How can you write a customer service email that's easy to read and understand?

1 Use a friendly and professional tone

Your tone is how you communicate your attitude and emotions through your words, which can have an effect on how your customer perceives and responds to your email. To create a friendly and professional tone, you should use polite and positive words, such as please, thank you, sorry, and glad. Additionally, avoid slang, jargon, abbreviations, and emojis as these can be confusing or inappropriate. Furthermore, address your customer by their name if you know it or use a generic salutation such as dear or hello. If there has been an inconvenience or mistake on your part, apologize and offer a solution or compensation. Lastly, express empathy and understanding while avoiding blaming or criticizing your customer.

3 Organize your email logically

When writing an email, your structure is how you arrange your ideas and information. This can influence how easily your customer follows and remembers the content of your email. To create a logical and coherent structure, begin with a clear and relevant subject line that summarizes the purpose of your email. Open with a warm and courteous greeting, addressing your customer by name or salutation. In the first paragraph, state the main point or goal of your email and explain why you are writing to them. Provide details or instructions in the following paragraphs, breaking them into smaller sections if needed. Then, close with a clear and actionable call to action, telling your customer what to do next or what to expect from you. Finally, end with a polite and sincere sign-off, thanking them for their time and attention.

4 Format your email properly

Your format is how you present your email visually and can affect how your customer reads and reacts to it. To show that you are professional, attentive, and respectful of your customer's preferences, use a standard and readable font, size, and color; create a clean and balanced layout with white space and margins; emphasize important words or phrases with bold, italic, or underline (but do not overuse them); separate different sections or topics with headings, subheadings, or labels; and proofread and edit your email for any spelling, grammar, or punctuation errors. By doing this, you can write an email that is easy to read and understand, which can help improve customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention.

5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?