Your customers share a love-hate relationship with canned responses.
Canned responses are undoubtedly the best trick to empower your agents. But even the slightest of mishandles can lead to frustrated customers. To make sure these help aids perform to their potential, you need to have a proper strategy.
Luckily, we have developed a comprehensive guide on what a canned response is. The highlight of this blog would be the top 10 canned response templates for you.
Continue reading to take a step closer to efficient customer support.
What Is a Canned Response?
Before we go any deeper, let’s understand what are canned responses.
“A canned response is a predetermined message that allows your customer service agents to be consistent and quick with their customer support responses.”
Let’s try to understand this with the help of an example.
Assume that you’ve rented a plush sofa set for your brand-new home. The platform you approached offered you a seamless experience while placing the order. However, the installation was delayed beyond its expected time.
This situation holds a high chance of turning your loyal customer into an angry one.
But you, being a smart company, have installed an easy help desk for your customers. You enable and encourage your customers to reach out to your agents at their convenience.
But is it enough?🤔
Even if your agents are skilled and well-trained, they still work within human capabilities. And handling a frustrated customer is no walk in the park!
Your agents need time to do the necessary research to help the customer better.
Canned responses are a set of pre-determined messages that your agents can use to answer your customers. These quick responses enable your customer service representatives to devote the necessary time to look into your customer’s purchase history.
In other words, canned responses facilitate automated communication with customers.
As these response templates are predetermined they make communication possible even in the absence of an agent.
Now that’s a lifesaver. Right?😅
Effective customer support begins with fast responses. They signify real-time assistance. If your customers are not provided with instant answers, they can and will find a replacement. It is for this reason, response time is one of the most important key contributors to improving customer satisfaction. And, having predetermined canned responses surely increases your agent’s responding speed.
But, is that all that canned responses do? Of course not.
Benefits of Canned Responses
Like the title says, in this section, we’ll the benefits of canned responses.
As we mentioned earlier, speed and consistency are the two most important benefits of canned responses. But, why do you think these two are held so high?
The answer is simple – because they cater to improved customer experience.
Let’s see how.
The faster your customer support agents are with their responses, the more your customer feels heard. Using predefined canned responses enriches the conversations by delivering quick and accurate information.
Let’s take a hypothetical disappointed customer.
This customer wishes to enquire about the status of their order. This is a stressful situation for your customer service agent as dealing with a disappointed customer is difficult. Canned responses enable your agents to pull language from their response bank, based on their product queue.
For example, let’s assume the order is still in the processing phase. In this scene, your agent’s response can look something like this.
Therefore, having pre-designed templates in your rep’s response bank makes it easier for them to function in a distressing situation. Your agent can either copy-paste this message or read it to the customer.
Another way to cater to good customer service is by making your customers’ journey an engaging experience. Predefined canned responses do so by providing a set of accurate and precise dialogue scripts. Even if you’re agent is new to the job, canned responses eliminate the chances of incorrect information being passed.
Here are some more benefits for both the business and customers.
1. Increased Customer Satisfaction Score
As we said earlier, canned responses quicken conversations with instant replies. This leads to satisfied customers who with time and continuous efforts convert into brand advocates.😄
2. Better Resolution Time
Pre-drafted canned responses help maintain an effective conversation. It can help improve your first response time (FRT).
3. Improved Customer Engagement
To target customer engagement, you need to have well-designed canned response templates. These can help deliver a delightful experience. You will be surprised to see how happy your customers will be with well-designed message templates.
Your customers appreciate you putting efforts into smoothening conversations because it’s their first point of contact with you.
Having said that, let’s look at a few guidelines to help you design the best-canned response template.
Precursors to Creating Great Canned Responses
There are three P’s you must keep in mind to have a solid canned response bank – Precision, Pragmatism, and Personalization.
“A good canned response is simple, personal, and easily customized.”
In fact, the best is the canned responses that don’t sound canned at all!
Before we have a look at the precursors of good canned responses, you must know that our ultimate goal is efficient customer service. Thus, it is necessary to create canned responses that can reduce the repetitive typing of replies during customer conversations. Only then can we aim for a boost in customer satisfaction rate.
Here are some effective tips for creating canned replies.
1. Research
Before you create canned responses, identify the frequent requests that your sales, support, and marketing team deals with. This will provide you clarity on issues that need canned responses.
FAQs serve as a good starting point to understand your customers’ queries.
Your canned responses should serve a large number of customers. The more common grounds of customer queries you can figure out, the more approachable will be your canned response templates.
You can start by asking yourself questions such as
- What are commonly asked questions by customers?
- What are common requests served by your customer service team?
- Which of your FAQ articles has a high number of views?
Once you have done thorough research on these questions you have the base ready for your canned response portfolio. Might we add, you can continue updating this portfolio as your products/services change and customers’ needs evolve.
2. Empathize
The second on our list is to relate to your customers’ disappointment. It isn’t necessary that your customer is right. But their complaints aren’t baseless.
Customers reach out to support teams after seeing no other resort. Therefore, your tone in the canned responses must reflect understanding and empathy.
Accept the complaints and don’t shy from saying, “We’re sorry that you had a bad experience”. Reassure your customer with, “we will do our best to improve your experience”. These magical empathy statements can go a long way to improving your customer satisfaction.
Put yourself in their shoes before you start drafting the canned response portfolio.
3. Accuracy
As we covered earlier, the canned responses should have a large target customer base.
Hence, you must ensure that these responses are as accurate as possible. Although canned responses are drafted to reply immediately, do not compromise on genuine information.
The accuracy of your responses engages customers better. It helps deliver better customer service.
4. Call to action
We already agreed that the primary aim of canned responses is to deliver a good service. These templates serve as immediate answers to common queries and questions. But, leaving your customer with no knowledge of the next step is as hazardous as not responding properly.
Hence, we strongly recommend following up with a well-explained CTA. These increase the effect of your canned responses.
When your customer knows ‘what’s next’, they are sure to provide you with good feedback.
5. Simplicity
Keep your responses short and crisp. While designing your immediate responses template use short, precise, and simple language.
Keeping your canned responses direct provides effective information and fulfills the purpose in minimal time.
Now that you understand the important precursors to create your canned response portfolio, let’s have a look at some examples of it.
Top 10 Canned Responses for Customer Service
By now we have understood that canned responses are tailored. They are tailored to improve your customer service, and in return, they increase your customer satisfaction.
In this section, we are going to provide you with different scenarios where the canned response can serve greatly. And, we will provide you with 10 best examples for the same.
There are several scenarios that require canned responses, but the most common ones are
- Greeting Customers
- Getting Details
- Booking Appointment
- Resolving Tickets
- Canceling
- Subscriptions
Now let us look at how canned responses can serve in these responses
1. Canned Responses for Greeting Customers
While creating a template to greet your customers one should always remember first impressions are crucial. They play a huge role in deciding whether the conversation will escalate to later stages or not.
These responses should be sincere and warm.
Therefore, the language used must make the customer feel as if they are going to have a memorable experience with your brand. Meanwhile, as we said earlier, ensure that your canned response doesn’t sound canned at all.
Example 1: Hey there! How can I help you today?
Example 2: Hello, how may I assist you today?
Canned Responses Templates for Collecting Customer Information
This part tends to get a bit tricky. Your customers aren’t always comfortable articulating their needs. To serve them better, before providing them with information, you must seek details from them.
By collecting information your agents will be able to provide customers with accurate and precise information and CTA. It leads to the job being done in the right manner and increases the chances of customer retention.
Example 3: To let you help us better, please provide us with your requirement(s).
Example 4: Great! I would love to help you with choosing the right product/service. Please let me know what are your concerns.
Canned Reponses for Booking Appointments
Booking an appointment is the most important process for companies, especially if it’s a B2B Saas company. It serves as an opportunity to demonstrate your product’s value to prospective customers.
The same goes for when a customer shows interest in booking a demo session.
Both situations provide your brand with a chance to explain how your products can solve customers’ pain points.
Having canned responses for when prospects want to book a demo session or appointment can help you make the best of this opportunity. It enables a faster and smooth chance to close the contract.
Example 5: We appreciate your interest in our product. You can easily book a meeting through this link <link>
Example 6: Thank you for requesting a demo. Follow this link <link> for a detailed meeting.
Canned Response Templates for Resolving Tickets
This situation, although challenging, can help your brand the most when dealt with correctly.
When your customers raise a request they expect faster resolution. You must deliver an instant response – as many companies with a good customer service strategy do.
Having canned responses for such situations help you respond to your customers faster. It enables trust between you and your customers.
Example 7: Hi <name>, your request raised for (issue) has been successfully fixed. Feel free to contact us for further assistance.
Example 8: Hi <name>, we are happy to inform you that the issue raised by you in the first half of the day has been successfully resolved. We appreciate you reaching out to us with the problem and hope to keep serving you in the future.
Templates for Canceling Subscription
We all know that a customer opts for canceling their subscription when they no longer find the product/service useful. In a situation like this, you must direct the customer to the next most relevant product or service.
Having well-defined canned responses can also help you handle the conversations without making the customer feel bad. This enables the customer to feel connected to the brand. Eventually, you can expect the customer to return to your brand.
Example 9: It is disappointing to hear that our product has not met your purpose. We understand and would like to inform you that your request for cancellation has been activated. We request you provide us with feedback so that we can serve you better in the future.
Example 10: We appreciate you placing your trust in us. It has been great serving you this far. Please note that your request for cancellation has been activated. We hope to serve you better in the future.
Conslusion
When utilized properly canned responses can increase your team’s productivity. It enables your customer service agents to meet their KPIs. Moreover, it eases their ways to deal with dissatisfied and angry customers.
We, at Simplify360, provide you with rich AI-powered conversations. Our customer messaging platform enables you with automation and seamless bot-to-human transfers. It helps you ensure 24/7 support meaning, deliver great customer service even in the absence of agents.
With the above-mentioned examples of canned responses, you can engage your customers and provide accurate, fast replies.
So what’s the delay? Start working now!
Create a well-researched and effective canned response portfolio today.