Not so great expectations for email customer service

In short: Your customers have spent their lives dealing with customer service which has probably been very poor. That changes the way they interpret all your communication and that has repercussions for the way you write.

When you work in an empathetic, competent and successful support team it's easy to forget quite how low the average person's service expectations are. When someone contacts your company for help (especially a newer customer) chances are they are not expecting it to go well because of their previous bad service experiences.

Those customers don't know that you're committed to solving their problem, and they assume they are going to get a slow, incomplete, or unhelpful answer.

In one sense low expectations can be helpful; I've certainly had customers blown away by how fast my response was, even when I've considered it to be unacceptably slow. The flip side of low expectations is that they become a lens through which email replies are viewed. Everything you write to a customer is interpreted through that lens of low expectation.

Here's an example from my personal support history. A customer wrote in having problems accessing their account. From what I could see it may have been related to a very small outage we'd had, and might already be resolved. I responded quite quickly, asking a couple of troubleshooting questions (including "is it still happening for you now?") that would help narrow down where the issue was occurring.

In my mind, this was a conversation where the customer would give me a bit more detail and from there we would be able to work out the problem together and get the customer sorted out.

In my customer's mind though, it was a different story. He left me some very negative feedback:

No resolution was provided. And no advice on next steps or how to take further. Worst 'support' I have ever received. Disappointed.

That one really hurt! It took me a few re-reads until I got myself approximately into the mind of the customer and could see it from his perspective.

Here are some facts the customer had no way of knowing (but that I was assuming he should know):

Our support is always helpful and will work on a problem until it is resolved
There was a tiny outage around that time that was a potential cause, but had ended (and so the access problem might not be a problem now)
I was genuinely asking him for a response, not fobbing him off with my vague "is it fixed" question
This was just the first part of a conversation, not the entirety

Once I understood all that I apologised and tried to recover the conversation, but I didn't hear back from the customer again. He couldn't read my mind and know I was going to help him out. I should have been much clearer.

Over-communicate when relying on text

When you read your own email, you're reading it with the benefit of knowing your own intention, your tone, your emotional state. Your customer doesn't have access to any of that, and while text isn't a perfect subsitute you can get a lot closer.

I think of this as "showing your working". Don't skip steps and don't assume the customer knows where the conversation is going.

Acknowledge the problem and how the customer is feeling.
Confirm that you will work with them to get the problem solved.
Align yourself with the customer against the problem.
Share the next steps (i.e "Once you let me know, I'll be able to look into our logs here and see exactly what has happened").
Thank them for their help in getting the right answer.
End by making it clear that the conversation is ongoing.

It can seem a little over-the-top when you write this way, but that's because you know all those points already. To your customer, especially one who isn't used to your level of service, it is just enough to overcome the very low expectations they have.

Here's how it might look in practice:

"Sorry to hear you're having problems getting in to your account, that would be very frustrating. I can definitely help you get that sorted out this morning so you can get on with your job.

It can be a little tricky to know what's happening, so it would be super helpful if you can answer a couple of questions for me: <questions here>

Once I have that information I can look at our logs and see exactly what's happening, and I'll get back to you right away.

Thanks for your help with this, I look forward to hearing from you soon (I'll make sure to pick up your ticket as soon as it comes back).

That's going to build your customer's confidence that the problem will be dealt with, and make them more willing to spend time giving you some more details.

Show your working!