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By Neptune Moon, January 23, 2012 5:55 pm

I’m annoyed this afternoon and I thought it was worth a blog post. WHY would you ever send an email that could not be replied to – especially if that email is in response to a customer support issue? This practice continually both amazes and infuriates me.

Case in point, web hosting companies that send you email updates on a support issue but if you try to email back a response to their update, put your message in the great void. How do you think you are making your customers feel when they are trying to communicate with you and they get an email back that says something like this:

Thank you for contacting Company X Customer Support.
The mailbox that your message was sent to is unmonitored, and as a result your e-mail will not receive a response.

If you require support for problem A go here: www.companyx.com/problemA
If you require support for problem B go here: www.companyx.com/problemB
If you require support for problem C go here: www.companyx.com/problemC
ETC…

So, now I have just spent time writing my message in response to the email you sent me (usually telling me how you have not yet solved my problem) and now I can’t just reply to the email to continue the thread and get my issue resolved. Why must I wade through 10 options to figure out where I should go next? How is this servicing your customer? The answer – it is not.

Even companies who are well-known for their customer service can fall into this trap. Southwest Airlines, which is generally a fantastic example of customer service, uses this same type of system for Customer Service emails. We had an issue on a recent flight experience and after receiving a long and thoughtful reply from their Customer Service Department, with a case reference number, I had to go back to the web site and fill out their comment form again, to send a follow up to their reply – not very user-friendly!

We could probably all benefit from taking an objective view of our communication and customer support practices. Try to put yourself in your customers’ shoes – is your customer service department easy to contact and quick to respond OR does it function more like a complicated choose-your-own-adventure story?

It is worth taking a look at your process and discovering if you’re treating your customers the way you’d want to be treated if you had an issue. If we all took the time to follow the golden rule when designing customer service responses, the world would be a much less frustrating place!

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By Neptune Moon, June 28, 2011 2:19 pm

With technology advancing at what often feels like warp speed, it is easy to forget that on the other side of any type of communication is still a human being. We have so many opportunities to instantly express our thoughts and opinions and so many outlets to post to, I think we may have lost sight of why we engage in the first place – to communicate.

So much of our business communication is decidedly one-sided and often, a little ego-centric. Think about it – how do you communicate most often with prospective clients or customers? Email? Twitter? Facebook? LinkedIn? A blog? There has been a lot of talk in the past couple of years about how push marketing is dead and it is now all about engagement. While I agree that engagement media (think Twitter and Facebook) have certainly risen in popularity and sophistication, there is still plenty of room in your marketing mix for good old-fashioned push marketing (think Email or blogs).

Whatever channel you choose to communicate with your customers, make sure that you are always putting THEM first. It is so easy to forget this simple philosophy and just bombard people with messages that are all about you and not all that interesting to them! I often suggest to clients that they think about their own behavior when we are discussing a new marketing concept or delivery method. Granted, your target market may be very different from your client and those differences are important to recognize, but there are certain types of behavior that are pretty universally annoying.

Are you guilty of any of these?

1. Obnoxious Frequency. Sending the same email blast out every other day for two weeks because your open rates are low. Tweeting about every little thought that comes into your head all day long.
2. The Hard Sell. Are all of your communications all about how wonderful your company or product is?
3. Not Listening. Do you ever reply to people who do try to engage with you or do you leave them hanging?
4. Being Intrusive. Social media can be tricky – just because you or your company was mentioned, does not always mean you need to jump in to a conversation.
5. Not Asking for Permission. Do you add people to your email list, or worse text message list, without asking? Do you get permission for one thing and then automatically sign them up for everything else?
6. Abusing Trust. Do you share email addresses with other companies?
7. Not Taking No for an Answer. Do you make it easy for people to disengage with you if they so desire?

Engaging in great communication starts with you and it is easier than you might think. How can you avoid being guilty of the above offenses?

1. Take a hard look at your email content and/or your email list segmentation. If you have low open rates, ask yourself why. Perhaps your information is not all that interesting or useful. Make it better!
2. Ease up on the blatant sales language. Start to build a reputation as a connector of people or a source of useful and topical information.
3. Build social media listening into your social media strategy – spend time reading what others are writing and when appropriate, join the conversation.
4. Use some restraint and avoid being creepy! Just because you or your company were mentioned in a post does not automatically mean it is appropriate or welcome for you to directly engage and jump into someone else’s conversation.
5. Follow sound opt-in procedures and be clear about your policies when someone is signing up to receive communication from you.
6. Treat your email list, followers and connections like gold – because they are! If you’re not sure about a particular behavior, you probably shouldn’t do it.
7. Make it easy for people to unsubscribe and if you do step over the line in the social space, apologize quickly and sincerely and then go away.

If we all take a moment to think about our audience and put ourselves in their shoes, our communications can’t help but be better!