From Flickr artist Oberazzi

But it’s not okay not to find an answer. 

It never ceases to amaze me at how people will try to answer questions even though they don’t know their product.  I was on a call with my Internet company and the support rep didn’t have answers to about half my questions.  His training evidently didn’t include some of the things I was looking for help with.

That would’ve been fine if he promised to get some answers.  Instead, at the end of a line of questions answered with “I don’t know”, he asks if there’s anything else he could help with.  Dumbfounded, I paused and asked, “Are you going to find out some answers to these questions?”.

Never leave your customer in this situation.  It’s okay to not know everything.  When that happens, just let them know you don’t have the answers yet.  Then politely put them on hold while you get some answers.  If it’s the middle of the night and no one else is around, let them know you’ll call them back as soon as you have an answer.

As a customer, I’m fine with a support rep not knowing something.  It’s the lack of effort to find out that’s the real crime.

I just got this email from a support ticket I sent in last week.  It’s an app that I use regularly and have been stuck with the same error message since Thursday.

We received your mail in a satisfactory manner.  You will soon receive personalized attention from our executives to support you with your questions and needs.

At long last, we finally arrive at the end of the first Support Ops series.  Here’s the email mashup that we started with:

Hello,

Thanks for your feedback. Our app does not include that tool at this time. I apologize for that inconvenience.

We get lots of requests each day so we’re not able to respond to each one. But do know that we read each and every one of them.

Let us know if you have any questions or comments. We appreciate you using our app.

Have a great day.

Sincerely,

John Doe

The App Team

 

Over the past few weeks, we’ve tweaked this and swapped out that.  Some of the email just got removed entirely.  In the end, we’re got our better feature request email:

Hi James!

Thanks for checking out my Support Ops app!

There’s not a way to login with your Facebook or Twitter info yet. I’m sorry about that!

I can definitely understand why this would be handy, though! Having a single login would save time so you won’t have to remember all the different ones you have for apps that you use.  I’m talking with my development team later this week so I’ll make sure to show them our email conversation and add your vote for this one.

If you have any other questions, just let me know and I’ll be happy to help.  Thanks again for checking out Support Ops and have an awesome Friday!

– Chase Clemons

That’s a better email.  Gone is the cold corporate feel.  The better email hits all the right points in a short, friendly, and personal way.  It’s an email that a customer deserves.

With our first series wrapped up, I wanted to leave you with a gift.  Head over to see our first ever ebook on how to write a better email.  You’ll take everything you learned in this series and put it to work with other common emails support teams get. 

The last critique we have on that email – the closing.

Have a great day.

Sincerely,

John Doe

The App Team

What a horribly formal closing. It’s something you’d expect to see in a business email or something.  I don’t really believe that you want me to have a great day.  And why put sincerely in there?  Does any of us think John is really sincere?

A better closing is the one that we used in the last article.

If you have any other questions, just let me know and I’ll be happy to help.  Thanks for using our Support Ops app nd have an awesome Friday!

– Chase Clemons

Short, simple, and easy to include with each email.

What kind of closing do you typically use?

In the continuing saga of our feature request email, we run across this line:

Let us know if you have any other questions or comments.  We appreciate you using our app.

First, “questions or comments” sounds like something you’d tack on as an afterthought.  It’s used by teachers at the end of class lectures or by press aides ready to take questions.  You’d never walk up to a friend and say “Hey!  I just fixed this thing on your computer. Let me know if you have any other questions or comments.”

Then there’s the word “appreciate”.  In the paragraph from before, you told me that you read each and every email, which I’m doubting at this point.  What makes me think you really appreciate me as a customer?

Appreciate – verb

• Recognize the full worth of something
• Be grateful for something

I’m definitely not feeling that in a generic line like “We appreciate you using our app.”  The corporate world has stolen that line and made it part of their evil empire of lingo.

Instead of that line use this:

If you have any other questions, just let me know and I’ll be happy to help.  And thanks for using the Support Ops app!

It’s still got the same idea behind it.  You want to know if there’s any questions they might have and you want to say thanks.  My way gives it a more informal spin.  It comes across more conversational.

That’s what you want to leave your customers with.  You want them feeling like it was a good conversation they ended, not just another email to be processed.

Pretty simple – here’s the worst customer support quotes I’ve ever come across.

#5 – If you have any other problems, just let us know.

This line usually ends up at the end of an email from a support rep.  They should find a better way of ending an email instead of reminding me there will be other problems.

#4 – We get lots of feature requests each day so we’re not able to respond to each one. But do know that we read each and every one of them.

Yeah, right… they really read each and every email?  I find that hard to believe.

#3 – Thanks for your feedback.

They don’t really mean it.

#2 – Your call is important to us.

Another one they don’t mean.

#1 – I apologize for any inconvenience caused by this.

Yet another one they don’t mean.  It’s just another bad sentence in the corporate lingo toolbox.

What other ones make it into your top five?

We get lots of requests each day so we’re not able to respond to each one. But do know that we read each and every one of them.

There’s an old card game that sums up every feeling I have with this line – Bullshit.

I don’t care how many emails you get every day.  I don’t care how you choose to deal with them.  But unless you’re actually reading each and every one of them, don’t ever include this line in an email to a customer.

Why?

Because you just lied.  If there was a chart showing the worst customer support sins you can commit, this would be at the top of the list.

The other parts of the email we can tweak the wording to make better.  With this line, not even Obi-Wan Kenobi can be our hope.  Just kill it off entirely.

Here’s our original sentence that we pulled from our email.

I apologize for that inconvenience.

Last time, we looked at how apologies don’t count. This time, I’m focused on that last part.

Comfort

Convenience is all about comfort.  No hassles, no stress, just being comfortable with something.  When it comes to feature requests, there’s nothing to do with comfort.  If you don’t have it, I’m not more uncomfortable than I was before hand.  If you do had it, I might be more comfortable but that’s a stretch.

Out of place

Inconvenience is a lot like the word “apologize”.  You see it all over the place when it comes to customer support and service.  But outside of that, it’s out of place.

It doesn’t show up in conversation in any way.  Have you ever walked up to someone and sad “I’m sorry for the inconvenience of me being late”?

Write like you talk

With support emails, you should be writing like you talk.  Have a fluid, normal conversation, just via email.  You wouldn’t use a phrase like “I apologize for the inconvenience” when talking with a friend so don’t use it with a customer.

Instead, try something like “I’m sorry we don’t have that!”.  It’s a lot more authentic and human – not something written by the corporate robot lawyer.

The support email mashup left me with one phrase that kept appearing over and over in all the emails I got.

“I apologize for the inconvenience.”

It’s such a horrible phrase that I’ve broken down how to fix it into to articles.  Let’s focus on the apologize phrase to begin.

Apologies don’t count

Honestly, can you think of a single time that someone said “I apologize” and you were okay with it?  The phrase itself has been swallowed up by the corporate world.  Anytime something goes wrong, I guarantee you’ll hear the phrase “I apologize for…”

I just don’t believe a person when they say it.  And your customers won’t either.  If it has the word apology in it, it doesn’t count.

The better option

Instead, go with the simple “I’m sorry.”  It’s short and direct.  Very rarely do we hear that phrase so we haven’t tuned it out yet.  It’s still believable.

A human says their sorry.  A robot goes with an apology.

That’s a real support “button” I found for this article.  

The app itself had nothing to do with airmail or aviation in any form or fashion.

In getting ready for UserConf, I’ve been watching every other speaker I can get of a video of lately. With support, there’s not many in our field but hey, that’s what UserConf is for.

Sidenote: Did I mention I’m at UserConf and you should get tickets? Use the code “chaselikesyou” to get a discount when you buy yours here.

Back to the videos – our friend Sarah has a great one from LessConf where she present an intriguing idea. In short, she emailed lots of online support teams about their apps and then merged those emails into one that summarized all of the replies. Check out her talk to see more.

I figured I’d try the same thing to see if I got a similar result. Over the past week, I’ve emailed both big and small support teams to see what type of answer I’d get. In each case, I send in a ticket asking if they had a certain tool, which I tailored to each one so that tool was missing. Basically, it was a feature request email.

The Numbers and Stats

Before we get to my mashup of them, here’s the numbers that I tracked just to give us an idea of how other teams are doing.

• Longest wait time – 4 days.
• Shortest wait time – 17 hours.
• Average email length – 80 words
• Emails from an actual person – 2 (17%)
• Emails from an auto-responder – 10 (83%)

The Email Mashup

Warning: What follows below is the culmination of a dozen email support requests to different online apps and tools. Names of those said apps have been removed because… well, they were just that bad at writing an email.

Hello,

Thanks for your feedback. Our app does not include that tool at this time. I apologize for that inconvenience.

We get lots of requests each day so we’re not able to respond to each one. But do know that we read each and every one of them.

Let us know if you have any questions or comments. We appreciate you using our app.

Have a great day.

Sincerely,

John Doe

The App Team

Seriously?

What an absolutely horrible email.  You have to be taught in the ways of bad writing and communication to create this kind of email.  It requires real effort to write something that’s this much of a mess.

The saddest part is that the mashup itself was easy. Every single email was this basic email with the words just re-arranged, often in a more confusing manner.

Fixing It

For the next few articles, I’m going to break down this email to show you how to fix it. At the end, we’ll have a feature request email that we’re proud of – one that your customers will love.

Here’s what I’ll cover.

1. A few beginning tips.
2. Feedback is from a microphone.
3. Apologies don’t count.
4. Know when to use the word inconvenience – never.
5. You don’t really read request emails.
6. I don’t think you know what appreciate means.
7. Be more sincere with your closing.
8. A better email.

This will be the first ever Support Ops series, which I’m excited about!  If you spot any other tweaks you’d make to the email, let me know and I’ll work them in.