Do you answer e-mail inquiries?
Posted on December 7, 2005
Very strange! I use e-mail in my daily life, both at work and at home (which is of course still at work due to my entrepreneurship thing). I read tons of e-mails a day and its my primarily communication tool in business. Still, few weeks ago, I wanted to find out some prices for some promotional materials I was planning to purchase. Being an “Internet guy”, I’ve googled for my suppliers and sent them some requests about their offerings and prices, with the strong desire to purchase their items. After few days I’ve got only one answer out from the 30 something e-mails I’ve sent.
I’ve tried to understand this thing and it seems that 51% of SMBs do not respond to customer e-mails. It’s like you opened a store, but nobody is in to sell your stuff. So, if you are an e-commerce software provider, make sure that the shoppers can get in contact with the merchant and the merchant is advised to keep a close eye to the messages from the site. This actually also relates to my previous post about customer thrust. It’s not a simple matter of displaying an e-mail address on your site, but also about having a real business address, a phone number that gets answered.
No need to say, if the customer can’t contact you, or has the feeling that you are a “PO Box” company, chances that he will buy from you are slightly lower. If you are a small company, maybe its good to also display the owner or manager name. I really enjoy to see who is behind an on line store.
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