Module eight providing electronic customer service. A growing number of customer interactions are taking place online. Younger people in particular prefer to do much of their business online rather than in person. But online interactions have limitations. To provide excellent customer service online, you need to understand what works and what doesn't work and how to make the most of the tools that are available to you the advantages and disadvantages of electronic communication. electronic communication is something that has taken off in a big way in today's society.
Most people now are familiar with email, text messaging, instant messaging and social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Each of these forms of communication has definite advantages, but it is worth remembering that relatively speaking, these forms are in their infancy. Many of us have been emailing for a decade or more now but people have been using the telephone for much longer writing letters for longer than that and speaking directly one way or another since mankind began. There are many people have become very used to doing things in the old ways who are not yet on the same page. When it comes to electronic communication, the advantages of email are very obvious. Firstly, it's highly convenient.
Unlike sending a letter email gets there instantly. If someone is looking for a detailed same day response and cannot get to the telephone at the same time as you, email is absolutely wonderful as a way of getting the information across. As well as this the telephone call cost a certain amount per minute. however long you make your email message, it will cost the same to send as the three line update. Once it is sent, it stays in the recipients inbox until such time as they read it and then decide what action to take. However, as has been mentioned, with telephone conversations, there's a body of opinion which holds that email is a very impersonal and cold way of communicating.
Certainly, if someone wishes to pass on news that may be sensitive email is not the best way to go about it. A telephone conversation leaves us relying on the inflection in our voice to give the correct interpretation to the words in the absence of body language and an email we don't even have that inflection to rely on. Therefore email does have its benefits and can Not be dispensed with entirely as a way of providing customer service, but its limitations need to be understood. Understanding netiquette with the massive changes that the internet has brought to many of our lives that is entirely unsurprising that it is brought another substantial change that which it has wrought on the English language, and most other languages two new words have been invented and new uses found for old words in order to describe things which simply did not exist before the internet came along and changed our world.
A decade ago, pretty much no one blogged absolutely no same human tweeted, and the word netiquette was unknown. Not only do we have to mind our P's and Q's, we would be well advised to keep an eye on our ads as well. If we are required to contact a customer by email, it is important to be aware that the usual standards pertaining to email do not apply. many if not most people have a different way of expressing ourselves in email than we would if we were writing a letter or speaking on the telephone. Perhaps emboldened by the text messaging revolution, many people have taken the tech speak approach Writing email. Even though email is not bound by the character limits that text messaging and Twitter impose upon us, people will still try to squeeze the message into a few short lines and cut words down.
But when using email in a business setting, it is essential to avoid this as it is seen as being unprofessional tips and tricks. Because so much of what we do on the internet has been molded from the social aspect which makes the medium great for most of us, the process of electronic communication has become more influenced by that social aspect. When we are communicating with customers, it is essential to remember that things are different. We all have different ways of expressing ourselves in person on the phone and the Internet. The issue of how to correctly express oneself and online communications will be somewhat different from the traditional ways. electronic communication is embodied and specifically email can come across as being extremely abrupt.
Even phrases like thank you have a great time and even I love you. It seemed quite straight and lifeless when placed in a standard font on a computer screen. It is essential to avoid this abruptness. In a customer service email, picking your words carefully is essential. Avoiding jargon is fundamental. And it must be remembered that brevity and what you say should be limited to simply saying things in the simplest way.
Abbreviations are not for this kind of email. When we speak out loud, our words have an inflection, they are absorbed by the listener, and then we move on. In an email, it stays there on the page and can be read into a number of different ways. It is essential to avoid saying things that are ambiguous as this can lead to a complaint somewhere down the line if misinterpreted. Remember that in person if you say something, the listener could then respond instantly before you move on to your next point. This means that if something you said was unclear, they can seek clarification before replying, an email.
This is not possible. Getting things said clearly and unambiguously, and ideally just once is hugely important. Eliminating electronic ping pong. One of the benefits of email is it's promptness. sending an email to a friend, a customer or a co worker can be done very quickly and will usually be read within a short time of being sent This system means that wherever our conversation partner is in the world, we can converse in real time without the need for a huge telephone bill. partially due to this, we have a habit of sending emails in a very cursory manner, which can lead to them being sent with information missing.
This leads to a phenomenon known as electronic ping pong, with each party sending 10 emails to each other to organize or clarify something that could have been handled in the space of two or three messages. Case Study. Jeremy wanted to report the highlights of a seminar he recently attended to foreign business colleague. letters were far too slow and because of the timezone differences, it was very inconvenient to both of them to try and call instead decided to break out his laptop instead than email. He paid careful attention to a spelling and such as he tended to shorten words and phrases out of habit. Once he was done drafting it, he emailed it to his colleague later that night.
By morning he had a reply from the other side of the world, all through the power of electronic communication.