“It’s not fixed. I can’t believe I received this. Ridiculous.”

“You’ve got to stop this closing before talking to me thing!”

“Why are cases being closed before anything is checked out that this has indeed been set up correctly? Am I the only one that finds this incredibly irritating?”

These are just a few of the comments we’ve seen from our clients’ customers before implementing the Perfecting Service customer support best practices.

A standard we instill is that the ticket isn’t completed until the customer tests and verifies the resolution and then approves that the ticket may be closed. After this confirmation, a closing email needs to be sent.

Closing emails, like the name implies, close the ticket that was worked on. They leave a paper trial about the work that was done and also give you a chance to follow up with the customer one more time and leave a lasting positive impression.

Even after a verbal confirmation, a closing email is needed so that you and the customer have peace of mind that the correct work was done and that any changes that were made are surely known. You can kind of think of a closing email as the information page you get when you get your car fixed.

Closing emails should be included in your best practices to prevent any miscommunication problems. For example, one of our client’s customers was having printing issues that were corrected while on the phone with the technician. In the resolution notes, it is mentioned that the default printer was changed and that there was a verbal confirmation to close the ticket. A few hours later, the customer wrote in angrily stating that he didn’t know his printer setting was changed and he had just wasted printing twenty ID cards. If the technician had written a closing email that included this information, this situation and a very unhappy customer could have been avoided.

We have also seen many instances of our clients’ customers being unhappy because a ticket was closed too soon and the issue wasn’t yet resolved to their satisfaction. The most important part of a closing email is the customer confirmation to ensure that tickets are not closed prematurely. You need to confirm with the customer that their issue is resolved or that their request has been completed to their liking. This seems obvious, but you can’t write a good closing until the customer has actually confirmed that the ticket may actually be closed. Even if there is a loss of communication with the customer, a closing email stating that you have been unable to reach them to get confirmation should be sent so that everything is documented.

After the confirmation, it’s time to write the email. First, you want to address the customer by their name and thank them for confirming that their specific request was successfully completed. This will again help make sure that you and the customer are on the same page. If an issue was fixed, then what was done to resolve the issue needs to be documented as well as the root cause of the issue, if you know it. Customers want to be kept in the loop, and when a closing email doesn’t include this information, many will respond asking for it, so it’s better to take the initiative and provide that information to them before they need to ask.

Next, ask the customer to please contact you if they need any more assistance or have any other questions. And lastly, thank them and wish them to have a great day. You want to end this and every other customer interaction on a positive note.

Closing emails may not be your favorite thing to do, but they only take less than a minute to complete on average and are an important and necessary aspect of providing great customer service and receiving more smiles from your customers in return!

Wouldn’t you rather be getting comments like, “Excellent follow-up! The customer service was exceptional!”?

Alona Bolotnikova is committed to increasing client satisfaction and retention for managed service providers. Her years of experience in customer service and an overzealous eye for detail helped form Perfecting Service, “the best-kept secret for MSPs."