Responsiveness is key

When customers have questions—or worse, when customers have complaints—you get huge bonus points for quickly responding

Most people do not promptly respond to customer requests or questions. (Or worse: complaints.)

They’re coming from a good place on this. They think "I need to fully research the issue and then come back with a complete, well-formed response, 48 hours later."

The problem is: that's a really awful customer experience. Your customer has no idea if you’re working on it or just ignoring their email. (And if the request is urgent, imagine how stressful that feels.)

So what should you do instead?

Fire back a quick note: “I’m looking into it.” Or even better, “I’m looking into it and I’ll be back in touch with an update by xxxxxx.”