What Have We Learnt From Our Email Mistakes?

Paul White looks at how our email mistakes can help us improve overall channel performance.

Not so long ago, email promised a revolution in customer service – rather than incurring call costs, sitting in long queues on hold or getting frustrated at complex IVR menus, customers would be able to send an email at a time that suited them and wait for a response from the contact centre agent.

However, it never really worked out that way, as too few companies geared up to properly manage email as a customer service channel and their processes remained unchanged and their technology inadequate. This resulted in emails going unanswered and response times sometimes reaching up to two weeks, meaning customers reverted to voice-based channels.

New channels are promising a revolution in customer service

A decade or so on, new channels, such as social media and webchat, are promising a revolution in customer service, with voice-based channels starting to fall, down from 79% of UK inbound requests in 2011 to just over 70% in 2014 and set to continue to fall over the next 5 years.

Meanwhile, the total volume of text-based interactions is growing rapidly, predicted to account for around 67% of inbound requests by 2020. While the danger is that it will meet the same fate as email, there is no reason for this to be the case. These new text-based channels can improve customer service, contact centre performance and agent productivity, if implemented properly.

What we are seeing when we analyse email, chat and social requests in a typical call centre is an awful lot of really simple stuff – high-volume, transactional enquiries, whether they be cancelling subscriptions, checking opening hours or checking stock availability, etc. In many organisations, there are typically 3 or 4 categories of requests which account for over 60% of all text interactions.

NLP can provide the best possible response to the customer

One way to better manage the volume of text-based enquiries via channels such as email, social and chat is through NLP (natural language processing) technology. This is able to identify and classify all those simple text-based interactions and provide the best possible response to the customer. Embedded workflow functionality can automatically action customer requests, for example password resets or form requests – eliminating the need for human interaction.

While the high majority of simple, text-based enquiries are answered through automation, the system can identify more complex enquiries and route them to the best agent to deal with them. This blended automated and assisted response approach allows business to better manage text-based channels alongside call volumes.

Although many companies may not have put the right technology and processes in place to handle email enquiries effectively in their contact centre the first time round, it is important for organisations to be prepared for this channel transition. They should not only be able to offer their customers access to the channels they demand but have the technology in place to be able to effectively manage the increase in text-based customer enquiries.

With thanks to Paul White at mplsystems