Why Your Customer Service Team Needs One Today
If you’ve ever typed out almost the same reply to a customer for the third time in one morning, you already know the problem we’re solving today. It’s one of the most common questions we get asked by our office admin and customer service students: “How do I stop rewriting the same email over and over?”
The answer is Outlook email templates, and once you’ve set one up, you’ll wonder how you survived without it.
Why This Matters More Than You Think
We talk to a lot of small business owners and office admin staff, and email templates come up constantly, usually right after someone has spent their lunch break rewriting a refund policy explanation for the fifth time that week.
Templates aren’t just a time-saver, though that’s reason enough. They also help you:
- Keep your tone and branding consistent, no matter who on the team is answering
- Cut down on typos and missed details when you’re replying quickly
- Respond faster, which customers genuinely notice and appreciate
- Onboard new admin and customer service staff faster, because the “how do I word this” guesswork is already done
- Create a teaching framework to train AI in online customer service
We covered a lot of this same ground, from setting expectations with customers to speeding up your response process, in our Online Customer Service Training Course article. Templates are really the practical, day-to-day version of that bigger customer service strategy.
How to Create an Email Template in Outlook (Classic Desktop Version)
- Open Outlook and click New Email
- Type up the message exactly as you’d want it to appear, generic customer name, generic details, and all
- Go to File > Save As
- In the “Save as type” dropdown, choose Outlook Template (*.oft)
- Give it a clear, searchable name (we like something like “Refund Policy Reply” or “Late Payment Follow-Up”) and click Save
To use it later: go to New Items > More Items > Choose Form, set the “Look In” dropdown to User Templates in File System, select your template, tweak the details for that customer, and send.
How to Do It in New Outlook or Outlook on the Web
The newer versions of Outlook (and Outlook.com) use a slightly different system called My Templates:
- Compose a new email as normal
- Go to Insert > Apps (or “Enhance Outlook with apps”) and search for My Templates
- Pin it to your ribbon so it’s there next time
- Click + Template, write your subject and body, and click Save
- Next time you need it, open a new email, click My Templates, select your saved reply, personalise it, and send
Simple as that. No add-ons, no extra software, no line item that blows out your monthly budget.
A Few Templates Every Customer Service Inbox Should Have
If you’re not sure where to start, these are the ones we see used the most:
- A welcome / thank you for your enquiry reply
- A “here’s what happens next” order or booking confirmation
- A refund or returns policy explanation
- A late payment or overdue invoice follow-up
- An out-of-office or “we’ve received your message” acknowledgement
Keep each one written in plain English, keep the tone friendly rather than corporate, and always leave a gap where you can personalise the customer’s name and specific situation. Nobody likes a reply that clearly wasn’t written for them.
Want to Get Properly Confident with Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint?
Email templates are just one small (very useful) corner of what Microsoft Outlook can do for office admin and customer service tasks, calendar management, contact and CRM tracking, and task lists are all in there too, and most people are only using a fraction of it.
If you want your whole team working faster and more consistently across the entire Microsoft Office suite, our Office Support & Administration using Microsoft Office course covers Outlook email and meeting management, contacts and CRM, and tasks, alongside practical Word and Excel skills your admin and customer service staff will use every single day.
Got a Microsoft Office, MYOB, Xero or QuickBooks question you’d like us to cover in a future post? Get in touch, we’re always keen to write about what our students actually want to know.
