The Art of Writing Customer Service Emails for Companies

However, email customer service is not as straightforward as it may seem. Your email behavior can build or damage your reputation both professionally and individually. It is, therefore, important that you treat every customer support email as an opportunity to build a better relationship with customers. Remember that every single email you send to a customer can shape or damage their attitude towards your business.

Here are great tips to help you perfect the art of writing customer support emails, make a better impression, and deliver the best support to customers.

5 Things to Always Do When Writing Emails to Customers:

• Maintain appropriate formality: Always maintain an appropriate level of formality and common email etiquette from the greetings to the sign off. Formality reflects respect and courtesy. Do not assume that emails by nature allow informal language when the customers expect a formal approach. Address people with respect and make sure that you spell their names correctly. Use formal phrases and standard fonts throughout.
• Keep the subject field relevant: Always ensure that your subject line is informative. It should accurately describe the content: You may include the subject of the case or a reference number connected to the inquiry. Ensure that your content delivers on the recipients’ expectations of reading something that is of value to them. Avoid spam keywords, vagueness or even failing to include a subject line.
• Keep the message clear and brief: Your message should be concise and to the point. Focus on the purpose of your email and limit your message to one subject. Make your message clear in as few sentences as possible. A giant block of texts in an email is overwhelming, and most people would rather ignore it than take much of their time trying to read and figuring out what you could be trying to say. Make the content interesting enough to grab the attention of the reader in just a few minutes. Give effective responses and show how you are addressing an issue.
• Use plain and polite language: Just like any other communication channel, always present your emails in a polite and courteous manner. Be polite, calm and use simple language. Unlike face to face communication, emails present greater chances for misunderstandings. The recipient may misinterpret your lengthy sentences, capitalizations, choice of words, and punctuations. Words like “Please” and “Thank you” and keeping your text readable can help in such a case. Your language and attitude also matter a lot.
• Proofread: Always review your email before sending. Check out for grammar errors, typos, and the tone of the message and ensure that the email looks professional. Improper punctuation and overuse of punctuation marks are inappropriate in customer service emails. Always keep your text readable, and ensure you have the right attachment, code or reference number, and that the link you are sending is functional.

You would not wish to have a customer describe you as rude, demeaning and unprofessional. We all want to stay productive and enjoy being in the office.

5 Things to Never Do When Writing Emails to Customers:

• One-liners: Never respond to a sensitive email with just one liner responses such as “Okay”, “Noted” or “Checking” or even sending a link without any explanation. It can be tempting to send one or two-word replies especially when you are emailing from a phone where typing a longer reply could be difficult, but such emails are highly unprofessional and just rude.
• Confidential information: Avoid discussing confidential information or particulars of a highly sensitive information in emails. If such information gets into the wrong hands, you could face serious consequences.
• Shortcuts and abbreviations: Abbreviations, non-standard punctuation, incomplete sentences, cryptic lines, slang, jargon, and linguistic shortcuts commonly used in chat rooms are considered inappropriate.
• Angry and negative language: Never reply or send an email to a customer when you are angry. Negative language, anger and rudeness actually lack professionalism. Your position might be correct but once you send a nasty email, the concern is likely to change from the issue at hand to your hostile email or negative language.
• Adding words that could alter your message: Adding words like “I may be wrong” “Is the message clear?” “Will that work” can make you sound unsure of what you are saying. Customer service representatives should sound confident in the emails they send. “Unfortunately” is another common term people keep using in emails, but it seems dismissive.

Here are examples of poor emails written by companies to their customers:

• Customer complaining about poor service:

Hello Jane!

We received your complaint about our service, but we get lots of emails, and so we might take some time to respond to each one of them. We will try our best to improve our services next time.

Thank you for understanding.

Thank you,
Maureen

• Response to a customer complaining about a service upgrade taking too long:

Dear Lenny,

In your email, you complained that your service upgrade has taken too long and that we haven’t communicated to you about it. I agree that the upgrade has taken too long, but you lied about us not communicating. I’m the one who called you last week, and I can remember telling you that we are working on it. Now give us some time to sort the issue out and get back to you. Also, do not forget to pay your monthly fee.

Seya,
Maureen

In the emails above the representative does not empathize with the customer’s situation, the language seems rude and unprofessional and they do not show effective responses on how the issues are being addressed.

Now, here are examples of excellent emails:

• Customer complaining about poor service:

Hi Jane,

Thank you for letting us know about your recent experience with UP-market Inc. We are really sorry that our services did not meet your expectations and appreciate you taking you time to share your concerns.

Our goal is to provide flawless customer service to all our customers and based on what you described; we did not meet this goal. We want to let you know that your comments are very important to us and we will use that as an opportunity to learn and improve. We take full responsibilities for the error, and we guarantee that such incidents will not occur in the future.

To fix this situation, we will give you a three months free subscription and a 50% discount on your next purchase. We hope this adjustment demonstrates how important you are to us.

Please accept our apologies. We value your business, and we consider it a privilege to have you as a customer.

Sincerely,
Maureen

• Response to a customer complaining about a service upgrade taking too long:

Hi Lenny,

I am really sorry about your service upgrade issue. You are absolutely right: It should not take us so long to send, and I completely understand your frustration.

We are getting this fixed right now, and I will keep you updated in the next one hour.

Again I apologize for this but am going to make sure we get it fixed before the end of the day.

Warm Regards,
Maureen

Remember to always respond promptly to your customers’ emails. Prompt responses make you appear efficient and professional.

These tips will add a high level of professionalism to your customer service and help you perfect the art of writing customer service emails. Learning the right way to interact electronically with your customers and provide good customer service via email will ensure your business benefits from it. Given the complexity of the marketplace today, you need to exceed the expectations of your customers, show that you care and make them remain loyal to your service. Ensure customers get the best experience, bearing in mind that they are more educated and have more alternatives. With just one click of a finger, they can say goodbye to your service and move to a new vendor.