Improve Customer Service and Communication With Standardized Email Templates

Creating standardized organizational email templates can save your company time and money with client communication. Not only do email templates enable customer service representatives to instantly respond to queries and issues, but they ensure that communication with the customer is consistently on-brand and on-target with company policies.

Email templates are useful in all industries, but I find them particularly useful with manufacturing and any department that is in charge of support or that uses a case management process. The financial industry, particularly wealth management, is another great example of an industry that can utilize email templates to communicate with customers and prospective customers.

You might be asking yourself how you could utilize email templates in your company. Here are some ideas to start you off:

• Create monthly newsletter templates so all newsletters have a consistent format. Use the template as a starting point every month
• Manufacturing | Customer Return Received – Let customers know when the shipping department has received an item that has been returned
• Manufacturing | Credit Issued – Let customers know when a credit has been issued for a returned item
• Manufacturing | Case Resolution – Service management departments can send knowledge base articles or notifications when a case is opened or resolved
• Financial Industry | Periodic Touch Point – Send emails to clients to have them call the office to schedule their monthly or quarterly meeting
• Financial | Internal Notifications – Automatically generate an agenda on Sunday for this coming week’s calls and appointments so you have an idea of what’s going on this week without having to go into the office or check your calendar.
• Manufacturing | SLA Notification – If a case is reaching its SLA and about to expire, send a notification to the user in charge of the case or their manager.
• Manufacturing | Reassignment of a case – If a case is assigned to a different queue and is a high priority, send an email to notify the team of the new case they should address immediately.
• Financial | Notifications – When a platinum client has a change of record or new activity for them, a notification can be sent to the advisor or Branch Manager.
• Financial | Summary of Activity for your Team – Have an email sent to your team summarizing the activity that took place during the week.
• Financial | Tear Sheet – Send a team member a quick summary of a client or company you are prospecting with key information on it.
• Bonus Tip | Financial Industry | Appointment reminder – Create a workflow to notify clients or prospects of an upcoming meeting that is scheduled for the coming week. The workflow can utilize the email template and automatically send it to the email on record at a set time

While this approach to email templates can be used by any product, we’re going to use Dynamics 365 to show how to set-up and test email templates.

Dynamics 365 Email Templates

There are two types of email template you can use in Dynamics 365. One is a system email template that can be accessed by users in the organization, and the other is a personal email template which is created by a particular user.

System email templates can be open to all individuals in the organization; however, the visibility can be limited to particular security roles if needed. For instance, if you have a service desk associate that needs an email template to let a customer know their case has been resolved, you can open the visibility to the service management area and restrict from all other areas in the firm. This way menus are not cluttered with unneeded email template options.

Follow the steps below to quickly create the templates and make them available to your organization.

Create System Email Templates

1. Verify you are a System Administrator. (Only system admins can create email templates for the organization level visibility.
2. Go to Settings > Templates > Email Templates
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3. Click New.
4. Select the record type you would like to associate with the template. Most email templates will be associated with a Case. (If you select a specific record type, such as account or contact, the templates will only be available for that record.)  Your other option is to select Global.

Note:  Custom entities cannot have email templates created for them.

5. Click OK
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6. A new email template will appear. Enter a Title that will appear in the list of templates.
7. Enter a Description on what the template will be used for or what process it is involved in.
8. Enter a subject for the Email.
   1. You can use field attributes in the Subject and Body of the email.
9. Enter a Description
10. To add a field attribute:
    1. Click the Insert/Update button at the top of the screen.
    2. Click the Add button.
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    3. Select a Record Type you would like to pull the field from. (Most likely Case.)
    4. Select a field to add within the email.
    5. Click OK
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    6. Then click OK again.
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    7. Once you click OK, the field will be inserted into the Subject or Body of your email.
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Note:  A space is automatically added after the inserted field.

Tip: Email templates are automatically double spaced anytime you hit Enter.  If you would like to have a single spaced line, hit Shift + Enter.

11. Once you are done entering the text of the email, click Save & Close.
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12. Don’t forget to spell check and test your email before using it!!

Tip:  If copying & pasting into the email template from another document, you can clear the formatting from the source document by following these steps:

1. Copy the text from the source document
2. Open Notepad
3. Paste the information into the notepad. (This removes all formatting because this program doesn’t allow it.)
4. Copy the text from the notepad
5. Paste into the Email template you are creating

Maximum Subject Length

Subject Default – 200 characters

Title Default – 200 characters

You don’t want to exceed 200 characthers on the email Subject for tracking purposes, otherwise you may encounter errors. Keep in mind that replying and forwarding emails adds to the subject length.

Testing Email Templates

You can send emails and use an email template from any view or advanced find.

1. Open your view for the Entity you create the Template email for.
2. Select the case you would like to send the email out for. (Make sure you have a sample record created with a sample email address or an email account you can retrieve information on.
3. On the ribbon, select Send Direct Mail.
4. From the message body, click on the Insert Template button. Choose the template you would like to use.
5. Send the email.

Moving Templates Between Environments

If you’re utilizing system email templates and have multiple environments you can quickly move the templates from one environment to the next. Simply open your solution, add the system template(s) to a solution then move the solution to all environments. This ensures every environment is kept in synch.

For questions on how to set-up the email templates that work best for your organization, please contact Hitachi Solutions today.