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Right now I am am selling on ebay, amazon, and my own site. Moving around 3000-4000 orders per month.
With that comes customer emails. The good, the bad, the ugly.
Currently I am using thunderbird and some add ons.
Problem is, I dont know what other email solutions exist for a small business like myself. I dont necessarily have a problem, but I dont know what solutions may exist for my business model.
One of my bigger problems is the same response to the same general questions. With this I used a template program that punches in the same response with the click of a button. This is a decent solution to a big problem.
The other is keeping track of email history. The previous responses are not always below the customers previous emails. Is there a solution?
What other solutions might existing for managing this volume of emails? There has to be things to make life easier? Right now email is manageable, but may not be with more orders?
I love Thunderbird for its simplicity, but I cannot use it. It does not have enough functionality for my business use. I use Outlook.
For canned responses, you could use the 'signature' function in Outlook.
eMail history - you can either create folders, use the Conversation feature, or just use the Search which works very well for sorting previous correspondence.
I don't know what else you would need, but you can create groups, calendars, flags, there's a lot of time management toys and lots of stuff I don't even use but probably should. Microsoft Outlook 2010 - Email and calendar software - Office.com
If you are getting e-mails about the same sorts of questions, then clearly you are doing something wrong on the front end.
You seem to be trying to band-aid a more general problem, that is, the first goal here should be to reduce the number of e-mails you get in the first place rather than finding quicker ways of addressing the e-mails.
3000~4000 orders a month shouldn't be generating a large number of e-mails...
If you are getting e-mails about the same sorts of questions, then clearly you are doing something wrong on the front end.
..
You might consider creating a clear simple, uncluttered website with FAQs and frank comprehensible answers, and if an email asks a covered question, just reply with a same-day form-letter link to that site, and invite the user to email back if his question remains unanswered.
Many customers (like me) believe that the vendor is obfuscating a lot of critical information, as if he doesn't really want the customer to be aware of the fine print. Of course, then, they're going to write back and say "Why the hell can't you make this clear?", and now you have to waste time with them.
A business that thinks like a customer will have a lot less trouble communicating with customers who think like customers. Sometimes on 800-numbers, I hear myself saying to the CS Rep "I can't believe that I'm the first person this has ever happened to."
A lot of the questions are from Amazon, ebay etc. On ebay you can add a good amount of details, but with Amazon it is limited, and the customer usually doesnt know where to look. There are far less question from orders off my own site.
Most questions are dealing with customer issues. With about 2 % of questions/amount of orders ( Defective product, usps lost packages, customer returns, exchanges, etc ), are not that bad. But 2 % of 4000 is still 80 emails a month. This doesnt include presales questions, which as mentioned above may be hard to cover based on limited info I can display on that particular platform.
All in all, it is manageable now. I am just not away of what other options that I can implement now before it gets busier.
80 e-mails a month is nothing, I'm not sure why that would (or anything close to that) would pose any logistical problems.
Anyhow, in terms of keeping track of e-mail history, the standard solution is to use a e-mail ticketing system. This creates a notion of "conservation" and you can easily keep track of your conservations with consumers. There are some open-source implementations and I'm sure there are some service providers as well if you don't want to run your own e-mail server.
Cant do it with ebay/amazon, it violates their policies to link off their site.
I was referring to responding to a direct email with a direct email reply that links to your FAQ site. Surely, it does not violate their policies to send a direct email to a customer saying anything you like, in response to a direct email from the customer to yourself.
I was referring to responding to a direct email with a direct email reply that links to your FAQ site. Surely, it does not violate their policies to send a direct email to a customer saying anything you like, in response to a direct email from the customer to yourself.
Yes it does. You are technically not even allowed to put in cross promotional material in with your Amazon orders.
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