Earlier in the Business Center Best Practices Series, we did a post on upgrading customer service to customer care. “Make Client Communication Your Priority” was one of the points that post focused on. In this post, I want to draw your attention to another practice that highlights effective and efficient communication with your customer which is setting up email accounts that send to distribution lists.
A distribution list is email client program feature that allows a user to maintain a list of email addresses and send messages to all of them at once. You can have the email staff@yourbusinesscenter.com set up to reach every member of your center’s staff included on the distribution list. This can be done with any specific component of your business as well (i.e. sales@yourbusinesscenter.com, support@yourbusinesscenter.com, or info@yourbusinesscenter.com) so that your customers have an easy to remember email address to send to when they have a need.
When you have email distribution lists set up, customers are reaching everyone that is able to solve their problem with one message. The alternative is that they might email the one person they know of that might be able to solve that problem. What if that one person is unavailable or overlooks the email? Then, your customer doesn’t have their problem solved and is probably made to feel less than important. On the other hand, if that customer uses the distribution list email, at least one person should be able to respond quickly and effectively. When you are setting up your email distribution lists, make sure that you include all the staff that is trained to respond to customer service needs. Also, put procedures in place to streamline who responds when in order to strike a balance between being attentive to customer needs and overwhelming the customer with support.
The creation of the distribution list email account can be set up by your center’s IT staff. If you need assistance in setting up an effective email distribution procedure for your staff members or if you’re interested in learning more about how to maximize customer care at your center, contact us.
