Today, our customers demand to be able to transact business with our organisation through a number of different communication channels and email is just one of these styles. We have an efficient call centre that can handle telephony calls well. However, our customers have high expectations of our service and they expect to be able to “talk” to us via email too.

This contact style is based on a “fire and forget” mentality. Often, the inbound email arrives during the evening when the Contact Centre is closed. Nonetheless, not only do our customers expect a timely and accurate response, but they also expect that the message is actioned promptly and the transactions closed off very quickly (in less than 24 hours).

The ability of our organisation to handle these transactions is questionable. But why is this?

• Handling written communications requires skilled agents; this is not the same problem as a telephony call!
• Distributing the email is laborious and cumbersome; each morning, the call centre managers have to distribute the emails manually across the Microsoft Exchange environment
• Compiling the response is time consuming because the agent has to check several back office systems (e.g. the order and despatch systems) to build their response
• Managing the workload is not easy; there is no indication of the agent work queue, no management information exists on work rate, queues, work outstanding load
• Controlling the email work practise is difficult; there is no centralised storage of the emails; the emails are distributed to each agents personal desktop and the handling is based on the agents personal preferences; the final result of the communication is not kept on a centralised, secure and managed system nor can a corporate style be ensured
• Monitoring outbound quality is not possible; this lack of control raises serious quality issues
• Complying with regulatory requirements is difficult (if not impossible) because there is no trace of the email transaction and the customers email resides on an agents local pc; this leads to significant concerns over statutory compliance
• Auditing the systems is inherently inadequate; there is no centralised location of all emails; no history is retained and there are no policies for the management of these transactions.

These difficulties mean that the costs of handling the email communication are significantly higher than expected. Today, an email costs about £1.75p (loaded cost of £21,000 pa) to process whilst a telephony call is of the order of £0.85p.

The types of inbound email seen by our business are: Order Delivery Enquiry, Faulty / Missing Goods, Complaints, Duplicates, Unallocated, Order Cancellation, Sales / Product Enquiry, Order Status Enquiry, Order Amendment, Returns / Collections, FAQ, Refunds & Exchanges, Order General Query, Multiples, Thank You, Order Payments, Online Credit Check Failure, and Others.

These email types are the same standard business transactions that are seen in the telephony side.