Dealing with high volume email of enquiries

[Mr JJC]

Hi all,

Our sales office is struggling to cope with the high volume of enquiries over the last few months. It's only manned by 2 people and we are normally contacted via email by new and exisitng customers;
- requiring a quote
- placing an order
- chasing status of an order
- chasing the status of quote request

Ultimately this is now affecting our conversion to order rate, and we are trying to think of ways to better qualify the opportunities coming our way.

We were thinikng of creating an auto response email thanking them for contacing us, and possibly sending back some kind of "qualification form" with such questions as;
- order to place?
- is quote for a replacement?

Has anyone had any such experience and tips they could share? We don't want to alienate existing customers with a generic auto response, but equally need to weed out the enquiries with more potential than those that have less potential to be converted to an order.

 

[NextPoint]

The big issue you need to consider about automating your sales enquiry responses is how it will affect how you can close the sale. An automated response may give the impression that your customer service is bad, resulting in lost sales. Personal responses also allow you to get more information that you wouldn't get from an automated response, allowing your sales team to better close the sale.

A qualification form is a good idea - i.e. if you can identify that they aren't serious, then use an automated response. Be careful with this because you don't want to be unqualifying the wrong people.

 

[wanttolearn]

Can you not simply have several different email adresses

Orders at
Enquires at

Then each person is responsible for each 'department'

Or employ an extra person if demand is there and more orders may happen

 

[Mr JJC]

Thanks for your perspective.

Yes, unqualifying is a serious possibility as sometimes we receive orders from companies which initially don't look much. Perhaps this is not an option after all.

The big issue you need to consider about automating your sales enquiry responses is how it will affect how you can close the sale. An automated response may give the impression that your customer service is bad, resulting in lost sales. Personal responses also allow you to get more information that you wouldn't get from an automated response, allowing your sales team to better close the sale.

A qualification form is a good idea - i.e. if you can identify that they aren't serious, then use an automated response. Be careful with this because you don't want to be unqualifying the wrong people.

 

[Mr JJC]

Employing someone wasn't initially an option but that has now changed.

As for the different email addresses, that didn't quite work in the past. We found each people sometimes copied in another email (or "department") leading to duplicate emails, etc. It got a little confusing. It still happens today with less email addresses!

Can you not simply have several different email adresses

Orders at
Enquires at

Then each person is responsible for each 'department'

Or employ an extra person if demand is there and more orders may happen