Canned templates to customers can do more harm to your bottom line than good. The classic greeting “Dear Valued Customer…” says just the opposite. But your employees are overwhelmed at times with messages from customers that are often incoherent and need to be literally decoded with e-mail chains that seem to take on a life of their own. “Auto-responders” serve a purpose in specific situations; but a personal e-mail can solve a problem, plus create goodwill in a few extra seconds. So before you think about investing money in fancy software to handle e-mail volume, it’s usually the “interface between a keyboard and a chair” that takes care of customers, faster. Posted By John Hall