80% of the all questions you're asked can be answered in 20% of the time by referring people to a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page on your website. If you aren't using one of these work-saving tools, here's how you do it.

1. Capture the Questions. Ask the person who answers your phone, "What are the main questions people call about?" Ask the person who sorts your e-mail, "What questions keep popping up again and again?" Keep a list for a week. This isn't the time to filter them into important/unimportant or frequent/infrequent. Just list them.
2. Sort the Questions. Now analyse the list and try to sort questions. You'll find (if you're normal) that 80% of the time people are asking the same five or 10 or 15 questions. Sure, they phrase them differently, but they involve the same information. (If you're not normal, be sure not to tell anyone!) Sort by frequency, not importance. A question becomes important to you by the very fact that it takes up your time to keep answering it. Now select the most frequently asked questions for inclusion.
3. Rephrase the Questions. Find the most common way that your customers ask a question, and frame it using the words they would use. Avoid questions and answers being technical gobbledy-gook that leaves users saying, "Huh?" The point is not to impress industry insiders, but to communicate to your newbie customers. If you must use technical vocabulary, link technical jargon words to a glossary that defines them. You'll only save time answering e-mail if people understand what you're talking about in the FAQ.
4. Answer the Questions. Now phrase a clear, concise answer to these common questions. Avoid confusing technical language. Provide the answer that 80% of the people need to know, and stop.
5. Arrange the Questions. Which questions should be first? 80% of me wants to say that the first question should be the most frequently asked question. But 20% of me realises that a FAQ is really an educational document. Some people will become acquainted with your product or discipline or industry by reading the FAQ. So 20% of the time you'll probably want to start with the most basic question and work up to the most technical, defining terms as you go.
6. Make your FAQ easy to navigate. You aren't finished when you turn this into a Web page. You also need to make it easy to scan. People who are looking for answers don't want to read 80% of the FAQ before they arrive at their question. List the questions at the top of the page, and provide links so your customers can jump to the answers (with questions repeated) farther down the page (or on other Web pages if you have lots of questions or many long answers).
7. Link to the FAQ from your home page. You'll probably want to link your newly-written FAQ from your home page. A well-written FAQ is destined to be one of your most popular pages. Make it easy to find.
8. Hyperlink your answers to action pages. Once you've answered your customer's question, you'll want to move her towards taking action. Do they need to purchase an accessory to solve the problem? Provide a link to the product page where it can be ordered immediately.

But 20% of the people will probably e-mail you anyway. They just don't get it, didn't find it, or are generally dense. And 80% of them will probably e-mail you asking one of your Frequently Asked Questions.
Let your FAQ do double duty. Prepare standard text files preloaded with answers to the questions you are commonly asked. After completing the online FAQ, copy and paste each question and answer into one of these boilerplate files which can be easily used to reply to e-mailed questions. Be sure to personalise the answer just a bit so your customer feels like you're really listening, and be sure to read through the entire e-mailed question so you can fill in a couple of applications that the e-mail boilerplate doesn't cover (the other 20%).