Transactional letters (online store, service, and so on)

Hello! And I continue the cycle (in the blog of a wonderful person Michael, the owner of Textbroker) about the letters, and which of them can be collected.

Transactional letters are, roughly speaking, confirmation letters that everything is going fine. For example, in the two thousandth online stores had only one transaction letter: "Your order is confirmed." After Amazon convincingly proved that the buyer should be kept informed, a whole chain appeared:
- Yes, we accepted your order
- Order processed
- Received payment
- The order began to gather in stock
- The goods went to you, tomorrow
- In an hour, wait for the courier (this is usually SMS, not email)
“The order has arrived, is everything okay?”
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The approach to writing these letters is the same as designing UI / UX models. And the principles used are the same as in navigation.

What is important

Transaction letters are needed to ensure that a person (for example, an online store buyer) is aware of what is happening. Amazon in its time made a small revolution, having taught the industry to immediately respond to an order, plus notify about all movements on it. Because if you do not do this, then it is not clear for a person - he, like, pressed “order”, but there is no action.

The main principles of navigation are control and predictability. Need to answer the questions:

“Where am I?” - give a clear understanding of the current step. For example, “Your order No. 2814, lens cap, has entered, and Groin Mikhalych is now looking for this cap in stock. It seems to be somewhere here. ” Of course, I exaggerate, but the person understands what is happening. Pay attention to Habr's transactional letters about the response to your comment - there is also a comment itself, so that the dialogue in your head is formed. Many sites send only the answer itself, which by no means contributes to the alignment of the full picture.
“What's next?” - designate who has the ball, and what the next step. “Your goods are in reserve for a day. We are waiting for payment on request, as soon as it arrives - we will begin the complete set. ” It is clear that the product is already there, it is not going anywhere, and you have to pay. Naturally, there should immediately be links-buttons to this action. Or: “Your order has been accepted, but now it's night in Moscow, and the call center and warehouse are open from 10:00. We will call you back tomorrow morning. ”
Emergency exit This is a contact in case something went wrong. This could be your store's phone, technical support mail, or something else. Exaggerating: "If something went wrong, feel free to call our store and ask for Yaroslav Petrov - it's me, your personal manager."

Let's look again at a couple of letters from the online store:
- Yes, we have accepted your order - here you need an order number in the subject line and in the letter body, the exact order structure and amount, information about the applied discounts, the next step is to wait for the operator's call, wait for picking, pay, etc.
- The order is being processed - everything is the same, but it is necessary to designate the previous and next steps. It can be this way: “Now we will check whether there are 50,000 arrows with suckers that you ordered in stock and form an account. It usually takes 5-10 minutes. ”

The same principles apply to all other information letters , for example:

You have just paid 100 rubles for the phone + 7123-456-78-90 in the payment system such and such. The money must go to your balance within 10 minutes. If this did not happen or something went wrong, write here.
Hello! Today is the 30th, and you have 50 rubles left on your internet account. Your tariff is 10Mb / s for 390 rubles per month. Please replenish account number 123456 with 340 rubles until tomorrow. [pay] If you do not have time to do it, do not worry: Internet access will continue, but the speed will drop to 64 Kbps. Here are our support contacts.

And so on.

From whom to send transactional letters?

Not from noreply @ These letters will often be answered, so you need at least a common company box like sales @ or opt @.
There must be a personal signature or an explanation that this letter is automatically generated — plus someone’s contact. From the client’s point of view, each transaction should be responsible on your part - if you are customer-oriented, of course. If not, just give general support contacts.
The “from whom” or at the beginning of the topic should be a company. Even if the letter comes directly from your employee, the person should immediately associate it with the place where he just did the action. The transaction is usually not expected to be personal.
Do not send transactional letters from the same services as your advertising or content distribution. I know a travel agency whose clients did not receive tickets because they unsubscribed from the main mailing. Or add it to the spam list.

One main action

Ideally, the action for the user should be only one. In half of the cases, it’s just to wait (you need to designate an approximate time when the waiting is over, for example, like this: “Your order was sent by mail to Russia, usually it takes 3-4 days to send your city”). In this example, you can immediately give a tracking number to track and show how to use it, but not in priority. And even more so do not need to frighten a person with what to do if the package has not reached. Better in 4 days to send another letter on the subject "The package should have already reached, if you want - call the mail on this phone here." In moments like: “Your order is almost complete: only 10 out of 10 ordered books are in stock, will the latter arrive tomorrow — divide into two orders or wait?” Choose the default action correctly. That is, a conscious effort - to divide, and if nothing is done and ignore the appeal - to act as it was.

Therefore, the current status and, sometimes, the next step is put into the topic.

Bad: "The status of your order number 12456"
Good: “Your order # 12456 just took a courier and took it to you”
Bad: Apple Receipt
Good: "You put 100 rubles on + 7123-456-78-90"
Bad: “Service 351, account status”
Good: “Tomorrow megamozg.ru domain will be delineated, don't forget to pay, please”

The main action is taken to the top of the letter. For example, AWAD does as a password reminder:
Sender and Subject: AWAD - Password Reminder
Large: "Here is your new password - ****" (yes, they sent it directly in the letter)
This is all that the user needs in a normal scenario. Further, exceptions that are needed in a few percent of actions, for example:
Smaller: How to change the password ...
Smaller and lower: If you did not request a password change, then ...,
Below: contact support.

Check list:

By subject or sender, the name of the service or company is clearly understood.
On the topic you can understand what it is about in the letter and whether you need to somehow react.
There is a current status (where I am), a difference from the previous one (what has changed), the next step (who does what).
Inside the letter there are all the details - we do not expect that the person remembers everything at once. Any letter from the chain is enough to have all the necessary information on the situation.
In the first sentence or somewhere nearby, the main action is indicated.
The letter did not go away with noreply @.
There is a contact person or department, which you can write or call in a nonstandard situation. Or there is at least a common phone company.
If possible, additional searches for information are minimized: everything that a person could go to your site for was put into a letter (for example, the address of the pickup point and a description of the route, the time the money arrived on the balance, and so on).
Simple language without ambiguities. For example, not “status change: your order is being processed”, but “payment has arrived, we are now collecting and packing your order”.

Other materials

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/297808/

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