Much of our communication now takes place over e-mail. While e-mail is a great tool for fast, easy communication, it has its own challenges that face to face and telephone conversations don’t have. With that in mind, here are some e-mail dos and don’ts to help your employees respond by e-mail in a caring way:
- Do be exceptionally polite and more effusive than you would in ordinary speech. This may make up for the tone of voice that is missing in e-mail but present when we speak. Begin with phrases like “Thank you for writing.” “We are grateful for the opportunity, etc
- Don’t be short and to-the-point in a clipped business style. With the missing speech elements in e-mail, you will come off sounding rude and uncaring.
- Do present in a very positive and affirming words what you will do to address the customer’s problem.
- Don’t emphasize what you cannot do. This will put a negative spin on the conversation, letting the customer know right off the bat his options are limited.
- Do use the word “and” when responding to a customer who has had a bad experience with your company. Using “and” keeps your customer’s brain opens to both sides of the sentence. For instance, you would want to say, “I’m sorry about the difficulties you’ve had and I’m sure I can help fix them,”” rather than, “I’m sure we can fix this, but it will take some time.”
- Don’t use “but” anywhere in your response. By now, your customer’s bad experience lets him skip over the first part of the response when he sees a “but” and begin reading the communication immediately after the “but”.
- Do use the ideal of partnership to solve problems. You can accomplish this with phrases like “Here’s what I need you to do.” ”Advanced thank you for calling back.” etc. Always use the inclusive “we” one of the key words of partnership that signifies to the customer that “we” are working together.
- Don’t dictate to the customer.
- Do set the e-mail message aside for an hour or before sending it. This hour will give you time to review it and ask yourself, “Have I walked in my customer’s shoes and do I understand what she really needs?” You do not get a second chance to make the first impression. Do it thoughtfully the first time.
- Don’t just dash it off and let it rip through the network to get it off your desk. Invariably, as the message is being swept off your screen, you will notice something that will negate all the positive words you just wrote with one negative comment or questionable lone.
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| Email Messages That Demand Attention |
Tired of all the junk mail you get in your mailbox? What about email box? I bet the situation there is getting worse and worse. Well guess what? It is for the people you communicate with as well. The biggest challenge in sending an email today is getting it read! Here are few reasons why:
- There is so much junk mail that people are deleting stuff right from their in box without opening it based upon the subject line or if the sender is known. You can get lost in a sea of sameness, even among friends.
- Email programs allow users to put selective filters that trash incoming emails based upon the sender the subject, etc. An example will be emails with ‘XXX’ or ‘$$$’ in the subject line … anywhere. You can pretty much assume it is online spam.
Here are some ideas to proceed in the email universe with sanity.
- Never assume your important emails are read unless you get a confirmation, not by a, confirmation robot but by a person replying. Always follow important messages with a phone call.
- Never send unsolicited junk mail yourself. You will anger people and some will be motivated enough to get your name on a watch list that allows many services to simply trash your emails, all of them, based on who you are. Only send email to those who have granted permission for you to do so, such as e zine subscribers, friends, business contacts, etc.
- Unless you are a spammer, you just want your email read by those business and personal contacts you have actually made. You use the email medium to follow-up on existing relationships. If that is the case, make your subject line as specific as possible, referencing the earlier contact with the recipient. Things like “Our conversation at Sam’s party” will put you immediately in context. (Yes, readers of my voice mail tips, this step are the same on voice mail). Spammers know this and will try to fake people out with “A friend referred me” or “You requested this information” right in the subject line. Of course, after you open it and realize it is online BS, you are highly irritated and set a filter on that user (see above).
- Get your point quickly in your message, respecting the reader’s time.
- Don’t send large attachments (greater than 200KB) without first warning the recipient it is coming. If not, shrewd email users will set filters to trash mail based on exceeding a predetermined size of the message, which include attachments.
- Don’t bother responding to spam you receive to tell someone to take you off of their list unless they provide an electronic, automatic means to do so (like I do with Getting Connected). All you are doing is confirming that there is a live body at the end of the communication and subject yourself to electronic mail.
The basic truth is that we are so overwhelmed with email contacts these days, 85% unsolicited nonsense, that we are not in the best frame of mind when viewing email and are looking to quickly trim the size of the incoming messages. Make yours stand out in your subject line and provide a relevant, user-friendly message that respects the time of the recipient and more will get read, allowing you to effectively leverage your communication across cyberspace.
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