Long response times can frustrate customers who are waiting on your team to help resolve an issue or answer an inquiry. Email response time is how fast you reply to customers’ emails, whether it’s with or without a solution. This includes sending out an email letting the customer know that you’ve received their message and are looking into it. Basically, email response time is the time it takes from when the customer sends the email to when your team replies to it.
Why is email response time important?
Measuring email response time is an important metric that teams need to focus on. Research shows a positive correlation between faster response times and positive customer satisfaction. In fact, 77% of customers say that valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide them with good customer service. In fact, the time it takes for a customer to hear back can change whether they choose you in the future. Research shows that 91% of dissatisfied customers will never buy from you again, and 96% of them won’t even complain – they’ll just leave.
Tips to reduce email response time
Now that we know what email response time is and its importance, let’s look at some tips to improve it and keep customers happy.
Set goals
Before any action can be taken to improve response time, set specific and achievable goals on how you’re going to increase the speed of email responses. “We’re working on it” or “We’ve got your email” might reduce the response time but that alone is not enough. After all, customers have emailed with a problem or inquiry, and they’d like to hear back with a solution.
For example, you can say “Every customer should receive a helpful response within a 4–5-hour window”. Goals like this can be measured and ensure that customers are receiving accurate replies.
Set a standard
Responding to customer emails in a timely fashion is important, but it’s also important that the emails hold value and meet a quality standard. Customer service representatives should be trained on what a “helpful and accurate” response means and what it should include.
Writing good customer service emails is a skill that representatives should have and can learn with organized workshops. Clear and effective communication with customers means you can resolve inquiries faster and reduce unnecessary back and forth.
Identify problem areas
Look at your past customer interactions and see what the average response time is. There are a lot of possible reasons why there might have been a delay in answering an email, some common problems being:
- Too many emails are in the queue
- Emails aren’t assigned to an agent
- Problems require specific expertise
- No internal tools to manage email
- Not enough agents to handle the volume of emails
Emailgistics helps solve these problem areas and gives you tools to increase customer satisfaction, team productivity and team collaboration. We provide the key metrics you need to see how well your team is performing.
Emails are automatically routed to the right team member, so you never have to worry about an email going unseen or unanswered. You can ensure that everyone has an appropriate workload by setting the maximum number of messages assigned to each user, giving you more time to focus on what matters most – your customers.
You can track average email response time and many other metrics with real-time customizable dashboards that help empower you to make informed decisions and keep on top of SLAs. With Emailgistics, you can easily track the goals and standards that are set for the team.
To learn more about how Emailgistics and book a demo, click here.
