Happy to Help | A Customer Support Podcast

How to Write Remarkable Emails for Customer Support

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We're doing a deep dive into the essential skills of writing remarkable customer support emails! Kate Chupp from the Buzzsprout Podcaster Success team joins us to discuss the balance between technical and creative writing, how empathy can be effectively conveyed through written communication, and offer practical, actionable strategies for sharpening your writing skills. 

If you haven't already listened to them, we recommend going back and listening to our episodes about aligning support goals and tone with your company values:

Whether you’re new to customer support or a seasoned pro, this episode will provide valuable insights to help you enhance your email clarity, build stronger customer relationships, and improve your overall customer experience!

We want to hear from you! Share your support stories and questions with us at happytohelp@buzzsprout.com!

To learn more about Buzzsprout visit Buzzsprout.com

Priscilla:

Welcome to Happy to Help, a podcast about customer support from the people at Buzzsprout. I'm your host, Priscilla Brooke. Today we're talking about writing, specifically how to write well in customer support. We'll cover the importance of being intentional about your written communication and discuss several actionable tips and strategies you can implement today. Thanks for joining us. Let's get into it.

Priscilla:

Well, h ere we go, episode 15. Jordan it does not feel like we've done 15 episodes. I know. In some ways it feels like we've done like way more than that and in some ways it feels like this is our third episode of the podcast, it's true.

Priscilla:

So I think this episode is going to be really beneficial for anyone who is new to customer support, because we're going to kind of get nitty gritty about writing styles. Was new to customer support because we're going to kind of get nitty gritty about writing styles, and this is definitely something that I don't consider myself a expert in. But the good news is we have someone on the Buzzsprout podcaster success team who is an expert in writing, and so she is coming on today to talk about writing and to give us some tips and to talk through different strategies that you can use in your writing to better show empathy or better clarify an issue that you're running into, and so I'm really, really excited about that. Yeah, so Kate Chupp is joining us. She is our newest member of the team. She's only been here for about six months. Kate, welcome to the pod.

Kate:

Thank you, excited to be here.

Priscilla:

We always kick off our episodes by shouting someone out who's made our day recently. Has someone made your day recently that you want to shout out from the podcast?

Kate:

I'd love to shout out the good people of Grumpy's Food Truck.

Priscilla:

Grumpy's Food Truck. Grumpy's.

Kate:

Food Truck. What is that? It is a breakfast sandwich food truck in my town and, I think, the best breakfast in my town. Our whole house is kind of obsessed with their sandwiches, so I go about once a week probably. I like try to limit myself to just going once a week, and so I went this morning and by the time I got up to the front of the line they already had my order on the grill, knew what I wanted. Oh, that's so great.

Priscilla:

Yes.

Kate:

I just haven't been like a regular somewhere before and it feels so special to go somewhere where they know your order, they remember you, like that's just some good customer service right there.

Priscilla:

Yeah, I feel like that's something that we all kind of have, that want is to be a regular somewhere, like, yeah, I want to go to the corner diner and have them know exactly what I want you know, and I wonder if it's from, like when we were growing up and watching sitcoms, you know, very location based, like how I Met your Mother, they're always at that same bar.

Priscilla:

Or Gilmore Girls, they're always at Luke's Diner or something like that, where it's like we saw it so much in television that now it's like, oh my gosh, I'm a regular here, I'm fulfilling a dream. They know who I am. It's so cool to have that experience. And you're right, it's customer service. It's someone remembering you and going out of their way to make you feel included or valued or just known. On that level. That's really fun. And it's fun that it's like a food truck in your town. So shout out to the person at Grumpy's who recognizes Kate. There you go and gets her breakfast ready. That's so great, all right. So today we're talking about all things writing. Kate, can you tell me and our listeners a little bit about what has kind of led to that passion and the expertise that you have around writing?

Kate:

I studied English with a creative writing emphasis in college and published some poetry and creative nonfiction from that and got to edit with this amazing magazine called Ecstasis. Wow, just loved getting to be around so much writing and see so many people's writing styles and creativity. Yeah, you're in it. Yes, yes, that's so cool. I love that. Writing just gives you time to articulate your thoughts and to like think through what you actually mean to say yeah. Where other forms of communication is more like processing in real time or things like that, with writing you kind of get to think through it and helps me slow down a lot and a lot of writing. I think it pulls out more meaning than you see on the surface because you have more time to think through it and dive into it. I just think that's super special.

Priscilla:

That's really fun. Yeah, when Kate started, you know, when she was going through the interview process, one of the things that really stuck out to us was how good of a writer she was and is. I mean, she really had a very strong written portion of her application that really pushed her over the top when we were bringing her onto the team. And since then she has just been such a leader in the way we write in our support team and the way that we communicate with podcasters and the intentionality around it too. Like we've always had a focus on being intentional about how we write. I mean, if you go back and listen to some of our older episodes, you'll hear the intentionality around our tone that we write in or our communication goals. But there's something that Kate brings to it that is like this extra level of knowledge. I mean I went to school for advertising and communication. Writing was not something that I felt like an expert in.

Priscilla:

And so Kate, coming into the team, has really kind of sharpened our writing skills for everyone on the team. I want to kind of start by clarifying a little bit. You know there's so many different ways to write. There's like very technical writing, and then Kate was saying like there's creative writing, and I think customer support kind of falls in the middle of that. Like there's some technical stuff, but there's also a lot of creative strategies that you have to use in order to communicate the things you want to communicate with customers, and so I feel like it's a very unique type of writing because at some points you have to get really technical and some points you have to be really creative about how you're talking to people, and so I think it just falls nicely in the middle there, which can make it really hard.

Priscilla:

Honestly, it can make it really hard to do well, okay, so let's start at the beginning and talk about why it's important to be able to write well for customer support. You don't have to be the best writer in the world like Kate, but you do need to be able to be a solid writer and comfortable with it and enjoy it to an extent, because it's such a big portion of the job, and so one of the biggest reasons that we need that is because, with customer support, you are representing a brand or a product Doesn't mean you have to be the best in the world, but you need to be able to communicate well so that you can communicate accurately as a representation of the product that you're serving.

Kate:

And you're taking out some of the other forms of communication, like body language and expressions or tone of voice that you get through, like a phone support or something like that.

Priscilla:

So it's all down to the words that you're using, yeah, written communication and just strictly written communication takes away so much of those like person to person cues that help communicate things. I think we talked about it in our episode on tone. I was thinking that too. The yeah we talked about I think his name was Albert Morabian and he did a study on nonverbal communication and verbal communication and he found that, like the majority of in-person communication is nonverbal. Yeah, so Cool, if we're talking face to face, most of the communication between us is nothing that I'm saying, it's all how I'm acting or the inflection or the hand gestures that I'm using, and so I think it was something like 7% of that communication is your like verbal, actual words. Wow. So if you take out all of that communication and then you go just to written now, you're losing so much of the communication that you have that's nonverbal because all of it is writing.

Priscilla:

And so it's so important to be intentional about what you're saying, the words you're putting down, because that's all you have, and so you can almost go into an email expecting that it's going to be misinterpreted, because there's just no way around that. To an extent, the important thing when you're talking about customer service is clarity. That is the top, at least. The way that we focus on how we communicate in our customer support team is. The emphasis is on clarity. We want to make sure that when we're emailing you, everything is clear, that our empathy is clear, the steps on how to unlock your episodes are clear, my understanding your problem that's clear, everything. Clarity is like the most important goal with our writing is that we're clear?

Priscilla:

And so perfection is not always going to be aligning with clear. So, for example, sometimes it will be clearer to put a comma in the middle of a sentence to show a pause, even if, technically, that comma should not be there. Yeah, totally. As you're listening to these tips that we're going to talk through, don't get too caught up in the perfection of it, but just remember that the goal is clarity. We're not following an AP style book, we're not following Chicago style and making sure that we never do anything wrong.

Kate:

And we don't want to seem like AI.

Priscilla:

Exactly, exactly. I think I said it on the episode with Sarah Hatter, something like there's a lot of humanity in a well-placed comma or a misplaced comma. Yeah, because AI is probably not going to mistake that. You know that robot knows exactly where every semicolon goes, but I don't. And so putting a semicolon in the wrong spot or accidentally mistyping a word, that can actually show humanity and it can make it more personal, spending too much time like perfecting that can actually make it look less or feel less personal and less human, absolutely Okay. And then the last thing I want to say, before we kind of jump into these actionable tips, is that the best writing starts with understanding the question fully.

Priscilla:

And so we're going to get into these kind of like strategies. But if you don't understand the question that someone is asking, if you don't have the context that you need to understand it, it doesn't matter how good your writing is, it's not going to help, right? So there is an aspect of good writing that really is good understanding and good listening and reading, and good listening Exactly with the interpreting of the questions that are coming in. But you're really good at writing. Your writing might suffer because you aren't able to interpret the questions correctly, and so you need to focus on that side of things. So today we're going to talk really about the writing side, but I also want to encourage anyone listening who feels like gosh, my emails are always missing the mark, but I write them really well.

Priscilla:

It could be that your understanding is the thing that's lacking a little bit and that needs to be sharpened in order to make your writing really shine. As a support leader, one of the things you can do to help encourage the people on your team to really lean into reading and understanding the questions well is giving them time to actually do that. I think a lot of times we focus a lot on speed in customer support and less time on understanding or less time on crafting the response. And so I would say the best results are going to be finding that balance of working quickly but also giving your team time and margin enough to understand the emails that are coming in, understand the questions that are being asked so that when they're writing that response back they can be really intentional about how they write but also be intentional about answering all the questions and understanding fully the context of the email that comes in.

Kate:

I remember when I was interviewing for Buzzsprout, we talked about how you would define success and, priscilla, you told me that it's not about getting to inbox zero, it's about communicating well and giving them a quality interaction, and that environment, and that being a value of ours at Buzzsprout, really does help with the written communication. Piece of it.

Priscilla:

Yeah, if you tell your team, hey, we're not focused on the fastest response time in the world, we're not focused on always having inbox zero, but then you turn around and that's all you focus on and that's all you talk about, they're not going to believe that, that actually you don't care about inbox zero. And so it's really important to not only communicate that to your team hey, this is not the most important part of the day or important aspect of this job, but to actually live it out and to actually say, hey, what we're going to celebrate today is these quality emails or these remarkable experiences that Kate had with a customer, that she gave that customer. That's the thing we're going to celebrate, not the 10 minute response time that happened this month. If this is your first time listening to Happy to Help, I would recommend that you go back and you listen to two episodes. We have one about defining your tone, your support tone, and then one about setting your communication goals. Those two episodes, along with this one, are going to be really helpful for anyone who's trying to define what that looks like for their team and trying to really sharpen that writing skill. So I would say, go there, but we'll give you a little bit of a refresher On what we talked about in those episodes.

Priscilla:

So I think it's important, before you start critiquing your writing or the writing of people on your team, that you are aligned and that your team is aligned With the goals of your communication For your support and the tone that you've set. And so if you haven't done that, for your support and the tone that you've set, and so if you haven't done that, I would not start nitpicking writing styles or clarity, things like that. I would focus on those bigger overarching ideas first. What are the goals here? What's the tone we're trying to hit? Because once you've established that, then you can go into the writing and say did this meet the goal? Did this align with the tone? In what ways could we change things so that is more aligned with the tone? But if you don't have that set beforehand, it's going to be really hard to accurately critique writing in that way.

Priscilla:

To sharpen that skill and make sure you know, one of the things we talked about when we were talking about setting your communication goals was to really align those goals with your company values.

Priscilla:

You know, for example, one we have at Buzzsprout is to take the time to find the best solution. So when we were putting together our tone guide, we took that into account. It means we're actually focused on understanding the email and the context of the situation, and then that trickles down into how I'm actually writing an email is. I'm going to take the time to explain this a little bit more clearly, even though it takes me a little bit longer. So, when you are setting your goals and your tone, keep in mind that all of that should align with your company values as a whole, and then it'll trickle down all the way to when you actually are putting your fingers to the keyboard and typing out phrases and figuring out how to structure a sentence. All of that is going to fall in line then under your company values, which is just really important, so that everything is in alignment. Right, that is the top.

Kate:

I think rule key that I would say is make sure it aligns with your values. Because even if you have a perfectly grammatical email, if it's not empathetic or if it's not aligning with what you want to communicate to the customer, then that's just, that's not it, that's not good writing.

Priscilla:

Yeah, there's like all these different facets of good writing. Right, because you can write a really beautifully written rude email. Right, you can write varying sentences and it can be completely off of what your tone should be Keep coming back to those values and those goals, Yep.

Priscilla:

And so go listen to those episodes if you want more information into that, because that is really helpful, I think, when you're getting into the nitty gritty of the actual writing. So let's get into some actionable tips, and a lot of this is not going to be groundbreaking. I also want to say like yeah, some of this is going to be like OK. Yeah, I learned that when I was in middle school, and it is stuff that is that simple at times, but we as adults, I think, sometimes forget that that is important to think about. Oh yeah, the first tip I have for anyone who is trying to make their writing better is to write how you speak.

Priscilla:

It's good to be human and to not try to be perfect.

Priscilla:

We talked about this a minute ago when we were talking about the AI and how you can sound robotic if you're too perfect with your writing.

Priscilla:

But what I mean is, like you know, if you are the kind of person who says like in a sentence, that's OK. Say like in your email. But what I mean is like you know, if you are the kind of person who says like in a sentence, that's okay. Say like in your email If you're the kind of person who makes a little joke or you kind of have that like witty banter, it's okay to include some of that and show some of your personality in the email. So I think a good example of this is contractions. I find that when I write I don't use contractions and I will go back into my writing and add them in and I don't know what it is about my writing that I never think in contractions, but I speak in contractions and so when I go back and I look at my emails, I add in my contractions, because I know that it makes it more conversational if I add them in.

Kate:

Do you have like an example of that?

Priscilla:

Okay, so an example is like if someone writes in and says, do you guys have a annual billing option? And I write back and say we do not have an annual billing option, well, yeah, okay, that's fine, but if I say, no, we don't have an annual billing option, Much more casual Sounds, so much more conversational. That's not how you talk. In that sense I'm not writing how I talk. I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them, sam, I am Exactly. But that's such a like a tangible tip when you are writing an email, go back and add in the contractions. If you don't think in contractions like I, don't, go back and add them in. We also have like a lot of words in Buzzsprout support that we don't use because they are not real words that we would use in our real life. So I think we talked about this again with Sarah Hatter, but the idea that we don't use the word inconvenience when we're saying, oh, I'm so sorry for the inconvenience because we wouldn't say that to someone in real life.

Kate:

Those are like flag words for when you're talking to AI or talking to like a robot kind of thing too, yeah.

Priscilla:

Or a customer support person who is tired and, at the end of the day, and you're like, oh, you're thankful for my feedback. Well, now I know that my feedback is going to go in a bucket of feedback that no one's looking at. That does not feel like anyone's going to respond to this or take it seriously. That makes me feel like a number. That doesn't make me feel like you're actually caring about me. Even if you are, that's the other thing. You could care about that person and say I'm sorry for the inconvenience and it doesn't come across that way, so you don't get the benefit of actually caring about them. And so being intentional about how you communicate that and not using those kind of words that you wouldn't use in real life, can be a really, really good strategy to keep your conversation and your emails human and personal Key number two is to use an active voice.

Kate:

I struggle with this one.

Priscilla:

Yes, me too. Yeah, this active versus passive voice is not something that I would have even thought too much about before Kate was here, like really thinking about how an active voice versus a passive voice can have such an impact on the clarity of an email, but it really can. So, anyway, you can keep explaining to us the difference between active and passive, kate, because I think there are some people who know exactly what you're talking about, and then there are some people who are probably like I need a refresher.

Kate:

I for sure did a refresher not that long ago, not gonna lie. Perfect, yes, yeah. So for those of us who haven't heard those terms since eighth grade, no-transcript. So can you?

Priscilla:

give us an example, kate, of a sentence that would be passive and one that would be active, so we can kind of see the difference in how that comes across.

Kate:

Like if somebody said to you I love you versus you are loved, they're both the same sentiment. If somebody said to you I love you versus you are loved, they're both the same sentiment. But the I love you is just more punchy and like direct and it means more. It means more yes.

Priscilla:

Yeah, like, imagine if your significant other never said I love you, but they always just said you are loved. You'd be like am I? Though? It's starting to make me question if you love me or not, because you just keep saying I'm loved but you're not actually putting that ownership on yourself. And so, yeah, I think, having that active voice especially, obviously we're not telling our customers that we love them all the time, but when you're talking to customers and you're trying to empathize with them and you're trying to say I understand what you're going through or I understand that this is really a frustrating situation, like, if you're passive about it, it's not going to come through in that same kind of authentic way. It's going to feel much more absent. It's this person doesn't actually care about me, they're just saying what they feel like they have to say so again.

Kate:

We're into the like inconvenience thing, so it's like the sorry for the inconvenience versus I am so sorry that you have had to deal with this.

Priscilla:

Yes, yeah, that's a great example. All right, so we know that passive voice is not as good as active voice when we're talking about, like, customer support, but there are times when I think passive voice can be helpful.

Kate:

Yes, Sometimes we do need to use the passive voice. Again, all of these keys. The highest thing is that it's going to align with our values and align with our communication goals. So we all have the times in customer support where the customer is maybe in the wrong, maybe they just didn't see something you know, and so saying something like you filled out the form wrong is not going to align with our values. So that is when a passive voice of like it looks like the form isn't filled out correctly, where we're taking that ownership away in the name of maintaining values and empathetic support is a really good idea. So again, just always go back to those higher values. It's not all about getting it perfectly correct.

Priscilla:

Yeah, I think that's so important. It is one thing when we're talking with a customer and we want to take ownership of cheering them on or we want to take ownership of explaining a process, so that should be active. But what happens when you're met with this idea of oh, if I talk in an active voice right now, I'm going to be assigning ownership of the problem to my customer and I don't want to make them feel shame for messing up the form. I don't want to make them feel like anything that will stop them from wanting to come back to this product or come back to me and, you know, feel comfortable coming with questions. And so using a passive voice strategically in those kind of interactions yeah, exactly, can like help you to leave the ownership out of it.

Priscilla:

It doesn't matter who filled out the form wrong. The form was filled out wrong. That is the reality and we're going to move past it. But if I say that in an active voice, it can feel a little bit harsher, it can feel a little bit more pointed, and so in that case, using a passive voice can actually help everyone feel a little bit better about it and not assign blame. I think that's such a good tip. That's brilliant. Yeah, the next tip we have is about being intentional about what you write. So, kate, you want to talk about that a little more.

Kate:

Yes, okay. So this one. I like to think about that. Every part of your email or written communication has a purpose for being there. So, on a sentence level, like you're looking at each sentence of does this need to be here? And then, within a sentence like do all of these words need to be here in order for me to make a clear point?

Kate:

This one's the hardest one for me, because we often process, when we're talking and I'll say things three different ways to try to actually understand what I'm trying to say and communicate it in the clearest way. So often that just ends up with a lot of repetition and what you're saying. And so when you're writing, it can also. I do this a lot, where I'll type three sentences where I'm saying the exact same thing in different ways. But then the key with written communication and writing is that you do have time to reread it, to edit and to think about what you really mean to say. And so, sure, write those three sentences, but then read back over it and think about, like, okay, how can I combine these? Which one of these is the clearest way to say this?

Priscilla:

Yeah, when you were doing the deep dive with us, you talked to us about asking questions to ourselves while we're in the process of writing it, like does this word or sentence need to be here? Have I said anything twice that doesn't need to be said twice? How could I make these two sentences one clearer sentence? And kind of doing that like those questions in our heads as we're reviewing an email, can cut down some of the like fat to really get to the important parts of the email Totally, which I think is really a good practice to put into place when you're going through your emails and trying to solidify them to be as clear as possible.

Priscilla:

I also think it's a good tip because I think we have all been in a situation as support specialists where we get an email from a customer and it's just one block of text.

Priscilla:

There's no breaks in it, there's nothing. It's just a ton of words and no one wants to respond to that email. Once you actually sit and read it, it can be the simplest question, but because they spent so many words explaining the situation, it can feel so overwhelming to even want to read it, and so we don't want to send an email to a customer that they don't want to read because it's too long, that by the time they get to the end where there's actually stuff that they need to do, they have already checked out. I just think it's really important to like be aware of that when you're writing. It doesn't need to be so clinical where there's no personality in it and there's, you know it's only this is what you do, this is what you do. This is what you do. You don't want to like cull it down that much, but you do want to be aware of getting rid of unnecessary duplicates or unnecessary words that just kind of add fluff.

Kate:

Yeah, I don't know about you, but when I'm reading like some of the emails I write, I'm using podcast every single sentence and then I read over it and I'm glazed out on what I actually said. I'm just like whoa, I said podcast a ton and if you're yeah, sometimes that'll happen with repeat words where you just kind of blank out so what could you sub in or where can you take out those extras?

Priscilla:

Yeah, do you have any examples showing how you could take a sentence and make it a little bit more streamlined? Okay, yes.

Kate:

So I'll just use a fictional company as an example here. I live in Colorado and it's a thing here that if you go on backpacking trips or things, you can rent a llama to go with you. Oh stop, I've always wanted to do it, that's amazing. I've never gotten to do it. So this is for the llama rental company. So we have a customer, tom, let's call him, write in and be like I am renting a llama but I don't want to take care of it. Do we have to feed them? Do we have to clean up after them? Great question, tom. So a example of an email that would have more duplicates and be less clear hey, tom of the llama, care, including transportation and feeding and the general well-being. You and your guests will just have to enjoy the trip and you won't have to worry about anything. Yeah, that's wordy. Yeah, very wordy. You're really saying two things here. You're saying don't worry, tom, you don't have to do anything, and here's what we're going to provide for you instead.

Kate:

And so a more like, streamlined version of that would be like hey, Tom, that's a great question. You will have a guide who will take care of the llama, including transportation, feeding and cleanup. You and your guests will just get to enjoy the trip and can interact with the llamas as much or as little as you'd like.

Priscilla:

Simple, clear. It's so much more streamlined, yeah, simple and clear, and you don't lose the personality. Making things more precise or clear doesn't mean that you have to lose all personal touch, right, all right, so let's move on to the next one, which is about paying attention to sentence structure and to email structure. This is a cool one, yeah.

Kate:

So you might remember in school you had like a thesis and then your paragraphs and your closing statement.

Kate:

And that's not what I'm talking about, but like the structure of how you would format a written communication. So the first thing that we always want to do is to just answer the question right off the bat. If they're asking how do I change billing plans, or anything like that, you want to answer that in the first couple sentences. So if they're skimming and they just want a quick answer, we're getting to the point with them, and then we always try to educate and provide context. So we'll do that. Next of like, here's some more information about how to do this in the future, or why we have this system set up like this, things like that. And then my favorite tip is then you want to wrap it up with an action statement. So, is there anything that they need to do now or that you need to do now? Yeah, and why is that Like, why do you want to have that at the end? Yeah, I think, especially because we sometimes will do the education part and put some extra things in there to end on, like here's what you need to do now.

Kate:

That like call to action piece is just helpful to read the email and be like okay, now I'm going to go do this kind of thing, yeah, and it's at like the forefront of their mind when they finish reading the whole thing. They don't forget about it if it's up top, interesting, right, and sometimes that's us too Like we'll say I'm going to look into this and get back to you, or like you're saying what you're going to do, and I always think that indicates like here's the next steps of like we're going to continue taking action on this, and it communicates the value, too, of this isn't just going to get lost. We haven't just given you an answer, we're going to continue taking steps on this, and that can be really impactful for your customer.

Priscilla:

Yeah, I really like having this kind of loose structure in place because it allows you as the support specialist, it gives you kind of a path to follow. You know we care a lot about remarkable support experiences. Everyone listening to this probably cares about providing a remarkable support experience. A remarkable support experience, let's say someone writes in and they say do you guys have an annual plan? And we write back and answer the question no, we do not, or no, we don't. That is adequate, right? They now know the answer. They've asked the question, they got the answer. So, ok, okay, box checked, sure, but is that a remarkable experience? No, is it better to educate them a little bit on why we don't have an annual plan, maybe to validate and understand why they might want it, but to explain to them our rationality about why we don't have it? That is what takes it from a adequate response to something more remarkable.

Priscilla:

You care enough about your customer that you want to educate them on how to use your tool. So when it comes to this process or the structure of the email, if you answer the question first, you get right up front with giving them the information they specifically asked for. Then they can choose if they want to keep reading or they can choose not to if they're in a rush. They've gotten their answer, they can move on. But if you move then into the here, let me explain to you why we do it this way. That gives them a little bit more insight. They get to know your brand a little bit more, why you think the way you do.

Priscilla:

And then I love what Kate was saying going back and then clarifying at the end what those next steps are. And that structure will also bring clarity to the customer, because at the end of the email they're getting a refresher on what is expected of them. That's clear at the end. So you've gone through maybe a paragraph of explaining the education or the reasoning behind how you have a feature set up, a way you do, but then your last sentence is reminding them, just to be clear, this is the answer, or just to be clear, this is your next step or what I'm going to do.

Kate:

It helps with that clarity. Also, sometimes there's not next steps, but that ending action statement is please let us know. If you have any more questions, that's one we'll use a lot.

Priscilla:

That is like keeping the door open. Keeping the door open? Yeah, it allows them the freedom to ask a follow up question if they have one, and you never want to end an email and make someone feel like they can't come back and so having that sentence at the end, let me know. If you have any other questions, let me know. If any of this doesn't make sense and you know we want to explain this another way like, bring it back to me.

Priscilla:

I want to make sure the most important thing is that you understand it and can go and accomplish it yourself. All right, so the next tip is varying your sentences. I feel like this just makes for a more enjoyable read when it comes to reading an email that's one paragraph, two paragraphs If every single sentence is structured the exact same way first you're going to do this, then you're going to do this, then you're going to do this, then you're going to do this. But this is where the creative writing part of it comes in, I feel like, because varying up those sentences you know, using different types of words and sentence structure that can like really make it a more enjoyable read, which is more engaging to the person who's reading it.

Kate:

And it shows that we're interested and engaged with them, because if you're just like, you can do this, you can do this, you can do this. That comes off as we're really bored and don't really want to answer their questions. It comes off as like a canned response that you're copying and pasting.

Kate:

Yeah exactly A time where it is good to use similar sentence structure is if you're directly comparing two things, where you're saying it's this option or it's this option, oh yeah, and using that repetition kind of indicates to our brains these are the two same things and you can pick one kind of thing. And so that's when it can be helpful.

Priscilla:

Yeah, it can also be helpful when you're doing a very step-by-step process, like if you're actually going to lay out step one, step two. Sometimes it can be helpful to have those sentences kind of line up. This might be my favorite using formatting strategically. We are writing to people and we don't have the ability to use inflection right. We just don't have that ability in writing. But we do have formatting, and so using formatting strategically can help you to communicate inflection in a written way. You know, if you want to put an emphasis on a word, you can italicize that word. Or if you're trying to explain how to find whatever it is for your product, you might say I'm going to bold these headings, so you need to go to setting and then you need to go to details. And if you bold it, then you're kind of telling them what the important thing is that they need to see. So if someone's sk.

Priscilla:

Bold it then you're kind of telling them what the important thing is that they need to see. So if someone's skimming it, they're going to know. Okay, I go to settings, then I go to details. That's where I get the answer I'm looking for, even if they don't read the whole email.

Kate:

Yeah, I think some strategies that we have used is like using numbers, so numbering things, or if a customer asks five questions in an email, we'll copy that bold their question and then answer in non-bold below it.

Priscilla:

Yeah, talk about clarity. I mean, if someone asks you multiple questions, it can get really muddy if you just take four paragraphs to answer those four questions. But if you take their question and use it as a header and then answer it underneath, it makes it so much more clear to the person who's reading it what each answer aligns with. And then the last tip we have is using outside resources.

Priscilla:

Within support, you work with all different types of people. You're working with your customers, but your customer could go anywhere from being a young kid to being an older person, or it could be someone who's really technically savvy, or someone who's not at all, or it could be someone that learns really well via a written document, or it could be someone who works really well and learns well with audio or visual. And so if you have the ability to include other options, do that. So we're lucky at Buzz Sprout that we have a lot of video resources that we can pull in when we're talking to podcasters. So it might be that we write something out and explain it in written form and then we say check out this video that's also going to explain it, because some people learn better when they're listening to something, and some people learn better when they're reading it and you don't know what that's going to be, and so giving them two options or pulling in different resources can really help when it comes to clarifying a process or answering a question for a customer.

Kate:

Yeah, and I'm such a visual learner. One of my favorite things we do is we'll take screenshots of where the button is that they need to find or things like that, so you can just visually see it.

Priscilla:

And it's funny how, like you know, I said at the beginning of the episode, like none of these tips are going to like be groundbreaking, and the reality is like that's not groundbreaking. Like include a screenshot after you explain where the button is. Include a screenshot with an arrow to it. That feels like okay, yeah, but the amount of like times that you think I don't need to include a screenshot. They're going to know where this button is. I've told them it's the right side of the page. They're going to be able to find it.

Priscilla:

Sometimes they can't find it, yeah, even when you've told them where it is, and so giving them the screenshot just goes that extra step. Or it's very possible that the person who you're writing with maybe they're blind, maybe they can't see it, maybe you need to give them a little bit more, maybe a screenshot isn't going to allow their screen reader to interpret that, so maybe you have to write it out and include a screenshot because you just don't know the kind of person you're talking to or what it is. And so I think having like multiple ways to learn something or to teach something in an email, written and verbal, and in a video, if you can all of that can be really, really helpful when it comes to providing clarity.

Kate:

Something we'll also use in Buzzsprout is GIFs and emails. Or somebody says thank you, we'll send them a little GIF back, and not directly like communicating information, but communicates like personality and things like that, and I feel like it throws people off, but I love them.

Priscilla:

It really brings the personality into it. And our first tip was be human. Write how you speak. Use a GIF like show your personality was be human, write how you speak. Use a GIF like show your personality. That is such a big connector with your customers to show your personality and to connect on a relational level. So using a GIF, using an emoji or a well-placed joke or something like that, all of that is really really helpful when it comes to building that relationship side of things. And that all falls under the umbrella of writing well.

Priscilla:

So writing, especially for customer support, can be really difficult, but the more you're intentional about how you write, the better you will become at it and it will take that room for misunderstanding and it will shrink it as you use some of these tips in your written communication. It's never going to be perfect. There's always going to be space for miscommunication. With written communication. There's never going to be a perfect situation, but using some of these tips can help bring that down and hopefully can help strengthen the connection between you and your customer when you're limited to written communication. Written communication Okay. Time for support in real life our segment where we discuss real life support, experiences and questions. Jordan, what question do you have for us today? All right, so today.

Kate:

I have a question from Reddit and I thought this was a really good one for you and Kate. So it says hey everyone, I'm curious about how you all approach that crucial first interaction with a customer. What techniques or strategies do you use to build a genuine connection?

Priscilla:

right from the start. That's good. I mean that's good and I would say, just like rewind and listen to this full episode, go back and start over. I mean that first interaction is so crucial because if someone's never reached out to your company before, this is the first time they're getting any kind of like personal connection to you. And if you aren't intentional about that first interaction, it could be really not a good experience. And so you have to be intentional. You know you want to find that personal touch.

Priscilla:

So spending some time, like we were saying before, understanding the context of the question, understanding their account, knowing those kind of things, and then finding that personal connection. So for us, we work in podcasting, which is really fun because a lot of our podcasters have really fun content that they're making podcasts about. So if someone writes in and they're having an issue with some technical something but their podcast is about the Denver Nuggets, well then we can use podcast is about the Denver Nuggets. Well then we can use that information about the Denver Nuggets to make that connection with them. You know you can go look up the score of the game last night and say, oh man, I see that the Nuggets won last night's game, something like that, to find that connection. Because imagine how strong that is when you're writing into a support team and they come back and they've taken the time to know a little bit something about your account that maybe they wouldn't have already known and then they bring it up and it finds that personal connection. That's really important.

Kate:

Yeah, I love that, and I think it can be as simple as making sure that you include their name. Or, instead of just saying click on your episode title, you list one of their actual episode titles, like my favorites of our podcasters is called Chickens Every Day.

Kate:

It's like a podcast of like a grandpa and his grandson talking about chickens. That's so fun. Even including your podcast Chickens Every Day is looking great Like including. That indicates that you didn't just skim their email, that you actually looked at their account and you know what their episode titles are.

Priscilla:

And things like that.

Priscilla:

Yeah, and if you're not in podcasting like, maybe you know their location, maybe you know that they are based in Texas and you can say something about the weather in Texas or you can, you know, somehow connect those things and make it personal. The goal is to find some kind of connection that's outside of the product, specifically in that first email, so that you start to build that relationship and it shows them right off the bat hey, you're talking to a real person, you're talking to Priscilla, who is on the podcaster support team for Buzzsprout. Like, I am a person. I think a lot of times, especially with customer support right now and with AI where it is, there's a lot of skeptical thought about am I going to get a person or am I going to get a robot? When I get a response here and so, right off the bat, showing them hey, this is actually a real person, and I'm going to make it clear that it's a real person because I'm going to find some kind of piece of information to connect on. I think that can be really strong.

Kate:

Not only that, when people are writing in to support, they're probably dreading it. They don't want to write in to you. So I think like, yeah, just starting off, like being friendly and thoughtful and intentional, it can make them go okay, this is going to be all right, this isn't so bad.

Priscilla:

Yeah. And then the other side of that too is you want to make sure you're answering all their questions. Right, because you can be super personal and if you don't answer all their questions, they really aren't going to care. It's not going to matter if they made a comment about the Denver Nuggets, if they didn't answer your question about annual plans, and so you want to have that personal connection, but you want to make sure that you're giving them a good quality answer to the questions they're asking so that they have confidence in reaching out to you in the future. It builds that trust between you and the customer when they know oh, if I write in, not only am I going to get a personal response, I'm also going to get an accurate and thorough response from this support team, because they're actually taking the time to answer all of my questions. And then, on top of that, make sure you show your work to the customer. When you write an email back to them, tell them that you logged into their account and you looked at their billing plan and that you saw X, y and Z, because you can answer the question. But if you also tell them you did that, that reminds them that, oh, this person is really on my team. They're taking the time to figure this out for me. You might think it's a given that you did that, but they might not know that that was part of the process, and so you kind of show your work a little bit. It builds that trust with your customer. I love that. All right, so remember to share your questions with us by emailing us at happy to help.

Priscilla:

At buzzsproutcom, you can send questions in. You can send stories in. You can use our fan mail link in our episode show notes to send in any information. You want to send in stories, questions. We'd love to hear all of it, and each week we pick one question or story to discuss. So send them in. We would love to hear from you. Well, thank you, kate for coming. It was really fun to have you on the podcast and to talk about writing. I think this is something that we can stand to focus on a little bit more as we sharpen our skills and customer support, and so I hope that this episode has really inspired some people to be intentional about their writing. And thank you to everyone for listening. Now go and make someone's day.

People on this episode

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Priscilla Brooke, Host

Host
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Jordan Blair, Producer

Producer