How To Send Thank You Letters & Emails
Do you want to set yourself apart from the vast majority of your competitors and create a great customer experience? Try a little simple courtesy. It is as easy as following up each service call with a thank you. I know what you're thinking - sounds great but who has the time to do that? You do - thanks to ESC. Here is how it works.
The first thing you will need to do is create a history code. You will use this to track the invoices that you want to follow up on. To do this go to Sales | Enter History Codes. Enter a code of TY with a description that reads Thank You For Choosing Us (or something similar).
The next step is to use the history code on your invoices. If you want the customer to receive a thank you, simply type TY in the product/code field on your invoice. The customer will see the nice description immediately on the invoice and it will enable you to give them a formal thank you shortly thereafter. You may not want to add this code to every invoice. For example: if you have commercial customers that you visit multiple times each week, a thank you after each invoice could be overkill. Use your discretion.
If you plan on thanking the customer by sending them a letter or email you will need to create a template first. You can do this by going to Customer Info | Manage Word Processor Templates. Refer to the built-in ESC help documentation for additional information on how to create a template if you need it. If you are planning on thanking the customer by phone you can skip this step.
Once you have completed these steps you're ready to thank your customers. To do this go to Customer Info | Reports | Report Generation. Click the History tab and enter a range of dates in the Date Serviced fields. You typically want to thank the customer the day after the service is performed or at least within the same week. Change the history code to TY so you will only find customers that you previously decided should get a thank you and click OK.
This will display a list of reports you can run. If you are planning on thanking customer over the phone, print the Customer List report. It will show the customer's name and all four phone numbers so you can follow up with them easily.
If you want to send a formal thank you letter to the customer's address select the first option - Mail Merge using a Template. Select the thank you template that you previously created, attach it to the customer's record and Print. This will print a separate thank you letter for each customer that you can then mail.
If you prefer to email the thank you letter you can select Email using a template instead. This option is the same as the first but it will use the email settings that you have in ESC to send out the emails. So, if a customer does not have an email address in Customer Information, then they will not receive an email.
That brings us to our third and generally best option - Email all customers with Email addresses and Print Remaining. This will make sure all customers get the thank you in the most efficient, cost effective method possible. If the customer has an email address ESC will email the letter to them, if not it will print out the letter for you to send to them through conventional mail.
Once you have mastered the basics you can get more advanced and add different history codes for different types of thank you letters. This would allow you to treat service calls differently from installations or replacements. Experiment and have fun! |
