Chapter 24

 ZAP! E-Mail Coming at You

Here’s a switch for you. How would you like to replace all of your incoming phone calls with a tour through your e-mail box? If you live for the phone, this may not sound so enticing. But for those who want to get away from the phone, freedom is here. Except that now you will be tied down to the keyboard of your computer! Oh well, nothing’s perfect.

Welcome to the world of e-mail. The system that allows written messages to be delivered instantaneously. The system where rain, snow, sleet, and hail will not stop delivery of your mail—although electrical problems, phone trouble, software, and computer hardware problems can prevent delivery of your electrified mail!

As with all of the other technological advances we’re discussing in this part of the book (such as the Internet, which we tackle in the next chapter), e-mail can provide you and your customers who are equipped to use it with tremendous value if it is used appropriately. It will definitely revolutionize the way you structure your customer service operations. In fact, it will help you streamline your operations and at the same time increase the level of service you provide your customers.

Hello, You Have Mail!

Everyday when Ron and Don sign on to America Online (AOL), if they have mail, they’re greeted with the message, “Welcome, You Have Mail.” (When was the last time you heard your letter carrier say this to you?) Their messages come from colleagues, clients, friends, and family.

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 Tales from the Real World
While writing this book, Ron and Don only met once in person. The majority of their communications was done through e-mail. Once a chapter was written, one would e-mail it to the other one for corrections, additions, and comments. E-mail was quite valuable in this collaboration. It saved Ron and Don a great deal of time in traveling long distances to meet and it allowed them to submit their chapters anytime of the day—without worrying if there was enough paper in the fax machine. E-mail allows communication without regard for either time or space. We sent and retrieved chapters whenever and wherever we wanted (or had) to—hotel rooms, airport lounges, the wee hours of the morning on a weekend at home. This flexibility helped create what Ron and Don agree was an enlightening and wonderful collaboration.

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E-mail provides customer service organizations with tremendous value, such as the following:

• Allows customers to contact you at any time.
• Allows you to respond immediately to customer inquiries—thereby meeting their expectations for expedient and gratifying service.
• Requires less overhead than having to staff phone lines; you can prepare well-written replies to standard inquiries in advance and then send them instantly to your e-mail correspondents.
• Less costly than responding by mail. Save on postage, printing, and paper/envelope costs.
• Less costly than responding by phone. No long distance charges. All of your e-mails can be sent at one time to a local phone number for distribution.
• Prevents you from interrupting people at the wrong time. Your customers can get your messages whenever it’s convenient for them.
• Assures both completeness and consistency of your messages.

Composing the E-mail

E-mail, like letters, should be sent with a clear purpose in mind. And they should be sent in response to interest expressed by your customer. In the world of electronic communication, there’s less patience for junk e-mail than there is for junk mail sent through the postal system. To send someone commercially oriented e-mail messages that they didn’t request is otherwise known as spam (you know, the meat no one claims to have eaten even though tons of it is sold).

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 Word to the Wise
Spam is the word used to describe junk e-mail. You don’t want to be accused of spamming someone. Otherwise, you might be sent e-mail by hundreds of people with searing feedback on your unwelcome junk e-mail. This is known as “flaming” a spam-mer. Internet culture has its own mechanisms for self-regulation.

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If a customer perceives you as sending them junk e-mail, even if you meant well, they will resent you. A big reason for this is they have to read the message in order to determine it’s junk. And many of them are paying for the time it takes to read or delete electric junk mail. Whereas with normal mail, most of us wouldn’t even open the letter if we thought it contained junk. A customer’s e-mail address is sacred and should not be abused.

Addressing the E-Mail

As with writing a normal letter, you should use the appropriate rules of greeting customers. If you don’t know the customers that well, address them by their last name—Mr. Sanchez or Ms. Sanchez. Use their first name only if you know them well enough to do so.

E-mail Etiquette

The same etiquette used in printed letters should be used with e-mail. All too often we receive messages from friends, colleagues and customers where words are misspelled, letters that should be capitalized are not and so forth. Remember that when a customer reads your e-mail, it is her first and possibly only impression of you. If your grammar and protocol are sloppy, her perception of you will suffer. To excel in e-mail, become an expert on using the keyboard.

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 Tales from the Real World
One of us once worked for a boss who sent long, rambling, terribly misspelled e-mail messages. This otherwise obviously capable and intelligent executive seriously undermined the respect he commanded from his staff because he didn’t take his electronic communication seriously enough. No matter the medium, you always leave an impression on your audience. Don’t risk offending a customer with casual or sloppy e-mail.

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Be Concise

The person reading your e-mail is probably reading one of several at any given time. Do your customers a favor and be concise and to the point. People don’t have patience to read a lot of verbiage that’s irrelevant. The purpose of e-mail is not to show off your creative writing skills, but rather to assist your customers. If words are irrelevant to the cause, erase them. Your customers will love you for this.

Signature File

When sending an e-mail to a customer, it’s a good idea to use a signature file, which is several lines of text automatically added at the end of every e-mail message. Some e-mail programs such as Eudora allow you to set up a signature file once and with a click of the mouse button, you can automatically append your message with your signature file. If your e-mail system doesn’t allow you to use a signature file, you can accomplish the same result by writing out the signature and saving it in a word processor file. When it comes time to use the signature file, all you have to do is copy and paste it to your e-mail message.

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 Word to the Wise
A Signature File is like adding a calling card to the end of your e-mail message. It allows you to include your name, phone number, and a memorable slogan. The signature file is a way of adding both vital contact information and a human touch to the electronic mail system.

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The components of a good signature file are:

• Your name
• Easy way to get a hold of you
• Succinct company information or promotional line

For example, your signature file may read as follows:

Ron Karr
1-800-423-KARR (5277)
e-mail: [email protected]
Helping organizations dominate their markets and get closer to the people they serve.

Or:

Pete Smith, Hardware Specialist
1-800-GO-LAPTOPS ext. 148
GO LAPTOPS—Your source for excellent computing on the go.

In customer service, signature files are important because they tell the customer how to get a hold of you by phone or e-mail should they have any questions on what you had to say. Ideally, they should always be used when:

• You want the recipient to know all the avenues on how to get back to you
• It is your first contact with the customer

The times you shouldn’t use a signature file are:

• When you send e-mail to people who know you well enough and know how to get a hold of you
• When it would be overkill and overwhelms the message of your text. If your e-mail is only 2 lines long and your signature file is 3 lines long, that’s overkill.

E-Mail Responses

There are several ways you can set up your e-mail responses, depending on your needs.

Small Mailing List

If you wish to send an electronic letter to a small group of people, all you have to do is address it to a recipient, and carbon copy the others. That way, you send the message only once and it goes in bulk to all the addresses listed. You can create group lists in your e-mail program to help you. For example, you may have a list of customers who are in the public relations business. You might call that your PR Group, and keep their names and e-mail addresses in a file on your hard drive.

If you have a large number of people to send a message to, then you’re probably better off with an Internet mailing list. This is a mechanism that’s run by your Internet Service Provider, and it allows people to subscribe or unsubscribe to the list simply by sending e-mail to a special address with a request. Later in this chapter, you will read examples of how small business people send electronic newsletters to large numbers of people using Internet mailing lists.

Semi-Auto Responders

A semi-auto responder is when you have prepared text all ready to send electronically at the command of a service person. Say you get an e-mail asking you one of the seven most commonly asked customer service questions your company regularly receives. All you have to do is go to the prepared answer for that question in your word processor, copy and paste it to your response, or attach the file to your e-mail message and send it off. This system allows you to cut down on the time it takes to respond to the message, and your customer gets his well-prepared answer fast.

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 Word to the Wise
Attaching a file is simply adding a file or document to your e-mail message. Most e-mail programs have this capability. Usually all it involves is a click of the mouse on the icon “Attach File,” at which point your software will allow you to scroll through your files until you find the one you want. Then you simply highlight it and press the mouse button and the file will be attached to your e-mail.

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Whenever you automate prepared answers to customer questions, you need to schedule a periodic review of that information. Make sure the information you send to customers—in any form—is current and accurate.

Auto Responders

As the name suggests, auto responders allow you to automatically respond to e-mails. Auto responders are an excellent tool for:

• Handling large numbers of requests for information
• Providing immediate responses so your customers will know that their message was heard and acknowledged.

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 Word to the Wise
Auto Responders provide automatic responses to e-mails. Sometimes they’re referred to as mailbots and infobots. Don’t get confused. They all are the same thing: automatic responses triggered by a customers request.

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The way auto responders work is this: You create a text file that resides on the host computer that has its own specific e-mail address. When someone sends an e-mail to that address, it generates a command that says “send this file.” An example is a customer sending you an e-mail to receive the latest customer service bulletin on a particular product line. They simply address their message to the e-mail address for this function and the service bulletin is sent to the customer in a matter of seconds.

Ron received an e-mail from a colleague that was sent to several entrepreneurs. The message encouraged all recipients to immediately write to U.S. Senators concerning the Home Based Business Fairness Act of 1997. The act was written to change several IRS regulations concerning tax deductions for home-based entrepreneurs. To make the process easy, the writer of the e-mail message supplied all the e-mail addresses of U.S. Senators involved with the act.

Ron highlighted this list, copied it, and pasted it into the address section of his e-mail message. Within hours, he received several messages back from the Senators, all of which were sent by auto responders. Below is a copy of one such response. The Senator’s name, e-mail address, and state have been deleted from the original message.

When was the last time you got a reply to a letter sent by mail to your politician? Without a reply, you didn’t even know if he or she received it. And because you didn’t get a response, you probably felt like they didn’t care for your message or were too busy to respond. Either way, no doubt you were miffed by the fact that you weren’t acknowledged. Mailbots, “automated responses,” may lack a politician’s charm, but they do let you know your message at least got to its destination. Whether your sentiments are being given serious consideration or not, well, that’s another story.

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 Quote, Unquote
These days, technology plays an important role in the power and reach of any business. The challenge is to maintain the personal qualities of customer interaction while leveraging the abilities of instant communication on a global scale. Customers still want to know there’s a person behind those e-mail messages.
—Terri Lonier, small business expert

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The Senators who responded to Ron made him feel important by acknowledging his message, even though it was a form response. At least Ron knows it was received and counted. Ron was also educated on what else he could do to ensure his receipt of a written reply. All of this action transpired while the Senator was probably far away from his office. As a matter of fact, no one had to be in the Senator’s office for this process to take place.

This is what your customers want from you: to be heard, counted, and responded to immediately. Auto responders are a tremendous tool that will allow you to do this in a timely and cost-effective manner.

Valuable Service with E-Mail

Besides enabling you to respond immediately to customer inquiries, e-mail allows you to pro-actively serve your customers. On a regular basis, or when it’s appropriate, you can keep your customers informed with the latest information on issues including:

• Price lists
• Product updates
• Calendar events
• Service bulletins
• Alerts and warnings
• Promotions
• Changes in procedures, addresses, and phone numbers
• Industry trends

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 Tales from the Real World
Wally Bock, an expert on using technology to support business strategies, sends out an e-mail every Monday called “Wally Bock’s Monday Memo.” It is a one-page document with tips and highlights regarding technology and its impact on business. At the bottom of the form is information on how clients can subscribe to receive his other services. Ron gets this memo every Monday and there has never been a week where he didn’t receive a valuable tip. Now that’s Great Customer Service! Look in the resource section at the end of this book to see how you can receive Wally’s Monday Memo.

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 Tales from the Real World
For several years Terri Lonier, author of a best-selling guide to selfemployment, “Working Solo,” published a traditional quarterly print newsletter distributed to her customers and the media. Realizing the power of electronic communication, she launched “Working Solo eNews,” a monthly e-mail newsletter that offers ideas, insights, and news for entrepreneurs. The electronic format allows Lonier to be in touch with a worldwide customer base on a more frequent basis, and for a fraction of the cost. It also allows her customers to receive current and valuable information essential to their success. Technology has certainly helped Terri Lonier service her customers at a higher level.

If you’re going to send e-mail newsletters, or even regular print newsletters, here are some of the elements you may wish to include:

• Customer testimonials—success stories about what’s working. Of course, get permission from the customer to use her story.
• Product information—Highlight certain products and services you have to offer. Be concise and make sure you include the benefits to your readers. Include ways the customer can and should use your products and services.
• Industry news—things happening in the industry that could affect your customers.
• Company news and updates—changes in policies, key personnel, pricing, and so on.
• Response instructions—how to get a hold of you by e-mail, mail, or phone.

As with anything else, frequency is the key. For some firms, it may make sense to stay in front of your customers every week. Or you may decide to send a newsletter by e-mail on a monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, or annual basis. We suggest that you send customers a communiqué on a quarterly basis at a minimum. Otherwise, your messages may be lost over too long a time period between them. When too much time elapses between your messages, they can’t have a significant effect on your customers, unless of course you’re sending out a special alert or update.

To decide the frequency that’s right for your situation, review what your customers’ expectations are. Heck, go ahead and ask customers how often they’d like to hear from you. This will help you come up with the right answer. While you’re at it, find out if there’s information you could provide your customers that they would find really valuable.

E-mails, whether they’re newsletters, updates, or responses to customer inquiries, are fantastic tools to help strengthen the bond between your customer and you, which, of course, helps keep out the competition.

The Ten Commandments of E-Mail

If you’re going to use E-mail, here are a few things to remember:

1. E-mails aren’t private. You never know who can access your messages, especially in internal company e-mail systems. If you’re going to write anything that you wouldn’t want anyone else to read, protect yourself and don’t send it via e-mail. As with cordless telephones, people with a little bit of know-how can eavesdrop on your conversations.
2. If your message isn’t fit to print in a public medium, don’t print it in e-mail. The last thing you want to do is tick-off a customer with a phrase that they find to be humiliating, offensive, or biased. In these days of being politically correct, you want to be a savvy e-mail user. For some companies, the only exposure you’re likely to have with your customers is through e-mail or on the phone. These companies don’t know what you’re really like and they aren’t going to take the time to analyze what you meant by certain words or phrases. Avoid misperceptions and print what’s universally understandable and acceptable.
3. Follow the same rules of etiquette in writing letters we discussed in Chapters 6 and 10. You are writing customer letters when you send e-mails. The only difference is that you’re sending your letters over the phone line. And you don’t have to lick your monitor.
4. Make sure your customers want to receive your e-mails. Give them a way to communicate that they want to continue receiving them—and provide an easy way for them to withdraw their names from your circulation list. (A common method is to have them reply with this one word as their message: Remove.)
5. Don’t send more e-mails than are necessary. The success of e-mail doesn’t depend on quantity. It depends on immediacy, quality, and purpose.
6. E-mails aren’t a replacement for the human touch. They’re an extension for enhancing human interaction.
7. Make sure you respond to all e-mail inquiries sent to you on a timely basis, generally within two business days, if not sooner. Customers have less patience with people who don’t respond to e-mail. They sent their message through a medium that communicates instantly, and they expect a response in kind.

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    Tales from the Real World
   If you plan on doing business using electronic mail, you not only need to reply to your customer e-mail promptly, you need a mechanism and process that assures it. In his Doing Business on the Internet seminars, consultant Bill Ringle shows examples of companies that respond to e-mail inquiries—the good, the bad, and the in-between, and explains the efforts and investments involved in creating the related customer response systems. Fast response through an auto responder is being used as an effective customer service tool today.

    

   If your internal resources aren’t ready to manage such services yet, you can contract with Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to maintain these services for your organization.

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8. Keep it brief, concise and to the point.
9. Carbon copy (now there’s an antiquated phrase—when was the last time you used carbon paper?!) only those people who are effected by the e-mail message. You don’t always have to cc: the whole world on every message.
10. Blind carbon copy—send the e-mail to people who you want to keep up to date without the recipient knowing it is being read by other parties. There are a couple of good reasons for this. First, when you put everyone’s name in the “To” box, everyone on the list will see the entire address list—taking up lots of time both to download the message and to scroll through all those names. Second, having all the recipients’ names appear on the e-mail gives away your entire subscriber list—valuable proprietary information. Check your e-mail systems to learn how you can use the blind carbon copy function.