Can we get rid of “If you need any further assistance, please contact us”?

Tuesday, January 27, 2015 Corporate Classroom 0 Comments

In a service based industry, we are all clients to someone- from other organizations or other teams in the same organization. And the most important part of our jobs is to communicate with these clients. Most of us spend our major part of day in writing and reading emails to communicate business needs, issues, solutions, credits etc. And thus it becomes important for us to understand the need of the email and what purpose it serves.

I have been at both ends of the communication – as a client and as a service provider. The general protocol says that when a client asks a query or raises some concern, we should reply to him/ her with acknowledgement email, followed by complete analysis, possible solutions, concerns etc, and should ask him/her to reach back for any “further assistance”.

But I have been experiencing that many times we just jump into replies without understanding the email, and to be at safe side, we keep writing -“If you need any further assistance, please contact us”. The reason we should write this is that we want to assure that we are concerned with any further concerns clients may have, and that the client should not hesitate to reach back even for any small concerns, and that we would be pleased to serve again. I am sure that we don’t write this to just project a false image that we are giving you a chance to write emails again and again, for same issue and let’s make this so tedious a process that you yourself quit after some repetitive emails.

I believe mostly when we either want to run from the main problem, or hesitate to ask from the client when the issue is not clear, we just encapsulate the reply emails with this statement. But I think it’s perfectly fine to ask again and again until the issue becomes clear, and I am sure that a mature client understands this and helps you his best to make the issue fully understood. After all, above everything the client wants the problem to be solved, and not play with emails. So, let’s not make this statement a proxy to hide our inability to understand the real problem, run from responsibility, ownership and just pretend to be great service providers, and let’s instead try to understand the issue and solve the real problem?

Good luck reading and writing emails!