By using canned responses, you can significantly streamline the communication with customers. However, such responses should be used wisely, as otherwise the customer service will lose its personal touch and will seem robotic.
Modern customers are fed up with chat bots and seek personalized experience while interacting with a business. One of the keys for creating a great customer relationship is the content you use to communicate with customers. In this blog post we will talk about the canned responses and will provide 10 examples of greetings which you can add to them to make your communication more customer focused and friendly.
What are predefined answers used for?
Canned messages are basically pre-written answers that are there to assist your employees in addressing customer questions promptly. They can be either ready-made responses which should be just sent with a click to a customer or can contain some useful information such as links which should be inserted to a chat message.
Though pre-written replies are convenient you should not forget that they are not personalized and when using them too often your chats will look robotic and the quality of your customer service may drop.
How to use canned responses on live chat?
Creating canned responses is very easy. There are several ways agents and live chat managers can create them with Provide Support live chat:
- Agents can convert chat messages to canned responses while communicating with customers.
- Agents can create canned responses directly from their agent apps.
- Live chat managers can import canned responses from a spreadsheet and make them available to all departments and agents, to specific departments or agents.
- Live chat managers can create canned responses manually in the account Control Panel on three levels: company, department and operator.
While chatting with customers agents can select ready responses in the right panel on their agent apps. They can also use the following hot keys to navigate through them, select and send in chat:
| Ctrl+R | Use this combination to open canned responses window. The focus jumps to the list of canned responses in the sidebar |
| Ctrl+Shift+R | With this keys combonation the focus jumps to the search field in the list of canned responses in the sidebar |
| Ctrl+Shift+I | Use this combination to insert selected canned response to the message input field |
| Ctrl+Shift+M | Use this combination to send selected canned response to the chat |
What are the main benefits of using canned responses?
There many advantages of using predefined responses on live chat. Let me break them down and highlight the main ones.
- Time-efficiency. Pre-written responses empower customer service teams to zip through common queries without compromising accuracy. While using predefined answers to address common issues, they can concentrate on more challenging interactions with customers.
- Positive customer experience. Even though your customers get predefined responses while asking common questions, they will appreciate timely assistance and will perceive your brand positively.
- Better quality. Humans can make errors, especially while working under pressure. However, ready live chat responses can be the rescue in such situations. They are meticulously crafted and there is no need to re-read them twice to ensure everything is correct.
- Training and onboarding. New employees can learn faster with the help of predefined responses. They will familiarize themselves with routine customer queries and will align with your communication standards.
- Consistency. Consistency in customer communication is your secret key that strengthens relationship with them. Canned responses bring your communication to a new level when you can provide high standard of service, give accurate information, show your professionalism and stand out from the crowd.
10 examples of greetings for canned responses
Here are examples of common canned responses which you can use as greetings or create your own templates based on them:
- ‘Good morning! My name is [ NAME] how may I help you?’
- ‘Good afternoon, I’m [NAME, POSITSION]. How can I help you today?’
- ‘Good morning / afternoon! Welcome to [COMPANY NAME]. My name is [NAME]. How may I help you today?’
- ‘Thank you for reaching out. I’m [NAME], and I’ll assist you today. How can I help?’
- ‘We appreciate you visiting us today! How can we make your day even better?
- ‘We are so excited to have you here! Maybe there is something we can help you with?’
- ‘Hi! Welcome to [COMPANY NAME]. Ask me anything anytime. I’m here for you!’
- ‘Thanks for reaching out! We will look into your query within 24 hours. In the meantime, please feel free to check out our knowledge base.’
- ‘Welcome back! If you need my assistance to make the right decision, I am here to help.’
- ‘We’re delighted you’re here with us! Let’s make sure you find exactly what you’re looking for.’
Conclusion
Meticulously crafted canned responses open the door to effectiveness and efficiency in your customer service operations. You can avoid human errors and improve customer relationship. By setting up live chat greetings you can automate a big part of your job and focus on more important and complicated things. The whole reason for using canned responses is to save time. We at Provide Support made predefined answers a powerful and convenient tool for customer service agents.
Olga is a Head of Customer Service Advocates and Social Media Coordinator at Provide Support, LLC. She is a writer and blogger on customer service innovation, customer service excellence and customer support technology.
