Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Email Questions

In your business, you’ll get lots of emails (hopefully) that deal with your products or services. Answering them is important, and it shows a touch with your customers, but it shouldn’t be “just” what you do.

In my business, since I have a discussion area, I don’t answer questions in email, but instead point them to the discussion area. That works for me, but in most businesses that’s not the answer.

However you don’t want to answer the same question a few dozen times. What you ought to do is answer the question, then bcc yourself on the email, and re-use that content.

  • Publish the content as an FAQ on your site, of frequently asked questions.
  • Use the content in a newsletter as a “common questions” or support issue.
  • Use the content to develop an article or piece that helps teach something to users.

There are numerous ways to take advantage of this. Plus once you’ve done that, you can refer email questions to an already published answer, saving some time.