Why Canned Messages are Important & How to Utilize them

Being a customer representative, you might be going through similar sorts of questions.

What are your expertise?
How much is the price?

And the list goes on. Are you tired of typing the same answer again and again? Well, in my case, when I was working as a chat support agent, this repetition made me feel exhausted.

Then one of our managers introduced ‘canned messages’ to our company. It made our life easy. We had messaged like,

Hi {customer name}, how may I help you?
Can you please be specific and provide some details?
The service you are looking for has three levels. It will cost you accordingly,

The gold level service will cost you $_____
The silver level service will cost you $_____
The bronze level service will cost you $_____

Thank you so much for contacting us. Have a great day.

And many more.

Canned messages are considered a standard in ticketing management system solutions. These messages not only save your time but also make sure that you have delivered the information without any error. Let’s look at some stats to understand the value of canned messages.

Some stats to look at

Canned messages are of really great importance. It provides value to your customer support and helps you handle your customers efficiently.

There are numerous reasons to have live chats and canned answers. Let’s have a look at some of the statistical reasons.

Live chat support is 15% to 33% cheaper than phone support. About 42% of customers do not like to hold on. Canned messages provide you with an option to engage users on the first go.

More than 50% of online customers appreciate it when a business is available online 24/7. AI chatbot integrated with canned messages makes it possible for business persons.

With the help of the above stats, I can say that live chat and canned responses play a very important role, not only in keeping your customer satisfied but saving a lot of money.

Answering the ‘why’ for canned messages

There are so many more reasons to have canned messages integrated with your live chat. Let’s see some of them.

1. Allow you to reply quickly and boost conversion rate

Most importantly, canned responses allow a service agent to respond in no time. About 71 percent of consumers from age 16 to 24 believe that quick response from any service provider improves their experience.

For instance, your support agent is not providing immediate response to the customers, which can provide room for more queries. This will result in more pending queries at the agent’s end. And will ultimately affect the service of your customer service department.

Once you have satisfied potential buyers with quick response, effective replies, and expertise, they will turn into regular customers. This will surely increase your conversion rate and will benefit you with your sales pitch.

2. Saving customer’s and agent’s time

The greatest currency for a customer or an agent is to save time. Replying to each and every query manually may take time. However, canned responses are one of the finest things to assist you. Additionally, canned responses should comprise the best possible solutions.

For instance, look at the example below,

“Thank you so much for showing interest in our services. We are glad to assist you in marketing your website via social media. Our tool will provide you run-time analysis and complete details in some clicks.”

This is a canned answer by a digital marketing service provider. An agent will take a minimum of 45 seconds in typing and proofreading the above-written message. The same message will take 5 to 10 seconds if you have it in your canned list.

3. Say NO to typos

Imagine responding to a customer with typos in the text. This sounds horrifying and imposes an unprofessional attitude. According to a report it takes 12 positive customer experiences to counter your one mistake.

The solution is simple, canned responses are the best way to dress up your error-free feedback.

In other words, canned responses not only simplify the errors but also make an easier way for customers to find the righteous response easily in a couple of seconds.

4. Making personalized efforts

When it comes to kindness and courtesy, personalization is worthy. The customers’ interests are taken into account when an agent interacts effectively. It helps to give customers concise and to-the-point responses which is the best way to get across their query.

The same strategy was applied by assignment writing service in order to increase customer satisfaction.

To show you what this means, the conversation between the customer and the agent should be in a cheerful and positive tone. Ideally, the canned responses should be personalized from the start by giving a brief introduction of the agents and addressing the customer by their names. Customers should feel agents’ willingness towards them as about 80 percent of customers are willing to buy from a firm that offers personalized experiences.

Let’s see two example messages:

What are your requirements? We will provide you with the best service.
Can you please give us some more details about your requirements? We will try to meet your expectations.

The second message is more personalized and will likely get the best response from the customer.

5. Managing multiple customers

Unattended customers result in intensified discomfort. Canned responses give growth to productivity and deliberate strategic investment of time, intelligence, talent, and energy. Multiple customers can be replied with canned responses by changing the personalized details. Additionally, help desk ticket systems can be integrated with canned responses for even more efficient customer support.

Let’s say there’s a change in a scheme and the agents want to inform the customers about it. Messaging individual customers will loose track of time. On the contrary, canned responses can be reached down while dealing with multiple customers changing their personal details only.

How to leverage canned messages efficiently?

Constant commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort help to give an urge to the productivity of canned messages. No matter what product is being sold, how much content knowledge the agents have, what matters is the effective communication agents have with the customers as it works like fuel which keeps the agents and the customers engaged.

“It takes months to find a customer… seconds to lose one.”
Vince Lombardi

Let’s highlight the points which can make canned messages fruitful.

Whatever feedback I am giving here is just from my perspective and definitely not given to make you feel bad. You may take it at your liberty if you feel the same way. Thanks!!

1. Avoid being a robot

Making customers satisfied with every small detail they ask for can create a good bonding. Customers appreciate when they are treated with the best customer service. They should not feel as if they are conversing with a robot.

Consider the example of a woman who had a conversation with an agent.

Woman: Hey! I wanted to make an order for a wooden baby cot for my newborn. Can you please assist me?

Agent: Well, I need to talk to the baby.

Woman: It’s a NEWBORN BABY!!! Please let me know too when you find out how we can talk to infants.

If such happens, then consider it as a BLUNDER, not a MISTAKE. To avoid all this the messages should be updated, keeping different scenarios in mind. Categorically, design the messages in a way that caters to the different emotions of people’s feelings. Those messages can be pre-defined and used as per the queries.

2. Give it a personal touch

People love it when they get respect. Having respectful and open communication with customers can lead to endless victory. A survey report says that 65 percent of customers love the casual tone. So you need to design your canned messages accordingly.

One of the greatest problems with canned messages is that people think as if they are having a conversation with a robot and not a human. Understand what customers want. Copying the same messages from the archive and sending them to the customers without looking keenly may cause you to lose customers.

3. Be concise and stick to the point

Don’t say in 300 words what could have been said in 60. Customers do not want to chit chat with the agents. Anyhow, they want their queries to be answered in the simplest and clearest manner.

People have zero percent interest in talking to a brick wall. Long instructions including unnecessary information will make them go nuts. Make sure to keep your answer to the point.

Imagine a customer receives a product through your site and complains about not getting the right one.

Customer: I received my parcel today and it’s pathetic to accept that you people have sent me the product which was not paid for. Extremely disappointed!

Now the agent has to make sure that they respond to the customer politely and keep their answer short.

Agent: Hi (Name), We’re sorry to hear that you didn’t enjoy your experience with us. However, the team will make sure to resolve the issue at the earliest convenience. You will receive the right product within 24 hours of the service. If there is anything else we can help you with, please let us know. Thank You!

In this way, your message will be conveyed and also be short and to the point.

4. Think of the customer’s point of view

If you want to get close to the customer, have a deep understanding of the customer’s unmet needs. Listen to them and perceive what they want.

Once they are comfortable, begin to think logistically and decide the most effective way to proceed. An agent’s mind is like a map, always showing the directions where and how to take the conversation forward for a better conclusion.

6 Tips to improve your canned messages

One of the major tasks for the agents to do is to communicate with the customers. Thousands of messages are sent daily to answer the customers’ queries.

What if all the queries were answers in just one go? Nothing would have sounded calming for agents more than this. Canned messages are one of the best solutions for the agents to have. However, canned messages can be beneficial if you will follow the below tips effectively.

1. Bring it into practice

Practice is one of the keys to success. Practice and progress and interlinking with one another. We do practice daily on how to live through our own experiences. No matter how much a person is talented, one is likely to forget what is being enlightened.

Similarly, canned messages need practice which can result in knowing the type of improvements to be made.

2. Discuss it with the seniors

This is the best way to have a great command on the canned messages. Keeping the seniors in the loop may help you a lot. They have vast experience and know how to deal with different situations.

Frequently ask for their advice and implement them in your learning. Put in different scenarios and reach out for multiple ways of controlling things. It will help you meet customer expectations.

3. Organize your canned messages

There are many reasons for people to feel awful because of their personal or social issues.

How disgusting it would feel if a customer receives a happy message in reply to account closing because of the sudden demise of the account holder. It is decisive to organize the canned messages and be vigilant while replying.

You can include these to organize your canned messages.

Name of addressee
Greetings
Apologies
Feedback
Announcements

4. Learn from the mistakes

Mistakes are the reason we are succeeding. It’s okay to make mistakes. However, the canned messages are to be flourished with accuracy.

Keep your messages error-free and make sure to send the correct message concerning the situation.

5. Monitor canned messages

Staying committed to get the best work, we need to find out the ways to analyze and reflect on the progress. In the same way, agents are liable to have a constant check on the canned messages being transformed. Keep a check on the messages being received.

For instance;

What are the most commonly asked questions?
What are the least common asked questions?
How well aware are the agents of the canned messages?
Are the customers being satisfied with the answers?

Monitoring such measures can be of great help while working on the canned messages.

6. Keep updating and refreshing

Nothing can be achieved in just one go. Canned messages are not to be set once and left behind for long. Even cell phones stop working if they are not updated.

Likewise, the customers might stop coming to you because of the old version of agents’ work. To keep the customers, canned messages need to be modified and equipped often.

While summing up

The above information can help a lot to embrace the quality of canned messages. Eventually, the key for taking forward these tips need to show consistency and convergence for the agents’ support and consoles and comforts the customers as certainty does.

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Guest Post Author

Gloria Kopp

Gloria Kopp is currently working as a Manager Of Customer Support department at EssaysnAssignments. She loves to share her experience. Gloria has also worked as a Customer Support Agent at dissertation proposal help.

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