Be Careful with Automatic Confirmation Emails

posted by Ted on January 2, 2012

When asking a question to a customer service or applying for something by email, (potential) customers often receive an email back to say that their request has been well received and will treated as soon as possible.

That’s nice: at least the customer knows that his request got through and that it will be answered as soon as possible. However, in this instant society customers like to know exactly when their question will be treated. So instead of saying ‘as soon as possible’ you might want to say ‘within 24 hours’ (if you can live up to that promise).

Another issue with automatic confirmation emails is that often the ‘sender’ of the mail can not be reached.

At least many companies state it in the confirmation mail: “this is an automatic email, you can’t reply to this address’ or something like that. But is it a good idea?

OK, you don’t want to be overwhelmed with impatient customers or other people that are anxiously awaiting an answer to their question but on the other hand customers can get quite frustrated if they can’t have a personal contact and conversation because of these automatic ‘no reply’ emails.

Especially if you don’t live up to your promise that ‘you will respond within 24 hours’ or if their request is really urgent to them. A (potential) customer that needs a quick reply might be or become a very loyal customer.

These days customers and prospects want to have a real conversation with your company. So instead of using an email address for your automatic confirmation mails such as ‘noreplyx1g@mycompany.com’ it might be a better idea to use something like ‘customerservice@mycompany.com’ or ‘jenny@mycompany.com’.

It will give customers the feeling that they have a personal contact and maybe if they reply the information they might provide regarding their request might be really valuable.

Of course your customer service or ‘Jenny’ might be overwhelmed by emails, that’s a risk.

But at least get someone to scroll through potential replies to your automatic confirmation mails. There might be really important stuff in it and really important people behind it.

Tags:Customer service,effective website,online marketing,small business,user experience,visitor experience,website design,website visitors