Customer service plays an integral role in sustaining business success.
Most businesses focus their energies and marketing efforts on attracting prospective clients and new customers. They they do not give much thought to what happens once they have successfully gotten people to buy from them. Good customer service goes well beyond a transaction and is offered to customers even after a sale is closed. Following up with customers is a sure-shot way to build trust. By doing so, you show your customers that you care about their experience with your brand. Customers will have more reasons than one to choose your brand again in the future.
On the flip side, negative customer interactions can cause a customer to choose a competitor for their next purchase. According to “Understanding Customers” by Ruby Newell-Legner, it takes 12 positive customer experiences to make up for one customer experience gone bad. There is a lot at stake here. And that’s why, following up with customers to understand their needs and experiences becomes so important.
Table of Contents
- Top reasons why you should follow up with your customers
- Ways to proactively follow up with your customers after a sale
- 4 customer follow up email templates
- Integrate follow-ups and serve your customers better!
Top reasons why you should follow up with your customers
Here are a couple of reasons and some case studies to illustrate why effectively following up with customers is crucial to a brand’s success.
1. Promotes repeat purchases
If you leave your customers with the feeling that you forgot them soon after they bought something from you, they might pass you by and head to a competitor for their next purchase. If you do not provide your customers with a great experience by following-up with them at the right time, it might seem that all you cared about was making a quick sale.
Here’s what you need to do. Make the effort to “just check in” with your customers a few days after the purchase. This way they will feel connected to your brand and are more likely to buy from you again. They might even help you get positive word-of-mouth and social testimonials for your business. In turn, you’ll increase your customer retention rates and attract potential customers through referrals.
Checking in on your customers is thus, a sure-shot way to get your revenues soaring.
Tesco Mobile is an example of a brand that regularly checks in with its customers via social media. The company makes sure to let its customers know that their support and sales reps are there to help with anything they need.
2. Helps recover lost sales
If a customer is angry or dissatisfied, and you send them a polite follow-up message with an attempt to make amends, they might reconsider buying from you. Not checking in on them will prove to them that their opinion about your brand not caring enough for its customers, was right.
In the end, they will go with a brand that can give them the positive experience they want.
Here’s something to think about. Following a bad customer experience, 39% of customers do not associate with a company for nearly 2 years.
DSW is a great example of a brand turning around an unpleasant situation and using it to their advantage. Last year, the company’s website crashed in the middle of a sale, leaving many shoppers stranded halfway through the checkout process. The very next day they sent out an apology note to their customers letting them know that the flash sale was extended due to the mishap. The customers could return to the website and buy their favorite products at discounted rates. This is the perfect example of service recovery done well.
Recommended Reading
3. Gives you deep insights into customer preferences
Every time you connect with your customers, you get a chance to obtain useful insights on what their needs are, what their greatest pain points are, and what they expect from your company in terms of service quality. You will also gain insights into what you can do to serve them better.
When McDonald’s started seeing a decline in sales, they decided to change their marketing tactics a bit and started focusing on the customer experience. They made a genuine effort to listen to their customers. Based on the feedback received, McDonald’s created a simpler menu and started using better quality ingredients. They also took the time to revamp their stores by installing digital self-order kiosks, lowering the wait times for customers. As a result of these changes, McDonald’s saw an increase in sales growth by 4.1 %.
Ways to proactively follow up with your customers after a sale
Now that you’re convinced about the importance of following up with customers, let’s look at some ways you can reach out to them after a sale.
There are several ways to follow up with customers post a sale. You can reach out to them via a phone call, on social media, or send them a handwritten note or a letter. If there was an issue during the sales process where your company did not offer the kind of service that was promised, you might even want to send out a small apology gift. This will show your customers how important they are to you. It will show them how far you are willing to go to ensure you don’t lose them.
Sending a well-thought-out and earnest email is one of the best and most efficient way to first follow up with your customers.
Why email you may ask? Emails are quick and easy to send. They’re a great way to collect customer feedback, particularly if you have an interactive survey integrated into it. You can keep track of all the customer comments and responses that you get to those surveys. To top it all, emails can even be personalized at scale with the help of customer service automation or email marketing software.
Now that we have seen how emails can be a great way to follow up with customers, let’s take a look at the kind of follow-up emails that you should send.
4 customer follow up email templates
Customer service follow-up emails have a huge impact on the customer experience. Startups and smaller companies have been quick to realize the power of using emails for customer engagement. This explains why 62% of customers have ranked email as their top preferred channel of communication with small businesses.
Proactive follow-up emails that are sent out soon after a support interaction can help you make your customers happy by showing that you are committed to ensuring their needs are met. We have put together 4 easy customer service follow-up email samples that you can use to reach out to your customers.
You may choose the type of follow up emails that best fit your needs:
Template #1: Ask for feedback
Each time a customer gets in touch with your support team, they expect a response from your end.
Hence it’s important to resolve their query as quickly and effectively as possible.
After you have successfully resolved a customer query, you can send the following email to ensure they are completely satisfied with your service. This allows you to know how well you have attended to their needs. When you ask your customers for feedback, it not only gives them an impression that you care about their needs but also gives you specific insights for enhancing your service quality in the future.
Here’s an example of a customer follow-up email template requesting them to share their feedback:
Hi {Customer name},
We are reaching out to you concerning an issue you had with (reference the issue) that was successfully resolved on (date). We wish to serve you better and would love to know about your experience with our customer service team.
On a scale of 1-5, how easy it was to get your issue resolved with us – 1 being ‘extremely difficult’ and 5 being ‘extremely easy’.
Thank you for taking the time out. We value your feedback!
If there is anything else that we can do for you, please feel free to get in touch with us.
Best Regards,
{Agent Name}
{Company Name}
___________________
We are reaching out to you concerning an issue you had with (reference the issue) that was successfully resolved on (date). We wish to serve you better and would love to know about your experience with our customer service team.
On a scale of 1-5, how easy it was to get your issue resolved with us – 1 being ‘extremely difficult’ and 5 being ‘extremely easy’.
Thank you for taking the time out. We value your feedback!
If there is anything else that we can do for you, please feel free to get in touch with us.
Best Regards,
{Agent Name}
{Company Name}
Donote: If you are unable to include a rating scale, then encourage customers to simply reply to your email and share their feedback. Do bear in mind, however, your response rates for such follow-up emails may not be very high. Customers might find it too much of an effort to reply with their detailed feedback.
With a customer support solution like Hiver, you can simplify the feedback collection process by attaching a simple customer satisfaction survey at the end of every customer interaction.
Template #2: Send an invitation for a survey
A customer service follow-up email with a link to a survey will provide you with more detailed feedback than a rating scale. Based on the questions you ask, you will get a fair idea about what customers think of your brand, your product/service, and your customer support quality. Here is a follow up email example that you can use to invite customers to participate in a feedback survey:
Hi {Customer name},
Thank you for purchasing from us. We are so glad you chose us. We would love to hear from you about your experience with our customer service team.
Please spare a moment to respond to this quick survey. We assure you it won’t take you more than a minute to answer! We value your feedback as it will help us serve you better in the future. Thank you for taking the time out.
(insert link to the survey)
Best Regards,
{Agent Name}
{Company Name}
If you’re not sure which questions to include in the survey, here are a few examples to help you:
- Are you happy with the way our customer service team handled your request?
- Did you get a quick response?
- Were your expectations met?
- What would you like us to improve about our product or service quality?
- Tell us how we can do better.
Do note: When you get in touch with customers, don’t stick to asking yes or no questions alone, instead mix it up with open-ended questions to get the most inputs about their experiences. The more information you gather, the easier it will be to enhance future customer experiences.
Recommended Reading
Template #3: ‘Just check in’ on your customers
You can send your customers a quick email to just check in on them and see how they are doing with the product or service purchased. Your customers may not respond to you if everything is alright. However, letting them know that you are available should there be a problem, is a kind gesture.
At times, your customers may not be sure how to use the product, or they may need more information. Just checking in on them will go a long way in easing their apprehensions and creating a strong relationship with your company.
Here is a customer service follow-up email template that you can use to check in on your customers:
Hi {Customer name},
We hope you are happy with your recent purchase with us. We just wanted to reach out and say that if you have any questions or suggestions for us, please feel free to let us know.
Just hit reply and let us know your thoughts about our product or service. We would love to hear from you.
Thanks again for shopping with {company name}.
Kind Regards,
{Agent Name}
{Company Name}
Do note: When you’re sending follow-up emails to customers, it’s best that you send them from a customer service agent’s name and not just the company name. An email sent from a person will make the interaction seem more personal.
Template #4: The “anything else?” template
Check with your customers if there is anything else they need help with before you close a conversation. Sometimes your agent may mark an issue as solved and close a customer email assuming that the customer had read the email. What if your customer was too busy to check their emails and had not seen the previous email from your company?
This gentle reminder email will help you find out if there is anything else the customer needs help with. This way, customers will feel satisfied with your service and not feel ignored or cut short. Here is the “anything else?” customer service follow-up email template that you can use:
Hi {Customer name},
Thanks for getting in touch with us regarding (reference the issue they had raised). We would like to inform you that your issue has been resolved and we will close this conversation in 3 working days. But before that, is there anything else that we can help you with?
Just hit the reply button to let us know and someone from our team will get in touch with you.
Kind Regards,
{Agent Name}
{Company Name}
Integrate follow-ups and serve your customers better!
Customer service follow-ups will help you know what a customer liked about their association with your brand and what you can do to improve it. Either way, it’s a win-win for you — you will get to scale up your service and keep your customers happy.
Customer service software like Hiver can make the process of customer service follow-up really easy. With features like customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys, email templates, and the ability to personalize follow-up emails at scale, Hiver can help you elevate your customer service quality considerably and foster meaningful customer relationships.
Schedule a demo with Hiver today and see how effectively you can streamline your customer service workflows and offer great customer service right from Gmail.
Resources you’ll love:
- A great guide on the art of following up with customers by Small Business Trends
- Some really useful tips on writing emails that will get you replies
- A roundup of the 7 best customer service software for small businesses
- An article on the six important customer service reports you must keep track of
