My last post was a longish rant about Netflix’s decision to remove its email customer support feature.

After writing that, I thought that the most logical follow-up would be a post that included some tips to help you refine your own email support system.

So, without any further intro text, here it goes…

Can the canned responses

One of the most frustrating things anyone can ever receive in their inbox is a canned response- especially if the inbox owner is a customer looking for an answer to a very specific problem. Think about it: your customer went through the trouble of finding contact information, describing his problem in detail and sending off his request. He’s waiting for you to offer resolution. Instead, he gets an indifferent-sounding stock response that tests his nerves and destroys his faith in you. Is that any way to treat a paying customer?

Your customers are people. They deserve to be treated like people. The only time you should ever consider using canned responses is if, for some reason, you’re unavailable at the moment or if you have a very important announcement to make. Otherwise, keep your responses personable and coming from the fingertips of humans. Believe me when I say that customers can tell the difference and they’re not happy when confronted with a person-substitute.

Respond in a reasonable amount of time

Though one of the benefits of email support is the ability to address issues at your relative leisure, this freedom does not permit you to take an undue amount of time to get back to customers. Timeliness is key to a customer’s support experience. That said, punctuality can have some degree of leeway in it, depending on your type of business. If your business is centered around technology, like a hosting company, you would benefit in keeping email support open 24 hours a day. If you’re selling non-technological wares, you may be able to get away with a 24-hour turnaround time and still keep customers happy.

Include options

Even if you’ve gathered that customers are more likely to email you for support, you should never discount the fact that some customers may have different contact preferences. Include at least one other support option and put it on the same page that you offer your “main” one. Don’t make customers hunt for a submission form, phone number or live chat button. Remember that not everyone will have email or phone access 100% of the time. Consider that some customers might even want to use fax or snail mail to correspond with you.

Use relevant email addresses

That’s right- “addresses.” As in, plural. Assigning a different email address for each general issue can help streamline your support work. Think about the main issues associated with your products or the buying process that may arise. Billing? Technical? General Inquiries? All of these things can be assigned a different email address and it can make receiving and replying to emailed support requests easier. This is especially true if you have different employees working on each type of issue. Even if you’re the only one answering support email, logging into an issue-specific account and getting into that frame of mind to answer similar emails in the account can help you work faster and more efficiently. How? Because using one account for support and having to go back and forth between many different issues at one time can lead to brain drain.

However, don’t overload your customers with too many different addresses. Keep it simple and down to a couple. Overlapping issues can just irritate your customer as he or she tries to deal with the frustration of his problem and the task of having to determine which address to send an email to.

Optimize your support

Like any other facet of your business and its website, you should optimize your support services. Good word-of-mouth about customer support is something that can go a very long way. You can make sure that you’re always providing your customers with great support services by asking them to participate in a survey or another feedback mechanism. Allow them to rate various aspects of your customer service, including timeliness, helpfulness, the friendliness of representatives and more.

Knowing exactly what your customers want and need will help you achieve a stellar reputation for customer service and can even help you cut down on support inquiries. For example, you may end up amending your FAQs with some of the most popular issues.

Raise the bar

Let’s be honest: online customer support doesn’t have the best of reputations. When customers opt for it, they almost always bring a sense of self-defeat to it. Sometimes, they expect to not be helped at all. That’s why you should pleasantly surprise them with the best service you can muster. Not only does it reflect well on your business, it validates your customers’ decision to buy from you.

The result? More business in the form of returning customers and positive word-of-mouth.

Do you already implement these tips into your email support?