Help with improving my canned response, please!

[Beachcondo]

I normally use a canned response to answer the enquiries I get. I personalize them and answer any specific questions, but basically they are the same.

Since I'm not a native English speaker I wonder if you can look at it to see if I can improve the grammar/spelling and maybe make it more inviting?

>80% of my guests are from the US, therefor I write inquiry instead of enquiry etc.


Hello..........,
thank you for your mail.
How nice that you are interested in our condo!

Yes, the requested dates are available.

If you would like to see more pictures of the condo and surroundings, read more info and see a virtual tour, please take a look at our website: www.thefloridabeachcondo.com


We will forward your request to our rental agency that is responsible for bookings, payments and service to our guests, when they are on the island, and they will contact you shortly.
Since we spend most of our time in Sweden, it is hard to give you good service without their help.
They have an excellent reputation and will take good care of you!


If you have any questions, feel free to contact us!

Kind Regards

Marie and Tomas Nilsson
(Tropical Sunset, unit 2)


p.s. If you haven't heard from our rental company in a few days, please check your spam-filter as their message has ended up there for some of our previous guests. Otherwise please contact us again. d.s.

[kendalcottages]

How quickly do your rental company normally respond? If it could be taking them "a few days", I'd be rather concerned. I would imagine you could easily lose bookings to owners/agencies who are quicker with their responses.

[pambon]

Agree with KC, unless enquiries (sorry inquiries!) arrive overnight any reply should more or less immediate, but at the most within 6 hours. Those overnight ones are responded to by 8am the following morning.

[Beachcondo]

Normally they would get a response within a couple of hours, in office hours, except on Sundays when it is closed. But then I use another reply where they can send their booking info to me.
Guess I am just making sure that they don't get disappointed in case it takes longer than usual. But maybe I should change that setting.
Thanks for the respons!

[Holiday Ray]

Of course this is all 'personal preference', but

I would change

"How nice that you are interested in our condo!

Yes, the requested dates are available".

For something along the lines of -

"Thank you for your inquiry regarding availability of ....
We are pleased to confirm that... is currently still available.... "

And rather than

"they will contact you shortly. "

I would say

"They will contact you as soon as possible"

Whether it's a few hrs, or a few days, you are assuring them of your earliest response and not suggesting that it may take days to get back in touch.
As Pambon and KC say, you are likely to lose bookings if someone things that it may take days for you to answer their inquiry.

Apart from that, the rest seems fine to me

[tavi]

Sounds great and I agree with the others.

Also, I think I would make two small changes:

"we have forwarded your....." (more pro-active than "we will".)


"Since we spend most of our time in Sweden, they help us to give you a good service. They have an excellent reputation..etc.." ( - the expression "it is hard to give you good service" introduces a slight negative vibe iyswim)

[Beachcondo]

Food for thought,
Thank you for taking the time!

[T.S.]

I agree with the suggestions above. Here are two more.

To me, the following sounds slightly more "U.S.":
"If you would like to view additional pictures of the condo and its surroundings, read further information, or take a virtual tour,..."

The "d.s." at the end of your post script will be unfamiliar to those of us in the U.S. I've never seen it done. But it might be useful to others, so you will have to decide whether or not to keep it. Or... is it possible to eliminate the post script altogether by incorporating its content into the body of the response?

I hope my comments don't seem overly picky; it's just that there is so little left to improve.

[la vache!]

I'm probably being stupid, but why do you get involved in replying to enquiries at all when it isn't you doing the booking? Is it always you who says yes or no to the availability and then if you have availability you pass it on to the rental agency? I think as an enquirer I'd find it a bit confusing to have more than one contact for a rental property, but maybe that is how you do things for US rental properties, apologies if so!
PS The ps about the possibility of replies from the rental agency possibly going into the spam folder doesn't instill confidence, either.

[Beachcondo]

This is an answer to my ads that I have on various listing sites.
If the rental agency finds my tenants I pay 20% commission. If I find them I only pay 10%, so I need to keep track of my inquiries.

So far I am booked 38 weeks this year, and 37 of them were referals from me. It does make a big difference in my revenue.

I have also tried doing the whole conversation myself, and just sending the booking info to my rental agency. That has not made a difference in my conversion rate, so now I try to do it the easy way.
Hopefully a bit of tweaking on my English might do a slight difference.

Nitpickers are welcome! I am the biggest one myself, but now I can't get any further with the knowledge I have.

[Beachcondo]

Normally they would get a response within a couple of hours, in office hours, except on Sundays when it is closed. But then I use another reply where they can send their booking info to me.
Guess I am just making sure that they don't get disappointed in case it takes longer than usual. But maybe I should change that setting.
Thanks for the respons!

[T.S.]

Since so many business transactions these days mean interacting with large, faceless, and seemingly uncaring corporations (at least, here in the U.S.), I think it's nice to receive a message directly from the owner... even if it does add an additional step in the booking process.

But La Vache makes a good point about some of the first thoughts a prospective renter is likely to have while reading through the message. I think changing the order of the sentences could help. Perhaps the paragraph that begins with "We will forward your request..." should begin with "Since we spend most of our time in Sweden..." followed by "We will forward your request..." This would allow prospective tenants to understand there is a caring owner who is working to make their stay more pleasant BEFORE they learn there will also be a rental company involved.

I agree with La Vache that the post script does not instill confidence. Could you simply take it out?

[e-richard]

This is the bit that seems to have created some discussion:

We will forward your request to our rental agency that is responsible for bookings, payments and service to our guests, when they are on the island, and they will contact you shortly.
Since we spend most of our time in Sweden, it is hard to give you good service without their help.
They have an excellent reputation and will take good care of you!

First a question: Is the fact that you are in Sweden a lot of much importance ? I mention that because I, like many others here are off-site owners, and don't have any issues, but perhaps my next point will clarify.

Instead of starting with the negative and following with the positive, turn it around.

I cannot quite get the phraseology sorted out, but the idea I'm trying to convey runs something like this:

Our rentals are managed locally by an excellent rental agency who will take good care of you at your holiday home. I will now ask them to reply to you with full details for bookings, payments
and so on and so forth.

I really don't think there is any need to make an excuse for the fact that the response will come from the agency. Just turn it into a benefit.

[Beachcondo]

Since so many business transactions these days mean interacting with large, faceless, and seemingly uncaring corporations (at least, here in the U.S.), I think it's nice to receive a message directly from the owner... even if it does add an additional step in the booking process.

That has also been a consideration for me to reply instead of just forwarding enquiries to our rental agency.
+ the fact that I think my guests would be a bit surprised to receive a request for a review, if they had never heard from me before.
Many of my tenants have said that they have chosen our place because of the excellent reviews, and when you have a personal touch I think it makes it easier to collect them.

Mentioning Sweden is a way of explaining that we need a local representative, and also an excuse for occational glitches in my English...

Excellent ideas (when one has looked too long at something it is hard to see what needs improvement), I am really grateful for all of your suggestions!

[e-richard]

...when one has looked too long at something it is hard to see what needs improvement...

I can certainly relate to that