Beware the vaccum: e-mail management in the age of multichannel customer service. (e-CRM).

In an age when many consumers are tied to their computers for both work and leisure, it's often easier and more efficient for customers to send an e-mail to a customer service representative to make an inquiry, report a problem or even place an order. As the sheer volume of e-mail messages proliferates and consumers become increasingly comfortable with this medium, e-mail is undeniably a crucial tool in any comprehensive customer service initiative. However, it is important to remember that e-mail communication does not happen in a vacuum. E-mail management needs to be a tightly integrated piece of a multichannel customer service strategy so that customers receive the highest quality service possible.

To shoulder the bulk of e-mail flooding their systems, many companies are looking to plug an e-mail management solution into their customer service mix, if they haven't already. Since the technology that enables contact centers and customer service departments to manage e-mail communication has been around for quite some time, most e-mail management solutions offer roughly the same range of functionality. However, the advent of the multimedia contact center has made one factor impossible to ignore: the degree to which e-mail combines with other contact center solutions channels, like voice and chat, to deliver true multichannel customer service.

Incoming!

When it comes to managing incoming messages, e-mail management solutions can feature search capabilities to ascertain the nature of a customer's query. These searches use natural language processing to perform context-based and keyword searches of the e-mail text. This is intended to determine the subject and meaning of the message. The level of confidence with which the automated search has grasped the correct meaning of the text will determine the type of response the message receives.

For example, if searches have a "confidence threshold" of 90 percent or higher, the e-mail management system might send an automated response, chosen from a knowledge base or repository of stock answers, to best address the subject of customer queries. However, if the search only yields a confidence threshold in the 70 percent range, it might route a "suggested" response to a contact center agent. 'With this functionality, an agent double-checks the e-mail, filling in gaps as necessary prior to responding.

When sending e-mail or suggested responses to agents, some inbound e-mail management solutions typically use skills-based routing procedures to scan agents pre-determined skill sets and relay e-mail messages to the agent best suited to respond, ensuring an effective and intelligent reply. For example, an e-mail from a preferred customer about a special offer gets routed to the best available agent, who has exceptional written skills and has been trained on this special offer. Routing procedures can also be established to prevent an overwhelming backlog of e-mail at times when a contact center is inundated with messages. This involves alerts to notify contact center managers of the extreme e-mail volume and automatic prioritization based on an e-mail message's time in the queue. Good e-mail technologies enable users to define and set their own rules for confidence thresholds and criteria for routing as necessary for their unique business needs.

Queue 'em Up And Send 'em Out

With the emergence of e-mail marketing, many companies require an outbound component to their e-mail management solution that enables them to proactively touch customers with notifications or promotions. To kick off an outbound campaign, the system pulls in a distribution list that may be imported from external files or culled from e-mail addresses on inbound messages. Once a distribution schedule is set, the e-mail management system begins its automatic campaign, sending e-mail to the contacts on the list.

Getting Personal

Personalization is a key feature of e-mail management solutions that many companies opt to forgo. However, by personalizing inbound and outbound e-mail campaigns, customer service departments can build a greater sense of customer intimacy with email interactions, amplifying the sense of personal service. Truth be told, e-mail personalization, which can range from using a customer's name in an e-mail to ensuring that the same agent handles all e-mail from a particular customer, is a basic technology implementation. Just because an e-mail is automated, it does not have to be impersonal.

What Time Is It? Real-Time

Reporting is critical for any contact center function, and this is certainly true of e-mail management. While it sounds elementary an important feature for e-mail management reporting is that it occur in real-rime. For example, supervisors must be kept abreast of e-mail factors such as volume, average response time and the status of individual messages. If the email volume spikes and threatens to exceed a center's capacity managers need to know about it immediately. If a center has promised responses to all e-mail within 24 hours and an e-mail has been in the system for 23 hours, managers need to know about it tight away.

None of this, of course, rakes away from the need for historical reporting, which is a different beast. Historical reporting tracks the effectiveness of e-mail customer service over time. Using this feature, managers can view statistics on topics ranging from how many email messages their centers have responded to and the number of customers that have sent multiple e-mail communications to the center (which may indicate that responses to their initial queries are nor adequate) to gain a firm grasp of the overall e-mail service operation. Historical reporting is also integral for forecasting agent workload, as it can be used to predict seasonal spikes in e-mail.

Avoiding The E-mail Silo 

Most of the features described above are standard fare for e-mail management solutions. However, the ability to mesh cohesively with other customer interaction channels will give an e-mail management solution the power it needs to be successful. Since customers use multiple channels to contact customer service departments, the most efficient contact centers will integrate those channels as if they were a single connection to the customer. An e-mail management solution that cannot interface with other customer interaction channels creates an e-mail silo. The email silo exists in its own world with a completely separate set of customer information, detached from other customer service functions. The following scenario illustrates the consequences of this approach.

During the afternoon, loyal customer John Q. Public e-mails Acme Company's customer service department to report a problem. The e-mail is routed to an appropriate agent with a suggested response, and the agent is able to easily resolve Mr. Public's issue. For the rime being, he is satisfied. But on the commute home that evening, he has a follow-up question, pulls our his mobile phone and dials the customer service department. When he describes his query to the agent fielding the call, the agent informs him that the original problem was never remedied, even though the problem was solved hours previously. John Q. Public, who had been under the correct impression that the problem had been fixed, is confused and begins to panic because he now believes the issue is still outstanding. He also is irate, feeling that Acme Company's customer service department is unreliable and nor trustworthy.

How did years of customer loyalty possibly disappear in a matter of seconds? Acme Company implemented an e-mail management solution that was isolated from its contact center's telephone system. All information regarding e-mail communication with customers is housed apart from all other customer service data, and takes a day or more to be uploaded to the main customer information system. In quickly and efficiently responding to John Q. Public's mail-based query, Acme Company executed customer service at its finest. However, because this information was nor available to the agent handling Mr. Public's secondary inquiry, an inbound call, the agent inadvertently botched the contact and ruined the positive impact of the e-mail dialog. This damaged Acme Company's credibility and narrowed the opportunity to generate revenue from John Q. Public in the future.

Tying It Together: The Universal Queue

To avoid this scenario, businesses must blend all of their customer interaction channels, including e-mail, so that information is easily shared -- the right hand must know what the left is doing. To achieve this fusion of channels, e-mail management solutions, and indeed all other customer contact media, should have the ability to be routed through a single universal queue.

The universal queue is a method for routing inbound and outbound communications in a contact center. As contacts enter the universal queue, they are prioritized based on the business rules pre-determined by users and the skill sets of available agents regardless of the channel. This enables the contact center to create or modify business rules in a single place and have them apply to all channels of communication.

For instance, if several e-mail messages, inbound calls, chat queries and outbound calls are waiting in the queue and an agent with superior e-mail skills is free, an e-mail on hold will be routed to that agent. If moments later an agent with telephone skills becomes available, an outbound call might be sent in his/her direction. In another scenario, users have defined business rules stating that inbound calls can be on hold no longer than 45 seconds. When agents become available, calls that have been on hold for close to the time limit will be routed to them, even if there are outbound calls, e-mail and chat queries waiting in queue. Later, if the inbound call load is more manageable, the rules might dictate that idle agents respond to e-mail that has been in queue for over five hours.

A universal queue allows contact centers to blend e-mail with other interaction channels to form the cohesiveness necessary to conduct premium customer service. In a contact center comprised of disparate point solutions, inbound and outbound calls will all too often rake precedence over e-mail, leading to unsatisfactory e-mail response times and disgruntled customers. The universal queue gives supervisors more power to adjust agent workflow across different interaction channels to most efficiently handle their customer contact needs.

Using a universal queue enables the unification of interaction channels, allowing a customer service department to gather all customer interaction information -- whether it be gleaned from an e-mail dialog, an incoming call, an outbound call or a chat session -- in a single place. This centralized information creates a complete view of customers regardless of whether the interaction was typed on a keyboard or spoken through a telephone receiver. Now when John Q. Public calls Acme Company, having already e-mailed it earlier in the day, the agent answering the call will be aware of the e-mail dialog and better suited to offer him topnotch service.

In The End

To find an e-mail solution that is integrated with other communication channels, there are two choices: purchasing a unified solution, or buying separate "point solutions." Unified solutions often offer simpler, faster implementation, and can help significantly reduce complexity by eliminating the need to manually tie together and manage disparate solutions. Choose an e-mail management solution that covers all the basics, from Web self service to real-time reporting. But beware... don't let e-mail solutions exist in a vacuum. To implement an effective and productive multimedia customer service initiative, be sure to integrate e-mail with other customer interaction channels. The results can be astounding, and the payoff can positively and profoundly impact your business.

Ralph Breslauer is an executive vice president at Concerto Software (www.concerto.com). Concerto Software provides contact center solutions that help companies more effectively manage customer interactions via voice, fax, e-mail and the Web.