Put Down that Phone

1. Acknowledge receipt of the customer’s e-mail.
Consumers’ top complaint with e-mail customer service is that it takes companies too long to respond — if they respond at all. People are much more willing to accept a delay in response as long as they know their service requests are at least being processed. To that, the whitepaper authors suggest that you set up your e-mail system to send automatic acknowledgments for all inquiries received. These acknowledgments should include an expected response time based on customer expectations and customer-specific service-level agreements.