The Best Chrome Extensions Canned Responses
If you deal directly with customers, you're probably wasting a lot of time by typing the same replies over and over again. Using a canned response Chrome extension can really boost your productivity. Here are 9 great options.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could reply to every customer question personally?
Unfortunately, that’s not the reality facing customer support teams. Of course, every customer deserves the utmost care and attention, but that personal touch has to be balanced with speed of response, since 12% of customers rate their number one frustration with customer service as “lack of speed”.
So how can customer service departments get faster at replying to customers when they are inundated with requests, and teams aren’t getting any bigger?
Support reps can make the most of Chrome extension canned responses to reply to common customer queries in seconds that would otherwise take several minutes to compose a message.
Before we jump into our list, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that Keeping does a lot more than just canned responses. With Keeping, you can manage your canned replies, but also assign, prioritize, and track all of your customer support email. The best part? You can do it all right inside your Gmail inbox!
The importance of canned responses
Canned responses enable your customer support team to reply much faster to customer queries. Many common customer questions are repetitive and can benefit from templates that your service reps can use to quickly manufacture replies. Canned replies can be written in a conversational, friendly manner, so customers won’t feel like they’re communicating with a robot.
Using canned responses promotes consistency in the way that your support reps are answering customer questions. Every reply will be the same and customers will be treated to the same experience.
It reduces the chances of human error in your emails because you are using a template that has already been edited and proofread. Your team can work faster and smarter without sacrificing quality.
The best canned response Chrome extensions
Here are 9 of the best Chrome extensions that you can use to help automate and share your canned responses. And if you use Google Workspace or Gmail, you may not need a third-party tool at all. We’ve written a whole guide about how to create canned responses in Gmail using Google Workspace’s built-in features.
1. Klutch
Klutch is an organizational knowledge management and canned response app that will make sure your company’s knowledge is available anywhere.
Create pages for long-form company knowledge and responses for short, copyable canned replies. Access Klutch anywhere and anytime using their Chrome extension and Gmail plugin.
Canned responses is the part of Klutch that lets you create and share canned replies with colleagues and teams. Instead of the various members of your team using different responses in customer interactions, with Klutch they will all have access to the same ones.
The ability to quickly copy responses will save you and your team hours and hours of manual email writing and typing work, especially for sales and customer support teams that tend to send out several emails of the same kind during the day.
Klutch offers a lot of functionality in a single extension. Klutch’s canned replies are combined with a company wiki that allows you to capture your team’s knowledge. Pages are the backbone of every company’s knowledge repository. Pages are where you put important company information that you can easily share with other colleagues. Pages contain “what’s to know” about your company and its processes like sales playbooks or internal customer support guides.
The advantage of Klutch is the ability to combine a comprehensive company knowledge base with canned replies so your team is always informed.
2. Canned Replies
Canned Replies is a Chrome extension that allows you to manage canned replies in Gmail, as well as other places on the web.
Canned Replies is a productivity tool that makes it faster and easier to send the messages you send most often. Use Canned Replies to create a set of commonly-used text snippets, and easily access these from within the Gmail compose window, or from the context menu and browser popup.
Used Canned Replies for a Gmail-optimized experience from within your Gmail compose window. Canned Replies adds a button into the Gmail compose toolbar so you can quickly access your messages in context to the email you’re sending. Simply click on the desired message and it’ll be inserted into the email.
Canned Replies is a simple to use Google Chrome extension that makes sending your most-frequently-used messages a breeze. It does what it says on the tin and keeps its functionality simple.
3. BombBomb
BombBomb is actually a video messaging app that comes with a Chrome extension which allows you to save and send canned responses. Did you ever wish that you didn’t have to type out the same email over and over again?
With BombBomb’s Chrome extension, you can save snippets or a canned response that you can quickly use in Gmail any time for a Gmail canned response. You can even save your BombBomb videos to your canned replies.
To use BombBomb’s canned response feature, open a new email within your Gmail account and insert all the elements you would like to include in your email. Highlight everything you’d like to save as a snippet and a pink “save” icon will appear. This will bring up your snippet in an editing window. Here, you can edit the snippet title, subject line, and email body text. When you’re finished, click the “Save” button at the bottom. Now your snippet is ready to use!
BombBomb is so much more than a canned response app. Record video messages to use in your emails that overcome both time and space, and bring your emails to life! At the same time, take advantage of BombBomb’s canned response functionality for your team.
4. Canned Responses Ultimate for Gmail
Canned Responses Ultimate is a productivity add-on for Gmail that lets you respond to common emails ten times faster and saves you from spending too much time on repetitive tasks.
Using this app, you can create an unlimited number of canned replies in Gmail organized into different categories. It supports rich text HTML email content with embedded images. One feature that makes Canned Responses Ultimate stand out is the ability to attach attachments to your email templates.
You can copy and paste your email content while retaining the formatting when saving email templates. This app comes with a shared Canned Response Bank for Teams which lets you take advantage of one-click sharing & management of canned replies with team members. Avoid repetitive setup by creating and making responses accessible to the team in a few clicks instantly.
You can quickly search for personal and shared canned responses using keywords, and delegate canned responses to other team members for editing. You can import your existing canned replies from Default Canned Response in Gmail (Templates).
Canned Responses Ultimate is a simple extension you can use with Gmail to create, save, and share canned responses. It works well for teams who want to share their canned responses, saving you massive amounts of time and energy.
5. Text Blaze
Text Blaze is a Chrome extension that allows you to save reusable snippets that you can quickly insert into any app you’re using, whether that’s email, social media, or a CRM tool. The advantage of Text Blaze is that it works with any website.
Text Blaze claims to save top users over 28 hours per month, and apparently one billion characters are typed using its platform every month. It is a powerful little app that inserts canned replies into whatever web app you happen to be using.
You simply save any “snippet” of text in Text Blaze and give it a shortcut of anything that feels natural – for example, /ty for a thank you email. You then type the shortcut and the snippet of text will appear wherever you are in Chrome. Text Blaze works on Gmail, Google Docs, LinkedIn, Salesforce and wherever else you may be.
Once you’ve created your snippets, share them with your colleagues. They’ll immediately update with any improvements you make and you can even edit them together.
Take advantage of Text Blaze’s forms, dynamic formulas, and integrations with other sites to simplify your day with Text Blaze. Reduce the number of tools you juggle and blaze through your work.
Text Blaze is a powerful canned response app that you can use from anywhere. Your typing will be supercharged by Text Blaze’s reusable snippets which you can insert using handy shortcuts.
6. Briskine
Briskine is a canned response Chrome extension that enables you to save custom, personalized templates in Gmail, Outlook, Facebook, LinkedIn, Fastmail, and Yahoo Mail. Create templates out of repetitive pieces of text, insert them in your emails within seconds with shortcuts, and respond faster to your customers!
If you find yourself writing out the same answers to common questions, templates allow you to answer them in a few seconds. You can even use custom variables such as the recipient’s first name to personalize your messages, so it doesn’t seem like you are using a canned response.
Templates can be associated with a keyboard shortcut. To insert a template, you just need to type its shortcut and press TAB. This makes using your saved replies even easier and reduces the amount of typing and mouse-clicking you need to do.
Briskine also allows you to share your templates with your team so that everyone is on the same page.
Briskine is a simple canned response extension for Chrome that allows you to use templates when replying to messages over email and social media. The best feature of Briskine is the shortcuts that you can use to insert a canned reply.
7. typedesk
typedesk is a canned response app that works across different platforms, including Chrome. It offers quick response shortcuts which are the fastest way to use canned responses. It works wherever you are – Slack, Gmail, Outlook, Zendesk, and Office for example.
It claims to save you six and a half hours a week on average, which is almost a whole day’s worth of work.
You can use advanced variables to create custom responses with select boxes, text input and much more to build unique responses every time you use them. typedesk works with all your favorite apps and websites so you can stick to your habits and the productivity apps and websites you use every day.
You can easily search through your canned replies using keywords to find the one that you need. typedesk even works offline so you can keep working without connectivity. You can access your canned responses on any computer and your responses are consistently backed up and in sync. The software supports private notes so you can give guidance on when to use the canned responses for the rest of your team.
The advantage of typedesk is the sheer range of apps that the extension is compatible with. No matter where you are, you’ll be able to see productivity gains with typedesk.
8. Magical – Text Expander
Text Expander is an extension for Chrome that expands text as you type. You can save time with quick shortcuts that can be inserted into the app or website of your choice.
Instead of having to remember Zoom links, email addresses, phrases about your company, or frequent emails you have to type repeatedly, Text Expander saves you time and increases accuracy by creating shortcuts of text that you commonly use. The extension comes with unlimited backups, and no limit to the number of shortcuts you can create.
Share your shortcuts either individually or by Tag with your colleagues to ensure consistency across your team. Search your shortcuts from any site you happen to be in, and add custom groupings to shortcuts using Tags to allow for better organization, search and sharing.
Text Expander is trusted by 290,000 users and is a simple extension for Chrome if you want to save canned responses. All you have to do is save your shortcuts and get typing.
9. Keeping
Keeping is a customer support solution for Gmail that comes with the ability to save canned responses. The Keeping Knowledge Base is where you can store answers to frequently asked questions that you wish to send to customers when you receive a repetitive enquiry.
If your team receives the same questions over and over again, the Knowledge Base can be a big time saver. As an admin, it can also help ensure that your team is responding to your customers in a common and consistent way.
Keeping calls these canned responses “Shared Templates”. Easily save and share common questions and responses across your entire team, so that everyone is working from the same library of templates. Insert them into your responses with one click in Gmail. You can even access Keeping through the mobile-friendly web app, so you can use your canned responses on the go.
Keeping does so much more than simply saving canned responses. It turns your Gmail inbox into a fully-fledged ticketing system that allows you to keep track of and manage customer queries with your team. Keeping allows you to get going in just three minutes – create a Keeping Mailbox, forward your shared email address, and invite your team.
Final remarks
There’s a good range of extensions out there that you can use with Chrome to enhance productivity for you and your team. Never waste time manually typing out a response to a repetitive customer query again. Your customer support operations will be significantly improved and your team will be much happier.
Some of the options on this list offer more functionality than simple canned responses. Keeping, for example, is a help desk ticketing system for Gmail that automatically turns every customer email into a help desk ticket that can be assigned to members of your team. Consider what features you’re looking for from your extension before you make a commitment.
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