Although it may seem as though social has made email obsolete, the number of email accounts is expected to increase from over 3.9 billion in 2013 to over 4.9 billion by the end of 2017.
With the growth of social media over recent years, it’s understandable that many businesses have started to pour their resources into social networks in an attempt to interact with customers and broaden their reach. But in order to ensure customer satisfaction, it’s important not to overlook the value of email.
And while social media has enabled consumers to publicly express joy and dissatisfaction with brands, 42 per cent of people use email as their most common channel for making a complaint.
Unfortunately, the following infographic created by numero suggests that businesses are not equipped to deal with the wealth of emails that they receive.
The Impact of Email Management In Delivering Great Service
The Growing Disconnect in Email Service
The major challenge that organizations face today is that a significant portion of customers, some studies suggesting even as high as 41%, expect an email response from service providers in less than 6 hours, however, only 36% of retailers are responding within that time frame.
This is a serious challenge since nearly two-thirds of organizations take more than eight hours to respond to customer emails, and one in four of businesses take 24 hours or more, showing that there is a lot to be done to maintain customer satisfaction and optimize the email contact channel.
At DigiCert, our technical support team aims to respond to customers in 10 minutes and we generally hit that performance metric. We figure that those first few minutes after a customer has sent an email are critical if we want to engage with a customer while the problem is still fresh in their mind. 24 hours is just too long and can pose a problem in getting accurate data as we follow up to solve a customer’s problem. We’ve found that striking while the problem is hot is really the best experience all around.
The Potential for Exceptional Experience By Optimizing Email Management
Numero’s data report shows that nearly 64% of organizations have no formal system to prioritize or categorize customer service email requests. This might be the reason why customer engagement over the channel is suffering and fails to contribute to a better customer experience.
Email management solutions, like Numero, give organizations some key advantages in deliver a better service experience through email, including:
- Higher call center efficiencies
- Reduced service team operations costs
- Higher customer engagement
- Increased customer retention rates
- Improved satisfaction scores
I’m optimistic that organizations can turn it around. A number of service providers are making it easier for organizations to leverage the power of email as a contact channel. Solution providers like Numero enable organizations to leverage CEM platforms to streamline customer contact, automate manual process, and empower service teams to deliver better customer experiences.
