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E-mail has become your primary way to
communicate with your customers. You are using it to answer questions,
send proposals, follow up with customers, confirm orders, provide company
information, and maintain relationships.
Are you using email as effectively
as you should be?
| According to Jupiter
Media Metrix: |
- 38% respond within 6 hours or
less
- 62% take longer than 6 hours
to respond
- 33% take 3 days (or longer!)
to respond
- 24% have given up responding
to customer requests entirely!
|
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Number as of October 2001 |
It is disheartening to see so many
businesses not taking advantage of email. Email makes it so easy to
connect with your clients and to build a relationship with
them.
What most companies face is that when
they first started using the Internet, they were getting only a few emails
a day and could handle them just fine. However, as they marketed
their site and ran promotions, the interest in their company grew.
With this growth came more emails, more then they could handle. At
this point, they had four choices: to hire an additional person to
maintain email, automate email responses, add more information to their
website, or not to keep up with email responses.
Not keeping up with emails is not an
option if you wish to grow your company. People using the Internet
to purchase a product or service want the information NOW! They are
not willing to wait three or four days for an answer. Not responding will
just send them to
your competition... the ones that do respond quickly.
Hiring an additional person to handle
email is not very feasible for small companies. You don't want to
spend your increase in profits on another employee.
Adding information to your website is a great
idea! This will cut down on emails and phone calls asking the same
questions, over and over again. Adding a FAQ section to your
website will help even more.
In my opinion, automating
your email responses is your best choice. Autoresponders are not difficult to
use and are easy to set up and to update. An autoresponder is basically an
e-mail tool that will automatically respond to any incoming message to a
particular e-mail address.
For example: From experience
(emails you have received) you have learned that there are nine very
common questions people ask before they purchase your product. On
your Web site, set up an email address - questions@yourcompany.com.
If you set up an autoresponder, the sender of an email to questions@yourcompany.com will automatically receive an email with
your most frequently asked questions. Your email might look something like
this:
Subject: To answer your
question
Hello,
Thank you for interest in XYZ Company. Through the years we have
learned that most people ask the same nine questions. We know your
time is valuable and that you want to make your buying decision
quickly. To this end we are sending your our most frequently asked
questions and their answers.
If your particular
question is not answered below please feel free to contact us at
info@yourcompany.com or call us toll free at xxx-xxx-xxxx.
We look forward to
servicing you in the future.
Have a great day,
Your name here.
List your top nine
questions and answers here
What does this do for you?
One important thing is that you do not need to take the time to respond to
the email. In addition, within 5 minutes
of sending an email, your customer receives your autoresponder and is able
to read through your more frequently asked questions.
In addition, you started to build a
relationship with this client because you:
- Anticipated their needs
- Answered their questions in a timely
manner
- Made it easy for them to
contact you for further assistance
- Treated your customers with care
and take your business seriously
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Autoresponders can be set up on most
email accounts. If you are unsure on to set them up, contact your hosting
provider or Internet Service Provider and they can assist you.
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