Customer Email Without the Inbox Dread

The service bot

Connect it to the shop's email. Give it your policies, from the pages you made in Chapter 5, and your voice guide.

The common questions

Most shops get the same few questions over and over. Write down your answers once, in a simple document.

A morning in the inbox

Here's what the service bot might hand you on a typical morning. Made-up examples:

• Order status. Customer asks where their order is. Bot checked the tracking, which shows it's out for delivery today. Draft reply ready.
• Product question. Will the cable organizer fit a desk 4cm thick? Bot checked the product notes, which say the clamp fits up to 3.5cm. Draft reply says no and suggests the adhesive version.
• Change request. Customer wants to change their address. The order hasn't shipped. Draft reply ready, and the bot notes the address change it would make once you approve.
• Problem. Spice riser arrived cracked. Customer sent a photo. Flagged for you, with a draft offering a replacement under your broken-item policy.

Being honest with customers

The bot's drafts should be honest, even when the honest answer is no. Number 2 above is a good example.

The hard ones

Some messages need you. Angry customers.

Refunds and returns

Refunds are money. They stay your call, always.

Response times

Customers notice how fast you reply. With the service bot drafting overnight, you can answer most messages first thing in the morning with a few minutes of approving.

Learning from the inbox

Every few months, ask the bot to look over the inbox and tell you what customers ask most, what they complain about and what keeps going wrong.

Walkthrough: setting up the service bot

• The owner wrote a common answers document. Shipping times by region, how to track an order, sizes for each product, colors, what to do if something arrives broken and the returns policy.
• They connected the shop's email to the service bot and gave it the document and the voice guide.
• They added Ask first rules for sending email and for refunds.
• They ran it on the last two weeks of old emails and compared its drafts to what they'd actually sent.

What went wrong: the promised date

A customer asked whether an order would arrive before a birthday on Saturday. The bot's draft said "Yes, it should arrive by Friday." The common answers document said three to five business days.

A note on tone

Customers can usually tell a canned reply. The best drafts read like a person answering a question.

A worked example: the broken jar

A customer wrote that one of the glass spice jars arrived broken, with a photo. The service bot flagged it as a problem, pulled the order history and noted the broken-item policy: a free replacement, no need to return the broken one.

A worked example: the wrong address

A customer emailed an hour after ordering to say they'd typed the wrong street number. The service bot sorted it as a change request, checked the order hadn't shipped and drafted a reply confirming the fix.

Questions people ask

Should customers know a bot drafts the replies? You approve every reply, so it's your reply.