A week ago I contacted my publishing company to request a new login and password because I deactivated my old e-mail address. The bottom of the email submission form page listed some basic e-mail turnaround times and operating hours. Not a terrible wait time, I thought, and thanks for setting expectations.
Fast forward 24 hours, the response read: “Go to our site, enter your User ID and we’ll send a new password to that address.” Sounds good right? But…my User ID was my old e-mail address. Strike #1. So for round 2, I was more explicit in my request.
Fast forward another 24 hours to the second response: “Go to our site, enter your User ID and we’ll send a new password to that address.”
Yep. They sent me the same response (verbatim) two days in a row. And the worst part is that this type of email “resolution” is the norm in my experience, not the exception.
Call me the jaded contact center geek, but it seems that the usefulness of email as a service channel has expired. I recognize some B2B interactions may be an exception to the rule – given more regular customer interactions – but for most service interactions, it’s a poor channel.
E-mail sounded good to me back in the mid- to late-90s when solutions providers were trying to sell the idea that e-mail would displace the phone as the primary service channel. But the realization soon hit that email is costly, time-consuming, and difficult to manage. Instead of replacing one channel with another – we simply added a new one.
That was 10-15 years ago, and I still haven’t heard of a company that has solved all of their e-mail problems. So why do companies still offer email? I’ve heard companies say, “We can handle the volume during down times” and “Our customers really like it”.
But do they? I often hear many folks actually aren’t satisfied with the speed of response, no matter how fast you get back to them! Plus, our research shows that 47% of customers are confident in the email channel (well below both phone and web self-service) & only 36% actually resolve their issue in one email.
And that resolution rate really matters – if you do the math on the email costs (labor, IT, and overhead) and multiply it times the number of contacts to resolve an issue, I’ll bet the total cost is more than you expected.
Consider my situation – I’m getting ready to send my third email to get a simple issue resolved. What if that issue was really complex? Despite any e-mail management system the company has, there is an increasing labor cost for each additional e-mail. Plus, I’m almost ready to call, which adds on the handle time of a frustrated customer.
The message here is clear: take a look at the number of e-mails to resolve an issue and customer experience scores in e-mail interactions, and do a quick check on this channel. You may just find yourself eliminating one of your channels … not adding to them.
CCC Members, check out how one of your peers was able to eliminate their costly e-mail channel – without harming customer experience metrics.
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on February 18, 2010
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I have to respectfully disagree. You are completely right that most companies do e-mail service wrong. However, your analysis and anecdote do not prove that e-mail is not a worthwhile channel. Instead, it proves that using e-mail as a channel does not excuse poor quality customer service.
The mistake is assuming that e-mail is an easy and cheap channel of contact that can implemented with a poorly conceived automated system or with little or no training for representatives.
That is just incorrect. Care representatives answering customer e-mails need to have a certain level of expertise in reading and understanding the customer e-mails and writing quality business e-mails.
So if it is not cheap and easy, why do it? Because customers demand it. Look at your own story: You have already had two poor responses and are going back for a third try, and yet you are only now thinking about calling in.
For myself, I have become so frustrated with phone customer service, that I will always try e-mail first. If a company does not offer e-mail and / or chat service, then my only call will probably be the call to end my business relationship with them.
In my humble opinion, companies should not support e-mail and live chat channels of service because it is easy or cheap or will magically replace the telephone. They should not support these channels because it can be done with little effort or forethought. They should support these channels because they will alienate potential customers if they do not.
on February 22, 2010
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Great post, and thank you for your response! I agree that email is often a mismanaged channel (as evidenced by my one example … and I have a lot more!). I wonder, though, what is the “right” way to manage this channel? In other words, what kind of skills do e-mail agents need to have? And do you need to have a snazzy e-mail management system to do this well? If you have these things (good people and system) then I’ll bet you will likely please a lot of customers … and it may be right for the business, too. But I have to wonder about the costs to do this. What if there was something that cost less, and still pleased the customer? We’ve actually found from some members that for customers who prefer e-mail, they also have almost as much preference for certain self-service options (knowledge bases, forums, etc.) … and if that’s the case, might we be able to steer those customers to those lower cost alternatives? And that could be a true win-win … customers get the information they want, without having to wait for resolution, and companies have lower cost-to-serve.
on March 19, 2010
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[...] many cases, this is not the result of a poorly built channels (though my colleague, Pete, may disagree), but rather that channels are a poor fit for individual customers at a particular [...]
on April 13, 2010
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Email is an excellent channel for customer service, but just like anything else, you have to do it right. You can’t offer it to customers and not give it the same priority that you give other channels. A call gets answered immediately. An in-person visitor is greeted as soon as they walk through your door. Email deserves the same treatment.
The keys are hiring the right people and giving those right people the right tools. Giving up on email is essentially giving up on your customers.
on April 16, 2010
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[...] Pete Slease, a Customer Contact Council member advisor, apparently doesn’t think so. On the CCC blog in February, Pete [...]
on April 20, 2010
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[...] Pete Slease, a Customer Contact Council member advisor, apparently doesn’t think so. On the CCC blog in February, Pete [...]
on November 29, 2011
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[...] about long e-mail chains, delayed responses, and unclear (or worse, scripted) information are earning e-mail a reputation of being ineffective in issue resolution. Indeed, CCC data shows that customers lack confidence in this channel’s [...]