What we're doing is making/taking the time to send an e-mail response to each customer for each order that comes in. Yes, it's a pain, yes it takes time, but it's working for us until we can find another engine for our websites. We're using some pre-typed 'thank-you' messages that we can copy/paste into each reply, and we also are copying in their order so the customer can see what they ordered and, much more importantly, where it's being shipped (we encounter quite a few errors thanks to the old PayPal verified address thing). The 'thank-you' lets them know their order has been received and is 'in the works' so they should receive tracking info soon, and "for the love of Mike please drop us a line if you have any questions." That sort of thing. OK, this isn't for everbody, that's for sure. We're processing under 100 orders per day this way currently, so it's probably too time consuming for many online sellers. Small is beautiful, at least in this situation. We used to be able to find a customer's order by e-mail address if they had a question - we can still do that but have to search in our 'sent' messages instead of the inbox. It's working for us, but it took 3/4 of a bottle of Dewar's to get the guys on board with the new steps we have to take. Burp.
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