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COUNTER INTELLIGENCE (June/July 2008) |
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Tuesday, 08 July 2008 |
e-ffective e-mail and e-tiquette
By Oliver Post
Without question, the telephone is still the number one method of communication for most distributors, but that’s changing. With the not-so-recent rise of the Internet as a business tool, e-mail has quickly become a vital part of communicating with customers—although few people use it effectively.
There
are certainly some pretty useful ways to use e-mail to promote your
business, or inform customers of new products, special offers, pricing
changes or events (I myself receive many like this every day). However,
shockingly few of these e-mails actually provide me the information I
need, such as the when or where for an event notification (no kidding).
Promotional
e-mails need to be considered carefully and, once you’re set up for
them, you can send out as many as you wish for virtually zero dollars.
That said, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Whether the
customers you are targeting have office-based purchasing staff, or work
from the cabs of their vans and pickups with blackberry in hand, you
never want to be accused of spamming them.
An
e-mail containing useful information for the customer is not spam, but
you should keep the recipient list short to keep your e-mails from
getting blocked.
Of
course, there is more to e-mail than just sending out mass
communications; as a tool, personal e-mails have become indispensable.
Increasingly, people respond to phone calls by e-mail, and many will
ask you to send them an e-mail describing what you just told them on
the phone.
E-mailing customers properly
E-mail
should be a way to connect with customers, not separate you from them.
So when they call, grab your note pad, take down the details then, in
your e-mail reply, detail their initial request with the appropriate
response. Recapping their request is important in the response to
ensure everyone is on the same page. Sometimes I get responses to
questions with just the barest of information, such as “No problem,
except we won’t have the last item until Tuesday”. This forces me to go
back through my own notes to see what I asked for in the first place,
and so determine whether I received an appropriate answer.
Here’s an example, each representing a separate e-mail:
You: We have everything you wanted in stock
except the 6- gauge wire.
Customer: When can you have it?
You: Tomorrow
Customer: When?
You: In the morning.
Customer: Good.
You: So do you want me to put the order in?
Customer: Well, what’s the total?
You: The total is $$$
A better response would be:
You: We
have the 24 junction boxes, 144 Marettes, 200 ft of 12/2 cable and the
12 breakers you asked for. We will have to order the 500 ft of 6-ga,
but we can have that by tomorrow morning if we order it by 2 p.m.
today. The total for everything is $$$. Do you want me to put the order
in?
By
giving the customer a comprehensive response, you achieved in a single
e-mail what took nine e-mails in the first example. You save time while
giving the customer all the information he’s looking for, meaning you
can get the order underway quickly.
The
trouble with the long string of e-mails is not just the fact that it’s
like a tennis match, but it can take all day before you get to making
the order for the customer. It can be exasperating and very time
consuming for everyone—and it’s just plain inefficient.
At the
root of the habit is the mistaken idea that e-mail is like the
telephone; the way people think of and see e-mail is very different.
And that leads me to the worst crime of the e-mail world: the angry
hotheaded e-mail.
Rage against the Inbox
At some
point or another, we all feel the urge to tell someone what we really
think of them or their requests, but a moment of anger is not the time
to do so and, when it comes to customers, there’s really never a right
time.
Disagreements
over the phone can get heated, but the words exchanged inevitably
evaporate and are forgotten, and tempers are quelled. The exact
opposite happens with e-mail: when a customer reads an e-mail he
perceives to be angry or insulting, he’ll read it for minutes at a
time, getting angrier all the time. He’ll talk to his colleagues about
it; he’ll open it again and again and, of course, get angry all over
again.
The
Internet is a wonderful thing offering us numerous equally wonderful
opportunities, but using it to yell at someone is not one of them.
We all
have difficult days and have to deal with customers who may seem
unreasonable, and it’s tough to keep our emotions to ourselves and in
check. But before you flip off an angry e-mail to someone, ask yourself
this: Would I write a letter to this person saying exactly what I was
thinking of saying to them in an e-mail? Further, besides the quick
adrenaline rush of having told someone off, do I really gain anything
by doing this?
If the
answer to both is “No”—and it almost always is—go grab a coffee until
you calm down, then pick up the phone and talk to the customer.
Oliver Post can be reached at
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