The Automated Reply That Says Nothing

The most-read message you send

An automatic acknowledgement is opened by almost everybody, because they are checking that their message or order registered.

That makes it more widely read than anything on your site, any newsletter, and any advertisement.

And on most small businesses it says thank you for your message, we will respond as soon as possible.

Which confirms receipt, something the person already assumed, and answers none of what they actually want to know.

The three things it should answer

• When they will hear, specifically.
• Who will be in touch.
• What happens next, in one line.
• What to do if it is urgent.
• What to have ready, where relevant.

The first is the one that does most of the work, because the anxiety behind checking for an acknowledgement is not whether it arrived, it is how long the wait will be.

As soon as possible means nothing

Worth naming, since it appears in almost every one of these.

It is not a commitment, it cannot be missed, and a reader understands it as filler.

Within one working day is a commitment, and it is why most businesses avoid it.

But a stated time you meet builds more confidence than a vague phrase, and a stated time you miss is at least a clear failure you can fix.

Choose a figure you can meet on a bad day rather than a good one, and adjust it for weekends and holidays.

A reply saying you will hear from Sarah by the end of tomorrow is a different message entirely from one saying we aim to respond promptly.

The messages worth rewriting

Since there are more of these than most businesses realise.

The enquiry acknowledgement, which is the one everybody thinks of.

The order confirmation, which is read closely and frequently contains only a receipt.

The dispatch notice, where the useful content is when it will arrive and what to do if it does not.

The out of office, which is usually the worst of the set.

And any password or account message, which people read carefully because they are trying to complete something.

List yours, read each as a customer, and count how many answer when, who, and what next.

A worked example

A business had an acknowledgement reading thank you for contacting us, a member of our team will be in touch shortly.

They replaced it with four lines: the enquiry had been received, Michael would reply by the end of the next working day, that enquiries sent at the weekend would be answered Monday, and a request to reply with photographs if they had any.

The telephone number was at the bottom for anything urgent.

Follow-up messages asking whether anybody had received the enquiry, which had been steady, largely stopped.

A proportion of people replied with photographs, which shortened the quoting.

The change took ten minutes in the form settings.

Make it repliable

The technical detail that undoes the rest when it is wrong.

Send from an address somebody monitors rather than a no-reply address.

A no-reply sender tells the customer their reply will go nowhere, which is exactly the wrong signal in a message about getting in touch.

It also loses the replies people send anyway, which frequently contain the information you needed.

Check where replies to each automated message actually land, since the answer is often an unmonitored inbox nobody has opened in a year.

That is a two-minute test per message and it catches a failure that is otherwise invisible.

Sound like a person

Since these are frequently the most formal thing a business sends.

Write them in the voice you would use on the telephone rather than in the voice of a system.

Sign them from a person, with a name, even where the sending is automatic.

Avoid the phrases that only appear in automated messages, since their presence tells the reader immediately that nobody was involved.

Keep it short, because a long automatic message is skimmed and the useful line gets missed.

Four lines is usually enough, and it should read as though somebody wrote it once, carefully, which is exactly what happened.

Update them seasonally

Because a stated response time is a promise that changes with the calendar.

The figure that is honest in October is not honest between Christmas and the new year.

Change the wording for the period, with the actual dates, and change it back afterwards.

Put both changes in the diary now, since the second one is the one that gets forgotten and an autoresponder still mentioning the holidays in February reads as abandoned.

Note where each message lives while you are editing it, which turns the reversal into five minutes rather than a search.

Check they are arriving at all

The prior question, since an excellent message nobody receives is worse than a poor one that lands.

Automated messages sent from a website are the ones most likely to be filtered, because they are machine-generated and frequently sent from a server with no sending reputation.

Send one to yourself at a few different providers and check whether it arrives in the inbox, the promotions tab, or the spam folder.

Where it is being filtered, the usual cause is the sending arrangement rather than the wording, and it needs whoever maintains the site to look at how the mail is sent.

Do this test after any change to the site or the hosting, since it breaks silently and the first sign is customers saying they never heard from you.

The counter-case

Not every message needs work.

A brief confirmation is sometimes exactly right, and a business that replies to everything within an hour genuinely does not need to state a time.

Over-writing these is also possible, and an automatic reply that runs to six paragraphs is not read at all.

And a stated response time you cannot meet is worse than a vague phrase, so the commitment has to be real.

Answer when, who, and what next, send from a monitored address, keep it to four lines, and change it for the season.

What to do

1. List every automated message you send.
2. Read each as a customer would.
3. Add a specific time, not as soon as possible.
4. Name who will reply.
5. Say what happens next.
6. Send from a monitored address.
7. Diarise the seasonal change and the reversal.

Step six catches the failure that makes everything else pointless, since replies to a no-reply address are lost silently and frequently contain what you needed.

Where those replies end up is covered in replying from an address nobody monitors.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.