+ + About Autoresponders + +

Customer service is always done best when the company owner or a sincerely concerned customer service employee come face to face with the customers and address their problems. However, applying this policy nationwide, or even worldwide, will be burdensome to the existence of the company. If your marketplace or store is in the Internet, then this is where an auto-responder comes in handy.

An auto-responder sends out the receipt for the sale, the information for accessing the product, and a ‘thank you’ via email, when a sale is made. It is called auto because it will continue to perform set tasks every time unless programmed to do otherwise. You can leave your online store for a couple of weeks and let the auto-responder do all the work. But what if a customer has a question or needs an explanation about certain features of the product he/she just bought? The auto-responder certainly wouldn’t respond. It isn’t programmed to. If it is programmed, what reply would it send? All that needs to be done is to program the auto-responder to perform specific tasks.

For instance, an elderly gentleman sees your product advertised and places an order. Everything goes through just fine, and he receives the receipt, the download information, and your ‘thank you’ email. Your product is an e-book, compiled into a PDF file. This particular gentleman doesn’t understand what a PDF file is, and he has no idea what you mean by ‘right click to download.’ He needs additional customer service for the product that he has purchased, and there is nobody available to help him – nobody but an autoresponder.

Set up an additional autoresponder that will send out a list of frequently asked questions or problems that deal with customer service or how to access the product. Also set up a support auto-responder. If he sends a message to support, he should get an

instant message letting him know that his message has been received, and how soon it will be addressed. This will give him some measure of comfort, and in most cases, he will wait that specified period of time for assistance.

However, if he doesn’t know how to download the product, and he sends a message to support, and nothing happens, he will most likely become very dissatisfied in a very short period of time. The difference between a patient customer and an irate customer is one simple auto-responder message that can and should be set up in under five minutes.

If you think your products are simple enough that auto-responders can be used to reply to customers’ questions, why not use them? It will certainly save you the time for having to read, look for the answer, think up a nice response and then send the reply.