A thorough clear-out is good for the soul. And in customer service communications, it can be good for business too.
Most contact centres have a library of email and letter templates to cover the majority of situations that customers want to know about. They help customer service teams to work quickly, and to maintain their organisation’s tone of voice.
But in the fast-paced environments we all work in, it’s easy for these templated and automated communications to get out of date quickly.
Maybe your company switches to a different delivery company for one type of product. Or your insurance policy now only covers people up to a certain age.
As these changes happen, it’s not uncommon for individual paragraphs to be tinkered with – which can lead to a whole letter or email feeling a little clunky. Then when further paragraphs are tweaked as more changes are introduced, whole communications can become more difficult to read – and they’re less likely to align with your organisation’s brand.
We’ve seen several situations where frustrated team members have unofficially rewritten swathes of templated communications, and kept them on their desktops to by-pass the official system. They do it because they think the originals are unwieldy – but their rewrites can be inaccurate. And when a number of people do this, consistency goes out of the window.
So it’s good, every now and again, to review all your templated and automated customer service communications.
Are they all still necessary? Do you need new communications to address new services or concerns? Are they all written in your organisation’s tone of voice? Are they written in the way your customers will find most useful and relevant?
Getting templated customer communications right – and keeping on top of them – might not be the sexiest of communications jobs. But it is always one of the most effective you can do.
When customers receive these communications, it costs money and reputation every time they don’t understand, call in for clarification – or simply feel disappointed by a lackluster email or letter.
So we’d say it’s always worth investing in templated customer service communications that spark joy.
You can find out more about how we support contact centres here.
You might also find these links interesting:
The art of creating brilliant customer service email templates
Three ways to give automated and templated customer communications more impact