The Latest: Check Your Staff's Email IQ
A former colleague (not in any way associated with HEROweb!) was a great guy, friendly, always happy, and a pleasure to work with in the office. However, his email manners were terrible. Let me explain.
The office in question had a front desk computer to which general inquiry emails went to and were checked by him. Occasionally emails would be copied to me and I would see his replies. His emails did not include any sort of greeting, no punctuation, no capitol letters, and, to top things off, didn't include his own name! An answer to an email query about a missed delivery or double billing, for instance, would read like this:
this is taken care of
When I realized that this was how he had been conducting customer service, it was shocking. I had assumed that everyone took the time to compose friendly, helpful emails like I myself tried to do. Training people on how to answer email queries was not something that I thought of needing to do.
Someone on your staff may have the same lack of email manners, but you might not know unless you check. If you have employees, periodically peruse the emails your staff are sending, to make sure they are grammatically correct, connect to the customer, and include basic items and information.
Of course, you may have a staff of one and handle all email communication yourself. If so, think about your own
business emails and make sure you are treating them as the important customer communication and marketing tool that they are.
The office in question had a front desk computer to which general inquiry emails went to and were checked by him. Occasionally emails would be copied to me and I would see his replies. His emails did not include any sort of greeting, no punctuation, no capitol letters, and, to top things off, didn't include his own name! An answer to an email query about a missed delivery or double billing, for instance, would read like this:
this is taken care of
When I realized that this was how he had been conducting customer service, it was shocking. I had assumed that everyone took the time to compose friendly, helpful emails like I myself tried to do. Training people on how to answer email queries was not something that I thought of needing to do.
Someone on your staff may have the same lack of email manners, but you might not know unless you check. If you have employees, periodically peruse the emails your staff are sending, to make sure they are grammatically correct, connect to the customer, and include basic items and information.
Of course, you may have a staff of one and handle all email communication yourself. If so, think about your own
business emails and make sure you are treating them as the important customer communication and marketing tool that they are.
