How to Write Support Emails Your Customers Will Love

You're swamped. You’ve got 300 new email support tickets for your app with all sorts of other ideas and things to be done outside of answering them. You’re answering emails for hours a day but the inbox never drains down.

The good news is that you’re not alone, and you’re in the right place.

I’m going to show you how I handle support tickets. I’m not promising the holy grail — or anything close. I can’t magically make those emails answer themselves.

What I can offer is a way to stay on top of your emails without them being on top of you — a way to answer more support tickets faster and easier.

And if you can answer them faster and easier, then you can get your support email inbox down to zero in no time.

Give me a little time now, and I’ll save you a lot of time in the future and help you get your support load under control. Once you learn how to write a better email, you’ll be faster at answering support emails and, more importantly, your customers will love getting them.

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1. We’ve got your email

Each time someone emails you asking for help, you need to let them know you received their email. It takes away the anxiety of “Did they get my email? Should I send it again?”

Bad response

Notes:

• Ever hear of the word “thanks”?

• The words inquiry and correspondence are too formal — unless you’re writing to the Queen of England, then you can use them.

• Instead of having the customer worry about ticket numbers, let them know they can just reply to that email to update their ticket.

• Personalize it! Even if you’re on a big support team, send out the email as being from your head support rep. Anything other than the generic “team.”

Good response

2. Feature requests that you’re not working on

Every team gets feature requests. When you’re not actively working on it, tell the customer so. Be as honest as you can with them so they can decide if they need to move to another app.

Example request

Bad response

Notes:

• Thank them for using your app and their idea, not just for “submitting” it, which is a weird word to use here.

• They are probably not reading “each and every” feature email. Toss that phrase out because it’s probably a lie.

• The last paragraph comes across as formal again. Liven up the ending!

Good response

3. Feature requests that you are working on

Since you know your team is working on this, let the customer know. Even if you don’t have a timeline for it, the customer will love that you’re working on that new feature.

Example request

Bad response

Notes: Same as with the last feature request email.

Good response

4. Troubles with the browser itself

A lot of times, a wonky behavior will be from the browser itself: A rogue extension, something hung in the cache, who knows. Here’s how to have them clear it out.

Example request

Bad response

Notes:

• You know their name. Use it!

• Corrupted data, hard refresh, clean a cache? Stay away from complicated wording.

• Make sure to include clear instructions on how they do this in their own browser. Linking over to a support page you have listing the different ways works best here

Good response

5. Extensions in the way

With as many browser extensions as there are out there, sometimes one of them will get in the way of your app.

Example request

Bad response

Notes:

• Don’t just pass off responsibility to the team with the extension. At least help where you can.

Good response

6. Supporting only certain browsers

As browsers keep getting better and better, your team will start dropping support for older ones. Just explain why and encourage the customer to upgrade to the latest one. It’s in their best interest and yours.

Example request

Bad response

Notes:

• Explain why you only support specific browsers. But make sure to explain it in a way they can understand.

• Stay away from the “inconvenience” phrase. Right now, they can’t get to your app because they have an older browser. That’s not just inconvenient, it’s a flat out problem. It’s like being locked out of their car.

Good response

7. Cancelling an account

Customers will inevitably forget to cancel their account before their next billing cycle starts. You’ll want to cancel it and get that refund headed to them all at once.

Example request

Bad response

Notes:

• They’re canceling their account and you want them to go back in and complete some more steps? Just do it for them since it’ll have them leaving on better terms.

• Make sure to include that you’re refunding their charge.

Good response

8. Getting a traceroute

Asking for a traceroute for a customer to see if they’re reaching your server can be scary. It’s a technical thing that many customers will be intimidated by. Strive to make it as painless as possible.

Example request

Bad response

Notes:

• There’s that “inconvenience” phrase again. Just never use it.

• Traceroutes can be scary for a customer. Walk them through how to do one.

• Thank them for helping you out with this. It goes a long way to actively get them involved in figuring out what’s going on.

Good response

9. Emails blocked by a firewall

If a customer is behind a pretty strict firewall, email notifications from your app might be blocked. Here’s how to have them check.

Example request

Bad response

Notes:

• First, don’t write like a robot. But I think you knew that one sounded like a robot wrote it.

• Go ahead and give them the IP addresses with instructions to pass them on to their IT team. That’ll go a long way, and the IT team can make sure not to block anything from that address.

• If none of those work, check out your email logs and see if you’re sending those emails out right. Any logs you can provide to the IT team will help out.

Good response

10. Online only

Customers will ask about using your app when they’re on a plane or out in the middle of nowhere without Internet access.

Example request

Bad response

Notes:

• Arg, it’s that “inconvenience” phrase again!

• Have a little empathy. Don’t just blow them off with an email.

Good response

11. Criticisms by customers

You’ll always have a few emails from customers about what you’re doing wrong. Some have specifics, some are vague. Here’s the best way to approach them.

Example request

Bad response

Notes:

• Say you’re sorry. You’re there to help people, not make them angrier with a bad opening line to an email.

• Find out what they like and don’t like. That’ll help you find out how they’re using your service. And it’ll remind the customer about the good things they do enjoy about you.

Good response

12. Getting by without a sales team

Your team is small and there’s not really a reason or the money to hire a dedicated sales team. Larger customers expect you to have one, but here’s how you can help them without one.

Example request

Bad response

Notes:

• The support team is the sales team. You should be ready to answer any question a customer has.

• Be flexible on how the customer wants to talk with you.

• Be excited and thankful they’re checking out your team. That excitement can go a long way with a customer.

Good response

13. Saying thanks

If you do your job right, every ticket will be resolved at the end. Don’t leave your customers hanging without some reply to finish things up.

Example request

Bad response

Notes:

• That’s the corporate robot writing emails again.

• Have fun. Leave them with something memorable. Bring a smile to their face.

Good response

14. Use an app to speed up your typing

With all of these emails, you don’t want to memorize them or copy/paste them out of some list. Remember, I said I’d help with making you faster at answering emails, not just add more steps to it.

It’s tempting to send automated, canned replies to some requests. Don’t. It’s impersonal. It takes away the trust the customer has with you. It breaks an already fragile relationship. They’re in the midst of a crisis, and you didn’t even read their email but automatically sent back a reply anyway.

They don’t work, never worked, and won’t ever work.

But like all good math rules, there’s a corollary to that. You CAN use pre-set snippets to help speed up your responses.

For instance, there might be a project that your team is actively working on. But you might see 15-20 emails every day asking about that option, tool, feature, etc. Sure, I could retype each and every email to a customer. But that’s wasting the customer’s time and my time. They just want an answer.

Enter saved replies.

Help Scout's saved replies let you save responses to frequently asked questions and insert them into email responses in just a couple of clicks. Before sending, you can customize the name and add a few other things — like “Go Tigers” if they’re an Auburn fan. When it’s ready, send it and move on to the next ticket.

Saved replies let you work a lot faster than before. An email ticket about that project from before only takes around ten seconds from start to finish. That’s way better than the five minutes it’d take you to find the info you need and type it all back out. Way better than even thirty seconds of looking for it on a list and then choosing to copy/paste.

With canned automated emails, no one but the computer ever reads them. That’s wrong… so utterly wrong.

With saved replies, a person actually reads the email, understands what’s going on, and then replies back quicker than having to compose that email from scratch.

Think about how much faster you can be when you start using saved replies.

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15. A few last minute tips & tricks

Before we finish up, I want to leave you with a few tips and tricks that you can use for every email you write.

• Use their name! Customers love when you say “Hi Bob!” rather than just a generic “Hello” or “Hi there.”

• Make sure to say thanks for using your app. There’s usually a lot of choices out there, and your customer has chosen you. At least say thanks and mean it.

• Talk like they do. Don’t use formal writing or words that you wouldn’t use in real life. Write like you would write to a friend.

• Short, simple sentences reign. Break up long paragraphs into readable ones. They’re reading an email, not a novel.

• For feature requests, repeat their idea and relate to it if you can. This shows them that you actually read their email and didn’t just skip over it.

• If you can, tell them about new features. It shows that your team is always working on your app.

• Close your email on a highlight.“Happy Friday!” or another date-specific line let’s them know you’re writing the email on that day. If you see they have an auburn.edu email address, throw in a “Go Tigers!” or other tidbit.

That’s it

You’ve got my best emails, the ones that I use for most of the customers I interact with.

With these emails, you’ll be faster, and your customers will love the emails they get from you.

So now what?

Don’t just copy/paste my emails into your collection of responses. If you do, you won’t sound like you. You’ll end up sounding like me.

Instead, look at how I ended up writing those emails.

In college, I had a class on politics and writing. My professor gave us four essays to study for the first class — two pretty horribly written ones and two outstanding ones. Then, we talked about what set them apart, the mistakes from the bad ones, the right phrases and tone from the better ones.

That’s the idea I had in mind when writing this. I wanted you to be able to see bad examples and learn from them. I wanted you to see better emails and learn from them. Not to straight up copy, rather to see what goes into a great email to a customer.

Take the notes from each email and write your own. That way, when a customer gets it from you, it’ll really sound like you.

Thanks for writing better emails.