by jay on October 22, 2009
Sometimes your customers need an immediate response to a problem. Say they’ve ordered something online, and they think you might have overcharged them. Or they’re not sure they ordered the right thing. Or they lost their serial number but urgently need to use their software…
So they send you an email asking for help.
What is a reasonable amount of time to expect a customer to wait for an email response?
Now remember, Email Center Pro is all about helping you respond to your incoming emails quickly and efficiently. We’ve built metrics to show you how fast you respond, and we’ve created badges you can display on your website bragging about your response time.
Click here to take a look at Palo Alto Software’s Contact Us page. We include on that page the hours we’re in the office, the fact that we generally respond to emails on the same day they’re received, and our Email Center Pro Response Time badge. The badge shows that during normal business hours, it takes us an average of 13 minutes to respond to customer emails.
13 minutes!
That’s pretty fast, don’t you think? We’re proud of that response time.
So back to the question: It’s 1 pm and our customer emails a question. Is 13 minutes too long to expect that customer to wait? Is two minutes too long?
I bring it up, because I had an experience today that makes me wonder if there’s ever going to be a way to be fast enough, or if we’ve reached the point that instant gratification is expected, at the expense of common sense and civility.
Today, I checked our inbox at 1:08 pm, and there was one email in it, time stamped 1:03. By the time I finished my reply to that email (which took all of 3 minutes), the same customer had emailed in again (time stamped 1:10). With the exact same question, worded only slightly differently.
Five minutes later (1:15), yet another nearly identical email from the customer arrived in the inbox. In 12 minutes she had sent three emails from our Contact Us form. She must have been sitting there rewriting and resending her email, without even checking her own email to see if we had replied.
The lesson? Even with the best email management software in the world and an average response time anyone would be proud of, you just can’t please everyone.
I can put myself in that customer’s shoes appreciate her need for an answer right away. But from the company’s perspective, it’s a little discouraging. Here we are, all proud of our 13 minute average response time, but our customers apparently can’t wait that long.
This customer had her reply 8 minutes after she sent her first email, but it was too slow. Can we ever win?
by jay on October 1, 2009
I used to work for a small publishing company as a copy editor and proofreader. Trying to move my way up in the company, I took more and more responsibility for one particular publication, and eventually got my name on the masthead as Assistant Editor. When the editor left, I even became Interim Editor for a few months. I still had all my regular responsibilities copy editing and proofreading our other publications, just with more work heaped on my shoulders and a fancy title (which, by the way, was not accompanied by a fancier paycheck).
photo by flickr user jenny downing
When people sent email to editor@ourmagazine, I’m sure they assumed they were sending a message to somebody who’s sole job it was to attend to that magazine’s needs. And of course, that’s what we wanted them to think! It was a national magazine that was actually well regarded in it’s field, and it wouldn’t do to have readers knowing they were emailing a guy down in the proofreading pit when they had something to share with somebody they probably perceived as important.
A lot of small businesses find themselves in positions like this, where employees have to wear many hats to get through all the work that needs to be done. When one customer sends an email to your marketing department and another writes to your shipping department, neither needs to know that they’re corresponding with the same person. As long as they’re getting prompt, reliable service, they’re going to be happy, right?
To that end, you want to have email addresses that fit your customers’ needs. If they needed technical support, they probably would be suspicious sending an email to sales. Or if somebody wants to discuss a business development idea, would they want to send a query to a generic info@ address?
Now check out this page for NW Tattoo Magazine. It looks like they’re thinking like I’m thinking — different email addresses for the departments, like Merchandise, Reader Submissions, Artists, and Models, right? But hover over one of those addresses, and what do you see in the bottom left corner of your browser window? You’ll be sending an email to info@, not the address they’re displaying on the webpage, no matter which department you want to be writing to.
This seems like a bad idea to me. If I didn’t notice that discrepancy and just chose to cut and paste from their page into my email client, would my email even reach them (currently, all signs point to NO)? Why would they put those addresses on the page if they want mail going to a different address?
Probably because they want it to appear as though they have somebody who handles Merchandise and somebody else who handles Artists, and so on, and not one account for all inquiries.
NW Tattoo is trying to create the impression of specialization within their organization And there’s nothing wrong with that. But if you’re going to do it, why not do it well?
I’m not saying that every business should make up a hundred email addresses to fit every possible customer need. But having the right email addresses can make a difference in how you are perceived by the people who want to contact you.
