Internet Marketers and most businesses and establishments with technical capabilities typically use an autoresponder service to get timely responses to customers or clients who wish to get in touch with them.  In a very literal sense, they “respond automatically” based on specific triggers or schedules that has been pre-set for them.  With it, we can conveniently pre-populate our series of messages, and have them sent at specific intervals.

 While automatically receiving an email responses in my inbox such us, “ We have received your message and will get back to you as soon as possible” assures me that my message has been received, it also raises doubts on my end based on what happens in the next 24 hours.

 So in answer to whether autoresponders destroy the personal touch of customer service, I would say it depends largely on what happens immediately after the initial acknowledgment message has been received.  Let me cite a case in point, Google Adwords.  Based on my personal experience, and from what I have gathered some community forums and even posted feedback on their own site.  If you have attempted to contact them you would get a series of autoresponder messages that would attempt to categorize your concerns in pre-packaged responses.  While that certainly is convenient and would free up much time off their customer service, it also creates the impression of being too impersonal to the point of actually ignoring the customer even when the customer has requested that they be contacted.  In their case, since they have become such an industry giant, it has truly lost the touch of customer service in exchange for efficiency.  I learned later that you just have to resort to contacting them via phone instead.

Here are suggestions to help ensure that even with the use of an auto responder, you would still have that personal touch in your customer service.

  1. Send an acknowledgement message but do provide a specific yet reasonable time frame within which you can actually provide feedback.
  2. Provide a series of frequently asked questions with the complete and easy to understand answers so that customers may find the information they need sooner.
  3. In your feedback or actual response, specify either an email message link or reference that automatically contextualizes the preceding exchange of messages.
  4. In your subsequent messages do provide an alternative means of communication such as chat, phone call, skype, another email address that you check more frequently or something similar.
  5. Enable the customer to rate the experience and solicit suggestions for how you can improve your delivery of services.

 

Remember, even in this high tech age of automation and wireless connectivity, people still prefer the personal touch of customer service.

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Filed under: autoresponders • Marketing Tools

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