20+ Canned Response Examples to Boost Your Customer Support

You probably spend much time in customer service answering the same queries. For common questions, your customers likely want answers right away.

Considering these points, there is a seamless solution: canned responses or help desk canned response templates.

Using canned responses for customer service is a valuable trick that enhances customer support. In this blog, I will walk you through some common canned responses examples and explain how to use them for greatest effect.

What is a canned response?

A canned response is a pre-written text or template used by help desks to allow support agents to send quick replies to common customer queries.

These canned responses are also known as:

• Predefined responses
• Canned replies
• Fast replies
• Saved messages
• Canned messages
• Pre-written replies

These canned replies can be sent either automatically or manually by the support team to quickly provide responses to customers without having to create new replies for each support inquiry.

A list of these pre-written responses also ensure clients with similar issues get consistent responses.

Why should you use canned responses?

Using canned responses can enhance productivity and customer satisfaction in any customer service setting. You should incorporate canned responses in your customer service workflow to:

• Provide prompt responses to common questions about your products or services, shipping, and returns.
• Allow employees to focus more on resolving complex issues that require a longer time to resolve.
• Deliver quick, accurate, and efficient communication.
• Assist new support agents to easily learn how to respond to different questions without having to start from scratch every time.
• Maintain a consistent tone and message across customer interactions, ensuring that all customers receive the same information.
• Make it easier to handle a large volume of inquiries without sacrificing the quality of customer service.
• Notify customers that a service is currently unavailable and provide information on when it is expected to return.
• Send thank you messages, satisfaction surveys, or follow-up information after an interaction or transaction has taken place.
• Help manage the workload and uphold service levels during peak times without needing to increase staffing proportionally.

Where should you use canned responses?

Canned responses can be implemented in various customer service scenarios to enhance efficiency and consistency.

Email

How to use:

• Acknowledgment of receipt for inquiries or support requests.
• Out-of-office replies with information on when the sender can expect a response.
• Responses to common inquiries like order status, refund policies, or troubleshooting steps.

Benefits: This reduces response times by providing quick, prewritten answers to frequent questions.

Live chat

How to use:

• Greeting customers, confirming receipt of their message, or providing initial troubleshooting steps.
• Answers to common questions, such as shipping details or return processes.

Benefits: Saves support agents from needing to search for or type out lengthy instructions or other answers during live interactions.

Social media

How to use:

• Quick replies to common inquiries on platforms like Facebook, X, or Instagram.
• Responding to customer comments or messages with common answers, such as operating hours or links to relevant resources.

Benefits: Ensures consistent responses across public platforms and maintains a positive brand image.

Support tickets

How to use:

• Automatically acknowledging ticket receipt, informing customers of ticket status, or providing resolution steps for common issues.

Benefits: Streamlines the ticket management process and keeps customers informed without manual input for each ticket.

How to create effective canned response for customer service

Creating help desk canned response templates helps you avoid typing the same responses over and over during customer conversations. Rather than slamming out a few responses you typed before, here are a few guidelines worth sticking to when writing canned responses.

• Collect frequently asked questions for your pre-written templates – this clarifies the most common issues, and from there you can develop the best canned messages.
• Create templates with accurate responses – collect answers to FAQs and then have a round of review by either your support team or the subject-matter experts. from the reviews create well organized templates
• Provide clear and concise messages in the canned response – keep the messages concise and impactful for quick information distribution.

• Customize your message – even canned responses can sparkle when they are personalized. Personalization accommodates the unique circumstances and needs of each customer.
• Include a call to action (CTA) – this gives clients a course of action to follow, and other topics related to their issue for their benefit.
• Maintain a consistent tone – It is essential to maintain the same tone for every scenario. This will guarantee that you’ll keep the same level of professionalism.
• Acknowledge your shortcomings and empathize – be sure to take responsibility for any issue that arises and write responses that demonstrate understanding and sympathy for the customer’s difficulty.
• Proofread the canned responses before deploying them – always ensure that managers preview the prewritten response templates before agents send them to the customers.
• Test your canned replies – before introducing your canned responses to a larger customer base, test them out with a small group of customers.
• Include links to more information within the canned templates – give clients a solid answer to their issue but conclude with attaching links to a knowledge base and video tutorials with related information.

Best practices for creating canned responses

Here are some best practices for preparing canned response templates:

• Know your audience: Make sure your templates are appropriate for your target audience, taking into account: the tone, language, and context of your message.
• Keep it simple: Use clear, concise language that can be easily understood by the recipient. Avoid using technical jargon or overly complex sentences.
• Customize as needed: While pre-written templates can save time, it’s important to personalize them as much as possible to make them more effective. Consider adding a personalized greeting and tailoring the content to fit the specific context.
• Be polite and professional: Always use a polite and professional tone, even when providing negative information.
• Test and refine: Regularly test your automated responses to ensure they’re working as intended and making the desired impact. Be open to customer feedback and make changes as needed.
• Organize and categorize: Store your canned responses in a way that makes it easy to find the one you need quickly. Consider categorizing them by topic or use case to make them even more accessible.
• Update regularly: Regularly review and update your pre-written text messages to keep the content fresh and relevant.

Dos and don’ts when using canned response

Canned replies are powerful tools that can be beneficial or harmful to your business. They have the capacity to increase your company’s credibility, but they can also damage your brand’s reputation. Therefore, you need to be very careful when using them.

The following are the dos and don’ts for getting pre-defined responses right:

Don’t use pre-defined responses for all replies

Imagine replying to an enraged client about a problem with your product or service with a prepared response. This would be unfair to the customer because it shows a lack of compassion for their troubles.

It is important to acknowledge the customer’s feelings when helping them solve the issue.

Don’t apply canned responses where human replies are needed

Regardless of how fast using pre-defined responses makes your customer service, they are not applicable in all cases. Therefore, when assessing an issue or a customer update, you need to analyze what’s the best step to take.

For instance, when a customer addresses you directly, you ought to personalize your communication by also addressing them directly.

Edit the response to fit the specific situation

Sometimes situations may be similar but have slight differences. Before you send a pre-written response, make sure to edit it to meet the needs of your customer.

This will save you from receiving clarifying questions from your customers since they will be getting the exact response they need.

Benefits of using canned response

Nowadays, clients anticipate support that is effective, tailored, and quick.

In fact, approximately 12% of clients expect a reply from a support representative in just 15 minutes.

Thus, help desk canned response templates play a major role in customer service to keep customers engaged. Here are some of the main benefits of canned responses:

Effective time management

Customers may have questions at any time of the day depending on their work hours and time zones. Can you imagine losing a loyal or potential customer because of late replies?

Using canned responses in your support can eliminate late and untimely replies, therefore building a good rapport between your company and your customers.

96% of customers state that quick customer service plays a crucial role in their decision to remain loyal to a brand.

Steer clear of clerical errors

When you manually respond to customers, you may make some errors without noticing. These mistakes can result in unanswered inquiries and a poor customer perception.

Canned replies are advantageous because they are configured to go to the right people automatically. Moreover, canned responses give your customers a good impression of your support team, earning their loyalty and helping to increase team productivity.

Replying to repeated questions becomes tedious when done manually. Use pre-written messages to quickly answer multiple customers with similar questions at once to increase conversion rates and save time.

Improve your brand’s image

As the saying goes, your reputation precedes you. Pre-defined answers ensures you get your customers the help they need immediately. As a result, it makes the quality of your customer service stand out in the market.

You will also quickly earn your customers’ loyalty and trust, thereby promoting the growth and well-being of your company.

Furthermore, it raises your customer satisfaction rate, providing potential customers an idea of what kind of support to expect from your company.

Clients who are unhappy with their current provider may even switch to your brand for better communication.

Higher quality customer service

According to salesforce, 96% of clients state that outstanding customer service fosters trust.

Using a canned response template can go a long way toward resolving your customers’ problems and receiving positive feedback.

Canned responses reply to your customers without any time wastage, maximizing their satisfaction, and a higher satisfaction score boosts your company’s rank in industry customer service surveys.

20 Canned response examples for chats and emails

We’ve collected some of our own frequently received queries from chats and emails and created canned responses for them.

Here, we provide some of them that you can apply in your own scenarios.

1. Send an immediate acknowledgment

The first impression makes the strongest impression on customers. Once we receive a client’s request, we have to acknowledge them to make sure they know we are working on it.

Use the following canned message as an acknowledgment:

2. Require additional information from the customer

If you need some more information to handle the customer’s issue, ask the customer to provide it. You can rephrase the response text based on your requirements.

Here is one example:

3. Working for a long time on an issue

Some support issues require a longer time to resolve. When the time needed to fix the issue increases, your client’s patience decreases.

So, inform them that you’re making every effort to find a solution and that you’ll keep them updated. After that, fulfill your promise.

This demonstrates how much your company values the customer experience, even after the sale.

For example:

4. Split ticket

If a customer submits multiple queries related to various departments in a single ticket, you need to split the ticket so that it can be managed properly.

In this situation, you can use the following message:

5. Requesting for a sample

Sometimes customers may submit a query that you have already resolved. In this case, you may use the previous solution and ask the customer to check whether their issue is cleared.

If it is not, ask them to send you a sample for further processing.

For example:

6. Closing ticket after resolving the issue

Customers may sometimes forget to respond about their resolved issue, and you’re stuck needing to close the ticket in your workflow.

In that situation, you can use the following canned message:

7. Closing ticket without knowing issue status

When you’re waiting for a reply from the customer and you don’t receive it, then you can close the ticket by providing the following message:

8. Closure follow-up

Customers expect a quick resolution when they submit a request. Sending quick responses to customers is essential in increasing customer happiness.

One of the crucial customer follow-up strategies is obtaining feedback after resolving an incident. Help desk ticket response templates make it easier for agents to provide updates following ticket resolutions.

Here is an example canned response:

9. Responding to customer feedback

Whatever response you may receive, either positive or negative, it helps shape and improve the productivity of the company. Customers share their opinions about your service or products, which are valuable.

You can create help desk ticket response templates to show gratitude to customers for sharing their feedback.

For example:

10. Thank-you message

We must treat every customer with respect, and we should thank them for choosing our product or service over the competitors.

Be thankful for the chance to demonstrate the quality of your product or service and for the customer spending their money with you.

You can use the following response to show your gratitude:

11. Responding to negative feedback

Even if you provide the best customer service, you’re still bound to receive negative feedback for some reason. Dealing with angry customers is part of the support process.

To soothe customers, we need to make them feel heard and valued using the right messaging.

A recent study revealed that 83% of customers agree that they feel more loyal to brands that respond to and resolve their complaints.

You can regain customer trust quickly if you have a canned response ready, like the following one:

12. Payment process

When customers complete the payment process, they require some guidelines for proper payment. Often, many customers raise similar questions.

Pre-written help desk responses will aid you in responding quickly with something like the following:

13. Reassigning support requests to another agent

There are many reasons for reassigning a customer request to another agent. In these situations, the customer might wait longer than usual for a solution.

Therefore, before the customer requests an update, inform them that you are purposely reassigning the issue to get them the required solution.

Use the following help desk ticket response template:

14. Providing special offers or discounts

Companies provide special offers for their products to customers. Offers bring inquiries along, and by creating canned responses, your agents can save time.

Moreover, agents can respond immediately to frequently asked questions without typing.

The following is an example:

15. While support agents are offline

Some customer service teams don’t operate 24/7. But there’s no off time for customer queries, especially when your clients’ time zones are not the same as yours.

Craft a help desk ticket response template to get around this problem. This reply assures customers that their request was received even when your agents are not available, providing a sense of 24/7 customer support.

Additionally, customers learn more about your company hours. Therefore, they know when to get in touch with you the next time they face issues.

For example:

16. Here’s an update on software license issue

Rather than leaving your client in the dark regarding their issue, keep them informed with regular updates on the progress of the resolution.

You could even take this chance to ask for additional information to accelerate the process.

Here’s a template you can use:

17. We value your loyalty—Thank you for choosing us!

Express gratitude to customers who choose your product or service. This will go a long way in creating a positive impression, fostering a relationship, and ultimately turning them into repeat customers.

For instance, you can send this canned message:

18. Update on feedback about a feature request

Customers often inquire about new products, tools, or updates that could potentially serve them better.

Create pre-written replies to acknowledge their requests and inform customers of whether they can be realized and what alternatives are available.

If their suggestions are feasible, keep them updated on the progress and let them know when the product or update can be accessible.

For instance:

19. Sending notification for a product release

Express gratitude to customers who suggested a feature that is now available. Let them know that their input was valued and that they were part of the product’s development process.

This will help foster loyalty and encourage them to keep providing valuable ideas.

Create compelling canned responses that not only generate excitement for your new product, but also trigger your customer’s desire to make a purchase.

Consider the following pre-written message template:

20. Issue resolved

Customer service agents are frequently bombarded with common questions from new customers. Craft help desk ticket response templates that offer comprehensive guidance to these queries.

Introduce a reference source, for instance, a link to a knowledge base that will prompt customers to research further on their own.

This will not only help customers become more self-sufficient, but also reduce the burden for customer service agents in the future.

For example:

Use canned responses for quick and easy communication

With the canned responses examples listed above, you can efficiently interact with customers by sending them precise and quick responses.

To raise customer satisfaction levels and boost customer retention rates, your support teams should consider using canned responses.

You can only achieve this by using the appropriate ticketing system for IT to deploy canned responses and support across all your platforms. We’re here to assist.

BoldDesk enables you to create customized help desk ticket response templates, ensuring timely and tailored responses for your clients.

Get in touch with us  to set up a 30-minute live demo to learn how BoldDesk’s features can be customized to align to your business’s needs. Sign up for a 15-day free trial today.

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