An acknowledgment gives a human touch to the customer relationship, and it forestalls follow-on messages and phone calls from impatient senders checking to see if the original message was received. Most response management systems send out a standard response stating that the message was received and giving an estimate of when an answer will be sent. A complete response should be sent out one or two business days after the e-mail is received. These systems vary widely in capability, so consider carefully the degree of automation your company will require. The most basic systems search for key words in the message to classify the subject and put the message in a queue for a person or group to handle.
Some systems attach a recommended response that is routed along with the message.
The person handling the message can use the response as is, edit it, or write a more appropriate reply. These systems depend on a library of responses that the company must create to handle its most frequent inquiries. The most sophisticated systems fully automate the acknowledgment and response process. They use complex algorithms to analyze and categorize the text of the incoming message, identify the sender, then send an answer tailored to the particular customer and topic. Even with these systems, however, there are tradeoffs between automation and accuracy.