Canned Responses

Wha responses?

Canned responses are pre-written answers to commonly asked questions that you can use during an interaction, by either reading the response to a customer, or by inserting the response into a chat, email, or tweet.

In fields like technical support, canned responses to frequently asked questions may be an effective solution for both the customer and the technical adviser, as they offer the possibility to provide a quick answer to common inquiries without human intervention. Canned responses can be very effective, but if not done right, it can end up sending replies that do not answer the user’s questions, this creating a rather frustrating experience for them.

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Canned responses can be used by chatbots to answer common customer queries that do not require an agent’s expertise to handle and answer them. But that’s not the only way how canned responses can be used. They can even be used by live chat agents to make their work easier and help them answer customer queries at a much faster pace. Rather than having to type out the same reply every single time a customer asks a question, especially if these questions are very repetitive, the agent can just access these canned responses and make minor edits to them for the purpose of personalization before sending them out. This improves the employee experience and even allows your agents to take care of more customer queries since they can speed up the pace at which they handle customer conversations. These canned responses don’t even need to be replies to queries, they could even be used to create shortcuts for phrases that the live chat agent would use multiple times during the day.

Why are canned responses important?

It is critical for businesses to answer customer queries as quickly as possible. But it isn’t really possible for businesses to answer customer queries as soon as they come in if they’re attempting to answer all these questions in a purely manual manner. Canned responses can help them speed things up, allowing chatbots to answer all the repetitive questions as soon as they are asked, and even helping live chat agents take care of customer queries at a faster pace.

Here are some of the main reasons why canned responses are important:

Easy management of queries

Making use of canned responses makes it easier for you to take care of a large number of customers simultaneously, especially since most of the queries tend to be repetitive in nature.

Saving time

Making use of canned responses helps your support team save time and focus their efforts on more important tasks.

Improves conversion rate

One of the main reasons why customers don’t make their purchases is because they don’t have answers to questions that they have about their products. Canned responses make it possible for customers to get answers instantly, thus causing your conversion rate to rise.

Enhance your customer experience

Since customers won’t have to wait for long periods of time before they get answers, they won’t have to deal with the frustration and anxiety associated with waiting. The instant answers are very effective at improving the customer experience.

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What are some examples for canned responses?

1. Use canned responses to reply to basic FAQs

There’s no need to manually retype company addresses, opening hours, websites, and contact details session after session after session. It wastes your time and delays the customer.

Canned responses are designed for your FAQ. Rather than typing out the exact same information hundreds of times a day, create an automatic live chat answer for each basic question you’re commonly asked.

2. Try not to automate entire conversations with canned responses

Canned responses shouldn’t replace the human element in a conversation. As a way of saving time and speeding up the FAQ process, they’re brilliant.

As a substitute for a real agent, however, canned responses are a poor imitation.

People want to talk to people. They can tell when they’re being fobbed off with scripted answers, and they’ll quickly get frustrated.

3. Personalise your canned responses

Canned responses don’t need to sound canned. Wherever you can, adjust the answer to suit the user and their needs.

It could be as simple as adding the customer’s name at the end of the message, rather than sending the stock phrase. Or perhaps you could add an emoji to mirror the tone of the chat session.

It doesn’t have to be anything time-consuming: just a small personalized touch will go a long way. Think of a canned response as a foundation to build on, rather than the finished article.

4. Be conversational

“Hello %name%. Thank you for getting in touch today. How can I be of assistance?”.

“Please wait a moment while I pull up your account and access your details.”

“I can see that you are frustrated and would like to escalate this issue. I will escalate your chat to the complaints team now. You will be connected in a few moments.”

Yes, those canned responses all work and all serve a purpose. But they sound stilted and insincere, and customers will sniff out the automation a mile off.

5. Use longer canned responses where relevant

Canned responses don’t have to be for basic FAQ alone. They can also be built around more complex processes and procedures, such as explaining your returns policy or a purchase installation process, for example.

Detailed canned responses can be a lifesaver in longer live chat conversations.  Particularly when it comes to existing customers or prospects on the brink of buying, they’ll alleviate the lengthy explanations that come with your in-depth chats.

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How can I add canned responses in Engati?

The Smart Response functionality will streamline the current chatbot setup experience and has been introduced to make it easier for the users to set up a chatbot as efficiently as possible. 

This menu allows you to set up answers to probable queries by setting up FAQs, defining Entities, uploading questions, and responses in a Tabular Input format or uploading relevant documents in Document Lookup. Engati NLP engine has been set up and has the intelligence to search across the four types and match the most relevant response according to the query asked, further users, have the control to change most of the settings and search preference according to their requirements.


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