Answering Emails from Web Site Visitors

Is it worth the time it takes to answer all of your email?

[Jane_Doe]

I have a health site that generates a lot of email questions. In my contact page I request that people refer to my FAQ pages before contacting me and also note that I cannot give anyone specific medical advice. I also note on the FAQ pages that I cannot give individual advice to people. However, I still get a lot of requests for individual advice, most often from AOL users.

For example, I can have a whole page on condition X, have a whole page on the treatments I found helpful for condition X, and link to 5 helpful web sites and 3 books on condition X that I recommend. Yet, invariably I get many emails, some from very sad and desperate sounding people telling me they or their child has condition X and asking me what they should do.

On one hand I feel a bit guilty just deleting emails from desparate sounding people. But on the other hand I'm not sure that its a good use of my time to send them individual email that merely reiterate that I can't give them any individual advice and point them to all of the places in my web site where there questions have already been addressed. Today it took me 4 hours to answer all of the visitor email from my health site and I'm not sure it was a good use of my time.

What would you do - answer the emails asking for individual advice or for advice clearly covered in the site, or ignore them? Is it bad customer service to just ignore some visitor emails, or is it good time management to only answer the ones with more limited and reasonable information requests?

[dcheney]

Although in a very different field, I also get a lot of the same type of questions. On my feedback page I list the most common one's that I can't/won't answer. When I still get such a question I use a simple form letter that repeats the exact same language from the feedback page.

[Woz]

Perhaps an auto-responder would be in order with something like the formletter that dcheney suggests, directing them to the best sources of information in your field, and advice to contact you only about specific website questions.

But then, it also depends on the return you are getting from your site. If you are only getting returns in the $100's per week, then 4 hours is not worth it. But then if your returns are in the order of $1000's, then perhaps four hours is part of the price you pay for a successful site.

Onya
Woz

[Bradley]

I use templated emails. I use Outlook - I create an email message and then save it as a draft. Then, if I have to use it, I simply copy and paste the info into a reply to a person. Works fairly well.

[Woz]

>I use Outlook - I create an email message and then save it as a draft.

Tip! - you can also save it as a sig file which is quicker to insert.

Onya
Woz

[web_india]

What you can try is getting a virtual assistant (I am not sure if this is the correct description) to answers all those emails by referring the visitors to appropriate faq pages.

Also you can consider a prominent link to faq at every site page near your email address which mentions to read faq pages before sending an email.

It may help in replying to emails in the long run but as Woz says it all depends what are you getting from the site.

[Jane_Doe]

Thanks to all who contributed suggestions to my question. A form letter is a perfect solution. Then I would not be ignoring people but also not spending much time repeating information already covered in my site. I don't know why I didn't think of that myself. I guess I'm just used to being on the receiving end of form letters, and not being the person who sends them out to other people.

I should add that I don't spend 4 hours a day every day on emails from my site. Today when I spent 4 hours I answered several days worth of emails. But since I can only work on my site part-time right now, 4+ hours every few days is still a big chunk of time for me.

Thanks again for all the great suggestions!

[fathom]

an alternative to FAQ (particular in advice venues) is to make the answers an audio reply. Many people need the human factor to make the advice more personable.

This works great too with an autoresponder message going to the link or form letter with appropriate links.

(Shocwave Audio) SWA files are very, very reasonable on file size and most web users already have the plugin as well.

[caine]

Yes and No,

I run technical based sites, in which i receive emails asking for products, or for tech advice, which is impossible to give via the email, due to their lack of knowledge in explaining the problem, furthermore, it is not a service that is offered, and without seeing the problem first hand, giving advice, can invariably be bad advice, and create larger problems.

Try reply to all emails, but depends on topic, even if the topic is dangerous from an operating point of view, its still a good thing to bow out gracefully. And point out exactly what the company does. For future reference.

[fathom]

I don't know caine. Dave Chalk gives tech advice via a TV show, and generalizes at the simpliest common denominator. I would say expert, advance advice or individually specific would be a fee service, but the "free" brings them in and adds loads of creditability. IMO. :)

[starec]

I also use form letters to answer more than 150 inquiries daily. I have about 20-30 of them prepared and it covers 95% of all email inquiries.

In addition, we only show the contact email address where it is really necessary. There is an email us/contact us link on every page. It loads a form, where users have to choose the type of inquiry they want to make and to structure the inquiry a bit. It really cuts down the response time and allows to distribute the email-load to various people.

The contact page starts with links to FAQs and a list of inquiries we will not reply to (we still do reply if they ask.)

Web_india, what do you mean exactly by a

virtual assistant?

[gsx]

I had the same problem (and still do to some extent), I was getting 10-20 per day.

Initially I had a feedback form available from every page. I got emails from that form because people couldn't be bothered to click a couple of links or use the search facility by clicking search at the top of the page.

Now the search box is highlighted on almost every page (except terms and conditions, contact pages etc...); an input box with a go button. At the bottom of the search results is a message and link leading to the submit question form. Also on each department, there is a link at the bottom of each department to the same form (read: bottom of each department, so if a department spans 5 pages, it is only on page 5, thus the person has gone through the full list).

It is your responsibility to respond. My latest is to respond with a pre-written email. In the email is "You can find these at: www.<whereever>.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?s=<This+Is+The+Advice+You+Need>"

It is quick, simple and effective. On the email, you could give further places of advice, if suitable to your line of business.

[rcjordan]

If you're narrowing it down to a form letter, consider making the meat of your reply a full-blown, permanent web page and simply point them to the url. My response emails now are often a series of urls, perhaps with a sentence or two covering some special detail that needs amplification. As for the web page "stock answers," I find that I'm often going in and adding breakout pages, explanatory pop-ups, etc. and over time I end up honing it into a fairly nice presentation based on feedback. Works great.

[Jane_Doe]

Thanks for the additional suggestions.

I do have a number of FAQ sections by topic, and do refer to those on the contact page; have a search feature which is listed at the top and bottom of every page and again in the contact page; and have a list of the types of questions on the contact page that I can't help people with, which includes giving individual advice for their health problems.

In the past the FAQ, search feature and list of questions I can't help people with cut down my email dramatically, except for some reason some of the AOL users. The email volume started to be a significant problem again for me recently when AOL switched to Google and my AOL traffic increased. The site that gets all of the email is just my hobby site, so I don't have anyone else to help with the email, I don't have a lot of time to work on it and I'm not making a fortune from it.

Twenty or so stock form letters is a great idea and will allow me to respond to people without spending hours each week on email.

[Jane_Doe]

Putting the form letters online is another great idea and another time saver. I wish I'd though of some of these myself in the past. But when I started my site years ago I never really thought my site would get as much traffic as it does now, and consequently I never really developed sophisticated ways of handling all of the email.