Best Way To Handle A Customer Follow Up

No matter what you sell, you’re going to find there’s a need for customer follow up. People will always have questions or run into problems, and it’ll be your job to help them.

Recently I was involved in a rather lively conversation about customer follow up, and in particular whether it’s more important to resolve issues or acknowledge them. The general consensus was to always acknowledge a problem as soon as possible, so the customer knows you’ve received their inquiry.

While this does make sense, there are some cautions that go with it.

First of all, receiving a customer follow up from an autoresponder or a help desk auto response may not quite be the best way to handle an angry or desperate customer. Most people have come to expect a long wait when they get one of those. So this type of acknowledgment could have a reverse effect.

Besides, they’re rather impersonal.

Customers with questions or problems want to know they’re being taken seriously. They want their inquiry treated as though there aren’t any others, and theirs isn’t sitting at the bottom of a queue somewhere.

Pretty hard to do when they receive an email stating, “all inquiries will be address in the order in which we receive them,” wouldn’t you say?

So not all customer acknowledgment is the same.

The best way to handle a customer follow up is to do it as a human. Create an inbox just for questions, keep it open at all times, and respond as they come in.

Now this has added benefits, because, as I mentioned during the conversation, if you can resolve an issue immediately, then there’s no need for acknowledgments. You can settle a problem with one customer follow up letter and be done with it.

And frankly, your customer will be shocked at the rapid resolution to a problem that already has them frustrated and perhaps even angry.

Of course, you may not have an immediate solution for them. In fact, you may not know what the problem is through one email. Some customers can be, well, vague and even cryptic with their inquiries. They may not even know what they’re having problems with.

But again, if your customer follow up is on a person to person basis, you’ll be able to ask them specific questions that will give you a better idea how to help them.

It’s a win/win all around, because your customer will have a direct response addressing their specific need, and because your emails aren’t going through some queue funnel, you’ll be able to resolve things for them much faster so you can move on.

Just as a side note: If you’re overwhelmed with customer follow up so that you can’t possibly answer all quickly, then perhaps there’s something wrong with your product. So if you’re getting the same problem from a lot of your buyers, it may be time to rethink and redesign your product to alleviate complaints.

Otherwise you should be able to address and resolve any customer follow up you get personally, and without the need for acknowledgment software or scripts.

So the best way to handle a customer follow up is to create products that aren’t prone to problems. But while that is unlikely, you’ll want to treat customers like people and respond in kind. Make you help desk human, your responses personal, and try to resolve problems immediately. It’ll make all the difference in the world for you!