Ask HN: How do you handle non-urgent customer email in a B2B SaaS? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you handle non-urgent customer email in a B2B SaaS?

6 pointsrodoni4 comments

We had the discussion in our team if we should try to reply immediately to customer e-mails and if we should even start to reply outside of working hours (on evenings or weekends). Often I'm working on the weekends/evenings and it would not bother me to reply to the customer.

Do you think it is a good idea or does it look like we are unprofessional? How does your business handle it. We are a SaaS company only doing B2B.

Thanks for your reply. I wish everyone a happy Easter.

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My rule: Don't let a customer decide what is urgent and what is not. Yes, I said it. For some people, everything is urgent.

If you get a customer email and YOU realize that this is indeed urgent (site down etc), then you respond as you need to. If you don't think this is urgent, do not respond right away. One thing I do is to use the "Schedule Send" feature in gmail. I write up the email (if I don't want to do it later or forget) but then I use schedule send to actually send it delayed.

Source: I run a B2B SAAS and if I tried replying to every customer email immediately, I would go crazy :).

I would be cautious as replying in non-business hours may become expected. I personally like to give myself a lot of flexibility and time to think about responses and such.

Too many times, I've seen people dig themselves into a hole because they rush a reply / solution.

It's never life threatening for the customer, however, it's life-altering for you. I only respond to customers during business hours. They're not special enough to even disturb my weekends. If you're too anxious about it, answer the query on the weekends, but deliver the solution during work hours (delayed mail sending is great!).

There is no right answer… it’s depends on many factors. The customer, the expectations you want to set and know you can uphold, the nature of the question, the nature of the customer… I try to reply as fast as possible but as the volume of emails has increased I’ve tempered my speed to balance also ensuring my team has a chance to also reply before me….

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