Problem: Your customer support inquiries are starting to pile up and answering the e-mails is taking up far too much time. You know your customers are top priority but e-mailing each of them and giving them each the time they deserve is time consuming.
Solution: Ask your VA if he/she does customer support! If this is part of their service offering, ask them to do one of two things.
- They can setup your e-mail to forward into an account such as Google Mail and then they can answer e-mail from that account on your behalf (and you have access to it so you can see what is being answered and what is coming in!) or
- Set yourself up with a service such as Kayako Support Center and utilize all of its functionality. This will allow you to appear quite professional for your customer base.
Tips: Whichever method you use for your customer support, make sure the person doing support keeps a running document of stock responses. The reason I suggest this is because in future, if you need to train someone new or you need to have someone cover for vacation, you have an operations manual for the customer support side of the business.
The best way to do this is to add all of the most common responses to a document and add to it as you go along. One format I have used in the past would be this (example only):
Question: How long does it take before I will receive my order?
Response: Hello!
Thank you for your recent e-mail. In response to your question, we ship out all orders within 24 hours of receiving the order notice. Depending on where you are in the US, you may receive it in 2-4 days.
If you do not receive it in one week from now, please give us a call at (555) 555-5555 and we’d be glad to track down the order for you.
Sincerely,
Customer Support