Top 5 canned responses for customer service

Your customer support team knows that no matter how extensive your knowledge base is, no matter how thorough your FAQ section or support tutorials are, some common questions will always find a way to your customer service team again and again. 

These questions keep agents busy and might result in a delay of other serious, more urgent queries. With canned responses, your customer service team can create a predefined set of quick reply templates that can be sent out with a single click. So the next time your team receives a new email from a customer enquiring about the steps to reset their password, they can simply use a canned response email template to share a quick response that addresses their problem and thus move on quickly to other tickets.

Here’s how you can create and use a canned response template within Freshdesk.

What is a canned response?

Canned responses are the best way to extend customer support, especially if your team is receiving many tickets from customers who are all expressing the same problems. It’s a way to lower response time and make life easier for your support team by having quick replies handy so that they don’t need to type the same response over and over again.

Best practices for creating a new canned response

Even if you use the canned responses above, you’ll still need to customize these customer service responses to be in sync with your brand. We have compiled recommendations for your customer support agents to frame the perfect canned response and keep them handy for quick replies.

Want to get straight to the top 5 canned response examples? Click here.

#1 personalize when you can

According to Forbes, 44% of customers who were given a personalized experience were significantly happier and more likely to keep using the product than those that weren’t. [1] You can use dynamic content to spice up your saved replies and make personalization easy. 

The placeholder functionality within Freshdesk allows you to personalize your automated customer service responses. The personalized email includes the customer name, updates them about a status change and adds a link to the respective ticket to retain the context of the customer interaction. 

#2 read before you click send

Just because a canned response was prewritten doesn’t necessarily mean that it was double checked and proofread. Your customers are less inclined to take you seriously if your response is rife with spelling errors. Use a spellchecker or proofread everything before you send it out. We would also recommend you to keep tabs on the format of your text drafted on a doc. Formatting is likely to change when your message is drafted on an email. Rectify any errors in alignment before saving changes to your canned message.

#3 empathize with your customers

As you can see in the templates above, you can use canned responses even in tense situations (like telling someone you’re not going to build what they asked for). However, it is important to empathize with your customers. Avoid using a formal tone in your canned messages, technical jargon or overly complex sentence structure that may confuse or frustrate your customers. Speak to your customers as you would speak to a family member: with respect, warmth and with values that reflect your brand persona. Empathetic customer service helps you nurture customer relationships and improve your customer experience.

The best canned response examples

We have compiled the 5 most common instances where you can use canned responses, as well as the best tactics to create new canned responses.

#1 support and guide your customers

Every support team member has received a message that looks something like “Hi, this isn’t working. Can you help me fix it?” Instead of typing a new response asking for more information, or explaining how to try to debug a problem each time, canned responses are a shortcut to resolve these queries easily and quickly. 

Create and save replies to common questions that your support team can customize as needed. With chatbots and automation gaining popularity as well, you may even choose to automate customizable canned email responses or feed pre composed canned responses to your chatbot, accelerating the process of replying to customers.

Agents can personalize messages by adding the customer’s name, and relevant details to quickly personalize the emails but they need to be mindful before hitting send on a personalized canned response. Here are a few tips:

1. Before responding with a solution, agents should make sure they have the context needed to move forward. They should ask additional questions to customers if required.

2. Help your customers help themselves. It would be great if your agents can share any additional resources with your customers to improve their experience and make the most of your product.

3. In case agents are unable to solve a customer issue immediately, they need to set the right expectations for your customer by letting them know when they can expect a response.

Although this saved reply will be different for each company, here’s a general template for what it could look like:

#2 tackle a refund/ upgrade or offer an alternative solution

There may be times when a customer is not satisfied with the product pricing, may ask for a refund, or even request for an upgrade. We’ve enlisted the best tactics for your support team to address customer issues efficiently.

1. When writing a response to cater to a customer problem around pricing, you can justify your company’s stance by sharing your pricing plans and tips on how to make the most of your product offering for the price quoted.

2. When addressing a refund request, it is good practice to apologize to your customer for their experience, share the status of their refund request or offer them an alternative solution.

3. When writing a response to the request for a plan upgrade, you can provide the step by step guide on how to upgrade to the next plan and thank the customer for allowing you the opportunity to resolve this issue.

Here’s an email template you can use when your team needs to process a refund for the customer:

#3 acknowledge, follow up and close the loop

Along with the aforementioned customer service responses, there are a few basic responses that every support team should have -‘Thanks and goodbye!’ Another such canned response is for you to let your customers know that you’re working on an issue. Being able to hit a button within your helpdesk that automatically triggers a suitable response and lets your customers know that you’re working on their recommendation, without you having to type out a paragraph can be supremely helpful. This may come in handy especially if you have an outage, or there is a known bug.

We found a few hacks that you may find useful for these general canned responses.

1. Use an emoji while crafting a quick answer. It can be indicative of the tone of the conversation.

2. It may be appropriate to send a thank you email to a customer after they make a purchase from your company or refer a friend to do the same. 

3. Providing a follow-up response is a good idea for any previous customer interaction. This shows that you care about their experience and can provide great service. In a follow-up email, remind the customer of the issue which they shared, ask if they resolved this and offer additional help if necessary.

Here’s an example of what something like this might look like:

#4 Delight your customers with updates on their Feature request

Feature requests have found their way to the list of common questions received by your customer service team. Customers always want more from you and may suggest changes to your current offering. 

There are instances when the high frequency of such customer requests might actually cause your product team to start exploring the possibilities of introducing this feature or making amends to your product in order to help customers overcome challenges that would have been resolved by this feature update. There will be instances when the feature your customers request for, is already part of your product roadmap. That’s great! Knowing that something is on the way makes it easier to tell your customers.

Create a canned response template for such instances and personalize customer support emails accordingly:

1. Thank them for reaching out to your company and sharing their insights.

2. Let them know that the team is working on the particular feature and give them a timeline if possible or assure them that they’d be notified when it’s ready.

3. Show that you care by following up with your customers, asking them for real-time insights to understand how your customer feels and what your customer needs. Customer feedback is the key to unlocking customer satisfaction.

Here’s a canned response example for you to customize for repeated feature requests:

#5 respond to feature requests even if you will never build it

For every feature request that your product team is planning to build on, there will be plenty more that are not and will likely never be on the roadmap. But you still need to address the recommendations that were discarded. You can track these requests using their respective ticket number and categorize them to reflect the status of these recommendations. 

Let customers know that while their recommendation was valuable and internally discussed, the feature will not be built in the near future, and if it makes sense – even elaborate on why this is the case. Let them know if the ask doesn’t align with the product vision, or because it doesn’t work with the current product infrastructure.

You may refer to the steps mentioned below and craft a quick response for your customers:

1. Acknowledge that this is a valid request but be honest with your customers about their recommendation. Clearly state that you will not be able to process that feature request.

2. Your customers will appreciate you if you can explain why you aren’t building the feature.

3. Ask them for additional insights that they would like to share with your product team.

It’s important for you to bridge the gap between your company and your customer. Your customers are likely to do business with you if you continue to stay honest with them, share why you can’t do what they recommend you to, rather than just sharing a message that it won’t be done. Here’s an example of what an ideal canned response should look like:

Getting started with creation of these canned responses can be overwhelming. We have identified customer issues prevalent across ecommerce, SaaS, HR, logistics and shipping, finance, real estate and more, to create a customizable cheat sheet for you to deliver great customer service. Get your copy now.

Conclusion

Canned responses can make a huge difference in how quickly you can respond to your customers, with a few clicks within your help desk. You can even improve customer satisfaction while simplifying the customer service workflow. Crafting your customer service responses to fit the tone of your company, as well as the situations that you run into is the best way to make an effective catalog of canned responses that will serve you and your customer base well.

Originally published on May 20, 2019. Updated on March 11, 2022.