You know the power of SNAP messages. They let your customer know about the Status, the Next steps, the Approximate timeline and the Planned outcome of what you are doing for or with them. This lets your customer easily know what to expect from the service you are providing. These are some of the most powerful ways to communicate with your customers and to drive excellent customer service.
Use these messages to set expectations, to provide updates, to dramatically improve customer satisfaction and to manage your customer relationships.
These SNAP messages are easy to put together, yet, perhaps not intuitive.
Following these six steps will help you quickly write out high powered customer service messages.
1. Write out the overall idea you want to convey to your customer.
Give a little thought to what overall message you want to send to your customer. Don’t spend too much time on this. Take a couple of minutes and brainstorm this out. Your overall idea might be something as simple as “I want the manager (customer) to know the job vacancy has been posted”, or “I want the employee to know their address change request was received and processed.” These overall ideas should be quick, simple and focused. By keeping your sentences short and avoiding multiple clauses, you keep your sentences focused on a single idea.
You will want your SNAP messages to be simple and to deliver a simple point, idea or concept to your customer. You will use this as a guide to keep you on track for the next steps.
2. Write out the Status of what you want to convey to your customer.
Draft out a two or three simple ideas regarding the status of what you are doing for your customer. Mention the status of where things are right now, today. This might be the status of an order that has been placed. The status of wait times. The status of progress or findings.
3. Write out the Next Steps of what your are doing that are important for your customer to know.
Draft out two or three simple ideas regarding the next steps that will take place or need to take place. Make a point of mentioning more than the next immediate step; mention two or three important steps, things with which the customer can connect.
4. Write out what the customer needs to know about the Approximate Timeline; let the custom know how long things are expected to take.
Draft out two or three simple ideas relaying how long the next steps will take or how long the wait is until the planned outcome, or even, how long it will be before you deliver another SNAP message to update the customer. Give a realistic preview to the customer about timing.
5. Write out what the customer needs and wants to know about the Planned Outcome is going to be.
Draft out two or three simple ideas that describe what the planned outcome is, what you are doing for the customer or what you will deliver to the customer. Be specific about what the planned outcome of the transaction or business relationship will be. Address what will be done, what will be delivered or what they will get.
6. Put the pieces together and complete your final SNAP message.
Take the ideas from steps #2 – #5 and put them together. Edit the words so that you have a nice, smoothly flowing message. Keep the total message to a few sentences; three to five sentences are ideal. Edit it after you write it out. Edit it again.
Write out your final SNAP message. Edit it after you write it out. Edit it again.
This final SNAP message is a very powerful way for you to communicate with your customer.
Use this worksheet to help you through this process.
Please note, for final SNAP statements the words status, next steps, approximate timeline, and planned outcome are not used prominently or as key words in the final statements.
What you will do is pretty simple. You define an overall idea that is important for your customer, you then draft out some notes for each of the four parts of SNAP, and finally you take those draft notes and put together a final, complete SNAP statement.
This forms a powerful message that is key to your customer communication strategy.
© 2014 – 2015, Philip Espinosa. All rights reserved.
