How Canned Responses Improve Customer Support (With Examples)

Pleasing customers is easier said than done. It doesn’t help matters that customer service perception is now a significant metric people use to gauge businesses.

In fact, 58% of people are willing to pay more for satisfactory customer service. That only shows how much customers prioritize good customer service.

The bulk of customer service work lies in attending to their inquiries and grievances. Several organizations employ stand-by customer service representatives, while others use customer engagement solutions.

But the option we’ll discuss here is canned responses.

What Are Canned Responses?

Canned responses are replies you pre-package for common customer queries. These pre-drafted answers can also help close customer support conversations faster.

For example, if your customers keep asking you “How to…” questions like “how to create an electronic signature in Word“, you can reply with a pre-written step-by-step guide.

That’ll then pretty much end the conversation. With this example, it’s easy to see how canned responses also help to improve your first response and customer complaint resolution time (CRT).

You can use customer service responses to address sales, marketing, and customer support queries. You can also automate replies, so customers with specific inquiries will automatically get the appropriate answers when they drop the question.

How Canned Responses Improve Customer Support

People use canned responses primarily to ensure customers get satisfactory replies to their queries quickly.

Nowadays, many customers don’t want to wait for hours or days before getting a response when they reach out to you. In fact, 33% of customers hate waiting on hold during a call.

They want you to get back to them immediately if possible. And if you don’t, they may create negative opinions of your brand, which is bad for business. Canned responses help you avoid this situation.

Let’s explore some of the other benefits below.

Improve Your Customer Satisfaction Score

There are three fundamental things you must do to keep your customers satisfied.

• Provide excellent value for money;
• Be 100% honest and transparent with them at all times;
• And lastly, always be one call, email, or tweet away from them.

These three factors show customers that you care about them and not just your profit. However, the first two are relatively easier to achieve than the third. That’s because, as a rule of thumb in business, you must always provide equal value for money and be honest with customers.

On the other hand, prompt response to customer queries is down to your personal preference. You can decide that you don’t want to do it, and there’ll be no direct penalty for you.

Then again, you don’t have to sacrifice time and resources to be honest, or provide excellent value for money. In contrast, responding to customer complaints takes time you would like to spend on other things.

Thankfully, customer service responses help you keep up with and respond to customer queries in real time. It speeds up the conversation, enables you to resolve grievances quickly, and that, in turn, improves their overall satisfaction with your service.

Helps You Keep Up With Overwhelming Customer Interaction

Depending on your business’s growth level, you probably have thousands of customers. That means you’re likely to have simultaneous customer calls and other correspondences happening at any one time.

It can quickly get overwhelming when you consider combining that with other aspects of your business.

Fortunately, you can use canned responses to take care of most customer interactions while focusing on other essential things. That way, you get to attend to multiple pressing matters in your business at once, without letting them overwhelm you. Plus, you won’t leave customers waiting long for replies.

An excellent example of how this works is when you pre-set responses to greetings. So, when a customer messages you “Hi,” you can send them a pre-set message reading, “Hello (ABC), how are you doing, and how may I help you today?

But of course, there’ll be some queries you won’t have pre-set responses for. Always take out the time to carefully respond to them. Then, you should refine and condense your reply to such new queries into canned responses for future use.

That way, you can use canned responses to handle most of the repetitive customer interactions.

Increase Customer Engagement

Interactive canned messages can help foster healthy engagement with customers. Note that canned responses don’t only work for private messages or one-on-one interactions. You can also use them to reply to comments, reviews, etc. In such cases, a well-designed message will encourage the customer to respond and keep the conversation going.

Tips for Creating Effective Canned Messages

Below are some best practices to maximize canned messages for improved customer support experiences:

Identify and Categorize the Frequently Asked Questions

Canned responses are only effective when they fit the queries. It won’t make sense if a customer asks you about a consulting proposal template doc and you only reply with, “Hi, we’re glad to have you around today!”

That reply is excellent in setting the tone, but you must follow it up immediately with something that addresses the reason for the customer’s message.

Review and Make Your Replies Accurate

You’ll appear unprofessional when you give wrong answers to customer inquiries. However, it’s still reasonable to make such mistakes when replying to unexpected questions.

What would be ridiculous is you knowing the question and preparing a wrong default answer beforehand. You have no excuses for such mistakes.

Hence, you must ensure your pre-drafted replies convey accurate information to the customers. It improves your customer support experience as well as your credibility.

Keep the Responses Concise and Helpful

As much as you want to be detailed in addressing customer complaints, it’s better to stick with a helpful summary. Ensure to keep your pre-drafts precise and meaningful. Prioritize effective communication over unnecessary details.

Maintain a Consistent Tone

Your clients are undoubtedly looking for solutions to certain problems. Don’t confuse them any further by making it sound like they’re interacting with several people at a time.

Be Polite

Politeness is an important customer service tip. Don’t mistake curtness for brevity. Keep your replies concise but respectful, regardless of the customer’s conduct.

Canned Responses Examples

Canned responses are primarily for answering common questions. However, you shouldn’t make the mistake of trying to create a one-size-fits-all answer to all questions that come your way. Instead, you should tailor as many answers as possible for each inquiry. Below are some practical examples of that.

Handling Complaints

Handling complaints requires diplomacy and tact, as you want to avoid aggravating the situation further. Hence, you can take a subtle approach like this:

Need More Details

Oftentimes, customers may make a request without providing sufficient information. In such a situation, you must clearly describe what you need from the customer. For example, this:

Confused Customers

Sometimes, customers ask the wrong people the right questions. If you find yourself having to reply to a query that has nothing to do with you, you can use the idea below.

Confirming Issue Resolution

This type of canned response will work whether you’re communicating with customers via live chat or email.

It’s important to let your customer know you’ve received their recent messages and are resolving the issue. This response gives the customer peace of mind and adds to their experience.

You can always group similar issues and write customizable canned responses for them. Here’s what we mean:

Or you can customize your canned message to indicate when the customer can expect feedback on their query. For instance:

Transferring Customers to Another Agent

There are many reasons a customer service agent may want to transfer queries to another agent. Perhaps, they have limited information about the customer’s query or do not have the authority to make required decisions.

These situations typically mean the customer will wait longer for effective solutions. It’s not an ideal situation for positive customer experience. But you can ease their wait by using canned messages to explain the situation.

You’ll have a suitable answer even before the customer requests an update. And they’ll love you for it.

Here’s a simple canned message template that can do the job:

Putting the Customer on Hold

It’s unlikely that your customer support team will resolve customer queries in two minutes. Even during live chats, there may be a need to put the customer on hold. Perhaps, the customer service agent has to do some digging to find solutions for the customer.

Canned messages for live chat can let the customer know they’re on hold. Here’s a simple template that works:

And if the hold will take longer than usual, you can also use canned messages to let the customer know. You can also use it to request their preferred contact details.

This way, you can contact the customer when you have all the necessary information and are ready to present them with solutions.

Here’s what we mean:

Do Less Talking With Canned Responses

Promptly responding to customers is vital to your business. However, it shouldn’t distract you from taking care of the other necessities of the venture. Canned messages let you spend less time talking with customers while maintaining the same results.

Apply the tips discussed above to improve your customer support experience via canned responses. Your customers and bottom line will thank you for it.

Written by  Yauhen Zaremba

Yauhen Zaremba is the Senior Director of Demand Generation at PandaDoc. Yauhen is a growth-focused market leader with more than 14 years of B2B and B2C marketing experience.

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