hours minimum.
Avoid having your response delayed for over 48 hours. To
accomplish this you will want to set aside time each day just to
respond to emails. Some say three times a day, morning, mid
afternoon, and evening is because it may take up a good span of
time to come up with a good response.
Be sure to respond in a courteous and professional manner.
There will be times that you just don’t feel like answering a
question that has an answer plainly on your website or sales
letter, or some question you feel are irrelevant or foolish. You
will need to hold back on the urge to send a response in
reaction to the way you feel and if you do not feel you can
politely and professionally answer, take a break. Come back
after taking some time to cool down. To the customer who asked
thi squestion it could be an important part of their decision
on whether they will do business with you or not. Do not push away a
customer or potential customer with a hasty emotional response.
If you dislike answering email or it becomes overwhelming for
you to keep up with, hire someone to do this task for you. You
will want to choose this person carefully. Get someone who has
the ability to respond in a friendly manner. Someone who knows
your business. This person will need to have the time to commit
to this task and they will also need the English skill necessary to
get a prompt and understandable reply back to the customer.
Some questions will be repetitive. It's a good idea to set up a
standard response and file it away, so that you can cut and
paste it into your email and then tailor the rest of this to
that particular customer.
It is at times inevitable that life gets in the way of our
regular routine. We may be set back in our schedules. Making
use of an auto responder, by posting it on your website, or by
sending out a newsletter quick if something comes up will help
you to keep in touch even through challenging times. All people
are aware of the fact that things can happen and we understand.
Just make sure to keep everyone informed on when they can expect
a response.
By corresponding on a regular basis to your customers comments,
questions, or concerns, your developing a relationship with them
that will make them a happy and loyal group who will help your
sales. The bottom line is that if you ignore your customers,
they will simply go somewhere else which really defeats the
purpose behind your growing business.