The gift and curse of email is its delay. It gives you space to solve a customer’s issue but extends a customer interaction across days or even weeks. It’s important that your replies help a customer move forward. And your very best replies help them resolve everything in just one or two responses.
I’ve found the best way to do this is to ask myself: what will happen if my suggestion doesn’t work? Even when I’m certain in my suggestion I consider what will happen if I’m wrong. I never want to put a customer in a position where all they can tell me is, “That didn’t work. Now what?” This puts us back at square one, introduces more delay, and leaves the customer waiting on me.
If you plan ahead and enlist the customer in your process you can avoid this situation. This can help you speed up the flow and prevent the customer from feeling stuck. There are two main approaches that help.
Think Conceptually
Part of your role in support is to teach a customer new concepts. These can range from how a feature works to the location of a browser’s address bar. When learning one new concept it’s only a short jump to learn other adjacent ideas.
For example, if you suspect a browser issue and direct a non-technical customer to clear their cache and cookies, consider if the console output or network details will also help. They’re already venturing into the great unknown of their browser settings so make sure you get the most of that. This helps you rule out their browser in one step so you don’t go through individual causes piece-by-piece. Here’s one example:
Thanks for those details about what isn’t working for you. A browser issue is the most likely cause in these situations; things can get stuck and lead to all sorts of odd behavior. There are a couple steps I’d like you to try that will help us rule this out.
1. Clear your cache and cookies and try reloading the page. We have a help article that explains how.
2. Check your browser console for errors. This one’s a little tricky, but we have instructions that show you each step.
If you see any errors in your browser console please copy those and let me know what they say.
This presumes that you have clear help articles for those two steps (if you don’t it’s a good reminder to add one!). The idea is to put the customer into an exploring mindset and combine similar requests. If neither option works, you ruled out both common causes in one reply, saving you and the customer time. And because you planned ahead and connected similar concepts it eased the customer’s experience, hopefully boosting their confidence in both you and themselves.
Think Sequentially
We all make heavy use of documentation in our support replies and often those help articles cover an involved series of steps. It’s a mistake to send that to a customer without first thinking about how they might struggle.
When you send someone to a multi-step support doc they can end up stuck or lost, which is why it’s important to guide them on what to do in that case. When you do this well you can get them back on track and avoid the dreaded, “That didn’t work.” response. As a brief example:
This is a great question; it’s one we hear often. We have instructions on what to do in our support site. There are 12 steps outlined, which I know is a lot, but each one has a screenshot to help walk you through what to do.
Can you try those steps and let me know how it goes? If you get stuck, no worries! Just let me know which step you’re stuck on and what you see at that point. It will help me figure out where things went off track so that we can get this all fixed up for you.
This kind of message increases the likelihood of a response like, “I got all the way to step 6 but when I got there what I saw didn’t match the instructions. Instead I saw…” By acknowledging that the customer may get stuck somewhere in the sequence you help them feel less lost as they always have your backup step. That step will still feel like progress. Plus, you will occasionally get an immediate pointer to where your documentation is out of date or less clear than you first assumed.
Final Touches
When you bring the customer into your process like this you create a smoother and more responsive experience. Gone is the one-step-at-a-time debugging that can lead a customer to feel like you’re guessing. In its place is a more considered approach that ties concepts together and moves in sequence.
The last thing you want is for this to feel like extra work, so be selective in what you ask of someone and only request the most relevant next steps. Don’t throw half a dozen things into one reply. Be deliberate and ask yourself what next piece of information you’ll need if this doesn’t work. Every customer’s time is valuable and the more you speed up email exchanges the better.
Finally, as I tried to show in those examples, remember to (briefly) explain why this information will help. It’s best to connect that to the customer’s own best interest, since customers will take an extra step if they trust it means a faster resolution. Email will never compare to live chat or a phone call for speed, but if you plan ahead you can significantly cut down on its inherent delay.