This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Do you have customer emails piling up? Well, I guess in some cases, that could be a good problem to have. All right, but I assure you for a lot of side hustlers that are busy and working hard, but also they have their day job and everything else, it can become kind of overwhelming. And as I begin to explain this, I'm like, Oh, this sounds like an ad. It's not actually an ad. This is what today's episode is about. We have a listener and he's
got an e-commerce shop and lots of inquiries coming in. It's great to have the e-commerce shop. He's selling stuff. But then, you know, every night at 11 PM, he's got pings coming in that are like, where's my package? It's taken up all his time devouring his weekends.
And that's not exactly what he hoped for in having a side hustle. Like most people don't hope for that. But there is this like expectation of instant replies these days. You know, it's like people are just kind of impatient and we all are right. The good news is I think you can deliver great service without being on call 24/7. So let's look at how we can
help this guy. We're going to build like a lightweight customer service kind of response strategy basically that scales with one person and zero burnout. So basically the question is how do you handle customer service without burning out? And even if you don't have a big side hustle that's bringing in all these inquiries yet, you want to pay attention perhaps because you might want to design your business in a way from the outset that avoids the problem. So let's talk about all that I'll do my best to be helpful in this short action packed episode detailed question and my answer coming right up.
Hi, Chris and team. So my one person ecommerce shop is doing well, but my inbox is out of control spending nights and weekends answering customer emails handling returns and chasing shipping issues. I don't have the budget for a full time support rep yet, but I also can't keep sacrificing all my free time. How can a solopreneur manage customer service efficiently, set boundaries, and maybe automate some of it without hurting the business? I'd love to know any thoughts or tips you can share.
All right, let's see if we can make a plan here. I think, you know, it's a good problem to have when customers are out there and buying stuff, right? But you do need to create a little bit of a flow or a strategy like something specific. An overflowing inbox means customers want what you're selling, but the trick is to make sure their enthusiasm doesn't take up your evenings and weekends. So what kind of lightweight system could we make? Let's
start with the low hanging fruit. As they say, give people answers before they have to email you. So a well written frequently asked questions section or a knowledge base that addresses like what are the most common inquiries? Think about shipping times, return steps, any product quirks or anything that people really need to know about your product. If you do that well, if you really write a good section, it can wipe out a quarter of your messages overnight. And if you pair that with a simple order tracking portal, like where
people can go and like see where my, where my package is, that can actually take care of another 25%. So now we've gotten potentially 50% of the messages reduced, like eliminated actually before they even come to you. Next move the conversation out of Gmail. Don't use Gmail or just your personal email tools for customer service. You want to help desk tool like help scout or groove. I've been using groove recently. I like it. Zoho desk
is another one. You know, these tools, they cost like a couple of lattes a month. That's how I think about it. 10, 20 bucks a month. It lets you do some magical stuff like, you know, insert a full friendly reply with just a couple of keystrokes or tag every message that says cancel or refund perhaps. So you can see those first and customers don't notice
this at all, but it will take a lot of time off your hands, which is great. Now, speaking of replies, you want to write a handful of canned responses for the questions you answer again and again. It's still good to keep them warm and human and maybe add a little bit of a quick like personal note at the top or bottom of that. But those ready made replies can make a huge difference. Another huge difference in saving time. Next about boundaries, perhaps
put a little auto responder on your support address that says, Hey, like we are a tiny but mighty team like, and we answer email Monday through Friday, usually within one business day. So that still is a pretty reasonable expectation, but it doesn't commit you to answering emails at night or on the weekends or like within the hour. Most people are perfectly fine waiting a bit, not too long, but a bit once you set the expectation. So then you just kind of do it once a day. It doesn't necessarily have to build up. Of course we
could also talk about hiring a virtual assistant or getting other help and such, but I actually think if you do these first things first, they're going to save you a ton of time and then you can figure out, okay, if I'm still overwhelmed, maybe I need to look for an additional solution. But here you have a simple human sized support plan that you can roll out in a week. Good luck with that. I hope it helps listeners. Let me know what you think. If
you have a question, sidehustleschool.com notes pages for every episode, some free resources and more. And of course a new episode rolls out every day. The archive of 3000 plus episodes available for free download on the site, but I hope you'll subscribe or follow and come back. My name's Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.
From the Onward Project.
