This is more on the professional level giving an outlook on email etiquette.
- Be concise and to the point, yet provide all relevant troubleshooting steps.
Do not make an e-mail longer than it needs to be. Remember that reading an e-mail is harder than reading printed communications and a long e-mail can be very discouraging to read.
- Answer all questions, and pre-empt further questions.
An email reply must answer all questions, and pre-empt further questions – If you do not answer all the questions in the original email, you will receive further e-mails regarding the unanswered questions, which will not only waste your time and your customer’s time but also cause considerable frustration. Moreover, if you are able to pre-empt relevant questions, your customer will be grateful and impressed with your efficient and thoughtful customer service. Imagine for instance that a customer sends you an email asking which credit cards you accept. Instead of just listing the credit card types, you can guess that their next question will be about how they can order, so you also include some order information and a URL to your order page. Customers will definitely appreciate this.
- Use proper spelling, grammar & punctuation.
This is not only important because improper spelling, grammar and punctuation give a bad impression of your company, it is also important for conveying the message properly. E-mails with no full stops or commas are difficult to read and can sometimes even change the meaning of the text. And, if your program has a spell checking option, why not use it?
- Make it personal.
Not only should the e-mail be personally addressed, it should also include personal i.e. customized content. For this reason auto replies are usually not very effective. However, templates can be used effectively in this way, see next tip.
When you write a message, start with the person’s name or Dear John. You may be sending email to an account that is read by more than one person. Always specify to whom the message is being sent to.
- Use templates for frequently used responses.
Some questions you get over and over again, such as directions to your office or how to subscribe to your newsletter. Save these texts as response templates and paste these into your message when you need them. You can save your templates in a Word document, or use pre-formatted emails.
- Answer swiftly.
Customers send an e-mail because they wish to receive a quick response. If they did not want a quick response they would send a letter or a fax. Therefore, each e-mail should be replied to within at least 24 hours as this is the service level we have committed to. If the email is complicated, just send an email back saying that you have received it and that you will get back to them. This will put the customer’s mind at rest and usually customers will then be very patient!
- Use proper structure & layout.
Since reading from a screen is more difficult than reading from paper, the structure and lay out is very important for e-mail messages. Use short paragraphs and blank lines between each paragraph. When making points, number them or mark each point as separate to keep the overview.
- Do not write in CAPITALS.
IF YOU WRITE IN CAPITALS IT SEEMS AS IF YOU ARE SHOUTING. This can be highly annoying and might trigger an unwanted response in the form of a flame mail. Therefore, try not to send any email text in capitals.
- Don’t leave out the message thread.
When you reply to an email, you must include the original mail in your reply, in other words click’Reply’, instead of’New Mail’. Some people say that you must remove the previous message since this has already been sent and is therefore unnecessary. If you receive many emails you obviously cannot remember each individual email. This means that a’threadless email’ will not provide enough information and you will have to spend a frustratingly long time to find out the context of the email in order to deal with it. Leaving the thread might take a fraction longer in download time, but it will save the recipient much more time and frustration in looking for the related emails in their inbox!
- Read the email before you send it.
A lot of people don’t bother to read an email before they send it out, as can be seen from the many spelling and grammar mistakes found. Also, apart from this, reading your email through the eyes of the recipient will help you send a more effective message and avoid misunderstandings and inappropriate comments.
- Take care with abbreviations and emoticons.
In business emails, try not to use abbreviations such as BTW(by the way) and LOL(laugh out loud). The recipient might not be aware of the meanings of the abbreviations and in business emails these are generally not appropriate. The same goes for emoticons, such as the smiley:-). If you are not sure whether your recipient knows what it means, it is better not to use it.
- Use active instead of passive.
Try to use the active voice of a verb wherever possible. For instance, ’We will process your order today’, sounds better than’Your order will be processed today’. The first sounds more personal, whereas the latter, especially when used frequently, sounds unnecessarily formal.
- Avoid long sentences.
Try to keep your sentences to a maximum of 15-20 words. Email is meant to be a quick medium and requires a different kind of writing than letters. Also take care not to send emails that are too long. If a person receives an email that looks like a dissertation, chances are that they will not even attempt to read it!
- Keep your language gender neutral.
In this day and age, avoid using sexist language such as:’The user should add a signature by configuring his email program’. Apart from using he/she, you can also use the neutral gender:’The user should add a signature by configuring the email program’.
- Watch your emails.
Remember that you can always deny that you said it. But if you write it, you may be held accountable for many moons. You may be surprised to find where your message may end up.
- Use professional Signatures.
Cheers!
This site is great but could really do with an online HTML editor took me forever to get the bold fonts.