Customer Emails
Email communication to customers requires courtesy and skill, no matter whether the message contains good news, bad news, or is just informational. After all, no business can be successful without customers. Your email message to a customer may be the only direct interaction they have with your company, so ensure that you are thoughtful in crafting it.
Personalization
One way of ensuring a positive customer experience with your email is to personalize it. People like to know they are communicating with another person, not just some large department in a larger company. Wouldn’t you rather receive an email from “Adrian” instead of “ABC Software Support”?
Appreciation
Always be appreciative of ANY communication sent to your company by a customer, as it is an opportunity to improve or deepen your relationship with that customer. Whether the customer is contacting you to provide a suggestion, complain about another department, or register a product defect, we always thank them for the opportunity to do better.
Organization
Give some thought to the content of your email and how that could relate to the structure of your message. For example, when your message contains good news or is informational, it is always best to get to the point right away. We do not want to waste our customer’s time reading through unnecessary background or other details before we deliver the main point of the message.
Here is an example of a good news message:
Re: A suggestion for your next release
To: Na’estse Goodenow
Dear Na’estse,
Thank you for taking the time to let us know of your idea. I brought it up at yesterday’s project status meeting with the developers, and everyone reacted positively to your suggestion. In fact, we wanted to get more details from you about how you would like to see the feature work. Would you be available later this week to spend a few minutes on the phone with Cavanaugh and Karina, who are leading this project, to discuss this?
Please let us know when a convenient time for the call would be. Once again, thanks for being a great customer and providing such useful feedback!
Best regards,
Manuela
Senior Product Manager
ABC Software
Delivering Bad News
Delivering bad news to customers is never easy. We naturally do not want to disappoint them. However, there will be times when a business email will need to address information that is going to be taken as bad news. There is some controversy about the best way to do so.
One approach suggests that bad news should not be delivered right away in an email communication to a customer. It is thought that that type of message should begin with a buffer— perhaps the facts that led to the situation, an immediate expression of apology and empathy, or an appreciation of our relationship with the customer. This so-called indirect approach to communicating would then call for revealing the bad news in the middle of the message. The closing of this style of email would then end with a positive sentiment about future business, perhaps some sort of discount on the next purchase, etc.
The major problem with this indirect email structure is that it can be perceived by the customer to be insincere, unethical, and avoiding the issue. Many people prefer to get the bad news directly and not feel as if they are being misled or manipulated. Great care should be exercised before adopting the indirect method of delivering bad news to customers.
Here is an example of responding to a message in an indirect way:
Re: A suggestion for your next release
To: Na’estse Goodenow
Dear Na’estse,
ABC Software is considered to be one of the most customer-driven software companies in the industry. One reason for that reputation is our responsiveness to customer suggestions for product features.
As you may know, the growth of the software industry has put increasing pressure on the ability of companies to hire software developers. We thank you for your feature suggestion, and we are sorry that we will not be able to consider your suggestion for the next release as we simply do not have the staff to implement such a feature.
We hope that you will continue to remain a loyal user of ABC and will not hesitate to send your suggestions to us in the future.
Best regards,
Manuela
Senior Product Manager
ABC Software
While some may find this indirect approach more pleasant than an immediate no, as we mentioned, others may feel like this email is insincere and prefer a more direct message. Here is the same response modified to be more direct:
Re: A suggestion for your next release
To: Na’estse Goodenow
Dear Na’estse,
Thank you so much for your new feature suggestion. We are sorry that we will not be able to consider your suggestion for the next release as we simply do not have the staff to implement such a feature. As you may know, the growth of the software industry has put increasing pressure on the ability of companies to hire software developers.
We hope that you will continue to remain a loyal user of ABC and will not hesitate to send your suggestions to us in the future.
Best regards,
Manuela
Senior Product Manager
ABC Software