Follow-Up Emails Can Save You Customer Service Costs
Our Vice President of Business Development Alan Keller, gave me a great idea for a blog post. He got an email from a company that he does business with that he thought would be a great idea for our readers. It’s a simple way to follow-up with customers that have just purchased a product from you that will get delivered. Here is a copy of the email:
Why is This Email Good?
Good Subject Line – The subject line “Have you received your Caswell Inc. Order?” It’s catchy and if you have ordered from them you’re likely to open the email.
Personalize it! – The detail of how long it’s been since their customers have placed an order is something you can do with personalization fields. This shows that you know just how long it has been since they’ve ordered and you’re up on their ordering habits.
Contact Info – They prominently display an email address so that you can get to someone quickly with any questions the recipients may have.
Customer Service – They encourage recipients to open the package and contact them with any issues they may have via email. This might actually decrease customer service costs because they’re being proactive in getting customers to take action and send an email instead of potentially having to make a phone call.
All in all I thought this was a great example of a transactional email that encourages your customers to take an action that could save your business money in the long run. Are you doing this?
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This is an excellent idea that I have used in the past. In a previous role, we had emailed/phoned out to customers who had either:
1. Place an order
2. Called to ask some questions
3. Called to complain
We contacted them to touch base, with ‘only the intention’ of seeing if their product arrived OK, if they had any questions or feedback. You would be surprised to see how many people were so psyched that they placed another order, or loved the customer service touch point, or reported a problem with our fulfillment process that we didn’t know about. All in all, it was a win-win in that we got great feedback and customer service points, and the customer loved the attention and will surely come back. Great article and example, thanks.
Yes. The nice thing is MailChimp actually does this as part of their offering. Auto follow ups. Does VerticalResponse offer this?
Followup is very important in maintaining customer relationship. Though I would prefer to have a follow up email subject as Feedback for your purchase rather then have you received the order. Have you received your order gives a impression that your delivery system is not reliable !