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Incoming emails : an essential contribution to customer relations; helps reduce costs and improve customer satisfaction
The incoming email is an often neglected channel because it is deemed to be less effective overall than the telephone. Primary objections are economic ones:
- It is true, the productivity of email activity, is sometimes lesser than what can be observed via the telephone.
- Email can also seem less efficient because it generates repeat contacts. Customers respond to customer service replies to ask for more information, thus causing much greater costs.
- Contrary to the telephone, email does not allow for obtaining returns on telephone taxes paid by the customer.
- Lastly, this channel does not, according to its detractors, create a possibility for additional sales.
These objections stem from a common origin: email is not handled as well as the telephone because the telephone has had years of experience.
However, this channel contains numerous inherent advantages, making it a key tool for customer relations.
Cost Advantages
- Email is available to
24/7 from anywhere in the world. Experience has shown that 35% of emails are sent outside of the normal hours for telephone customer service, which proves that the need is real.
- Costs are reduced for the customer. In a context of growing resistance to overtaxed services, email may mean the loss of some commissions but improvements in customer loyalty in the long run.
- Email leaves a trace for the customer. It resembles in this sense traditional postal mail, which remains important in a country with a longstanding tradition for writing.
- Lastly, email makes it possible to distribute complex information, for example, sending user’s manuals or links to online content.
Productivity and Cost Advantages
With an optimized system, an operator should be able to treat many more mails per hour
than he could telephone calls. The advantage to productivity is from 10 to 60% depending
upon the tools implemented. This increase is explained by improved customer demand analysis
but also by formulated responses, particularly thanks to libraries of email templates.
Email also allows for notable flexibility in organization. It allows for smooth
customer service activity while increasing teams’ rate of utilization. It is also especially easy
to out-source; there is no telephone connection to establish, nor problems relating to speakers’ accents…
Lastly, email is an often-neglected advantage, but it can be instrumental in avoiding
numerous useless contacts due to its coupling with the Internet interface. The customer
or prospect being already on the web, it is easy to offer him help pages or redirect him
to other online services. There is very little risk of increasing the number of contacts,
therefore, when a company installs a mail channel.
Increase sales
The incoming email channel allows new contacts to be generated from customers who would not
have picked up the phone. This channel can also translate to respectable sales, if the contacts
are handled within 24 hours. Combined with other channels, email is particularly effective. Re-contacting
a potential prospect by telephone can produce excellent results, for example
A few helpful hints for email (list not exhaustive…)
- Consider the customer’s path , and Internet kinematics
Kinematics on the Internet is particularly important. It must be designed for requests to be
re-directed online if possible, thus decreasing the number of incoming contacts.
This reduction can, with solid expertise, exceed 50%!
Forms are a key link in mail channel efficiency. They allow for precise qualification of
customer requests but also an efficient routing of email internally, within the organization.
- Implement a system of email management
Efficient email management requires specific tools. Tools such as Eptica automate the
treatment of mails while guaranteeing effective piloting, quality service and high productivity.
Effective routing is the key to efficient processing. It limits the transfer of
mails from one service to another, which can both create costs and delays.
- Ask yourself the internal organization question: team polyvalence or specialization?
There is no one correct response to this question; it depends on the volume to
be treated but also on the nature of the field involved. Only an ad hoc study can provide the answer.
- Implement a quality control system with customer satisfaction surveys
Systematically including a link to a customer satisfaction survey lets the customer or
prospect grade the responses he receives. As a result, customer satisfaction is increased
while the number of repeat contacts, which is to say the number of requests treated over
several occasions, decreases
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Management of Incoming Emails
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