ICMI's Customer Management Insight - September 2007 - (Page 6) TECHNOLOGY BY GREG LEVIN for directors, managers, analysts and technology managers M CONTINUED FROM COVER and strategies to email. Commenting on the latter problem, the people at call center software provider eGain say in their whitepaper, “Mission-Critical Email Customer Service”: “A spike in phone calls in a call center can, at worst, result in unacceptable levels of abandoned calls — an undesirable outcome, but not a persistent one. On the other hand, thousands of emails that remain unanswered during holiday season cannot be wished away by the customer service team — they must be responded to, or the customer on the other end stays on ‘hold’ indefinitely. ” And poor email handling often affects more than just the customer directly involved; in this era of rapid-fire electronic communication and the blog, perturbed customers have made a sport of sharing with the world their negative service experiences. Because email transactions with a company are documented, it is particularly easy for customers to reveal in detail an agent’s or company’s service shortcomings. This, of course, can cause public relation nightmares, permanently damaged reputations, and the defection of more than just a few customers. ATTRIBUTES OF THE MASTERS Successfully handling customer email contacts, while a challenge, is certainly not impossible. Numerous call centers have slain — or at least tamed — the email ogre and today provide consistently efficient email support with quality. Though these organizations differ in regard to specific industry, call center size, contact types and volume, and customer demands and expectations, there are several attributes and practices they all have in common with regard to email management. icmi’s insight www.icmi.com | SEPTEMBER 2007 6 http://www.icmi.com
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