The email volumes have grown and the organisation has responded accordingly by scaling the agent population to handle the demand. But how do you recognise the symptoms? A simple examination of your agent team size will immediately reveal the issue:
- 1,000 emails per week number of agents 3 to 5 1 with SmartAgént
- 2,000 emails per week number of agents 6 to 10 1 with SmartAgént
- 2,500 emails per week number of agents 8 to 10 1 with SmartAgént
- 5,000 emails per week number of agents 18 2 with SmartAgént
- Above 5,000 number of agents ??
Based on an average full loaded UK agent cost of £22,000, the costs (and savings) will be readily apparent.
Now it could be that you are an existing user of an earlier email management system. If so, we would naturally expect the agent productivity to be higher than the above. Nonetheless, the savings will still be considerable (please refer to the ROI and the document: Low Entry Cost Systems may not be what they seem!).
In summary, the objective of an automated email response solution is the provision of a scaleable technology platform that reduces contact centre costs (through reductions in agent numbers; this reduction is usually actioned by via the re deployment of the staff to the telephony channel) and support business growth independent of the agent team size.
Of course, your organisation may believe that an alternative strategy would be to offshore your email response handling requirement and indeed, this approach may be valid too. However, we believe that demonstrable business issues still exist with this approach and furthermore, independent detailed cost analyses demonstrate that SmartAgént will still provide a lower cost platform than an offshore set up with a personal desktop solution or a first generation application (please ask for further details). Naturally, the lowest cost solution will be SmartAgént operated from a low cost labour economy.