InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
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April 9, 2001 |
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Customer Service
Customers Get The Message
E-mail makes a great communication channel, but it creates new challenges for customer service. Businesses must be aware of the differences between verbal and written communication, the inherent time lag between E-mails, and how to handle contacts.
By James K. Watson Jr., Frank Meister, and Joe Fenner
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| More on online customer service |
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Poll: Clicks-And-Mortars Give Best Online Service |
growing number of businesses are opening new channels of communications with customers. Customer self-service Web sites, E-mail, chat, and wireless channels are providing better, more-targeted customer service. Many companies are starting to transform their conventional call centers into virtual contact centers to handle all of these interactions consistently--and in a way that's transparent to the customer.
For many businesses, one of the more difficult channels through which to service customers is one of the simplest technologies to implement: E-mail. The challenge of providing customer service via E-mail is less about technology and more about human factors and the staggering volume of queries.
Doculabs and the University of Illinois at Chicago recently conducted a series of case studies in the financial-services industry to better understand the challenges that companies face as they adopt emerging technologies for customer service.
The study suggests that E-mail is the No. 1 concern because of its impact on the way customer-service representatives work.
Three issues are of particular concern to survey participants:
- Differences between written and verbal communication skills
- The asynchronous communication lag
- How to handle many-to-many relationships.
Everybody realizes that there are differences between written and verbal communications. For a customer-service representative, verbal communication skills matter most. Good representatives address the customer by name and use voice inflection to communicate tone and mood. But in the realm of E-mail, tone is completely lost, making clarity just as important as sentence structure, grammar, and punctuation. In addition, people expect E-mail to be short and to the point, so brevity and effective summarization are critical skills.
In reality, few people are equally strong in both verbal and written communication in general, never mind the nuances required for E-mail writing.
In a customer-service center, does it make sense to use specialists to handle different channels? Or is it still preferable to use the same representatives for multiple channels, opting to give the customer a consistent point of contact?
Most companies are creating dedicated teams to handle E-mail requests. But given that getting "bounced around" among different representatives is such a common customer complaint, it makes sense to focus on skills development for all customer-service representatives. If a customer wants to work with the same rep over the phone as he or she does via E-mail or chat, shouldn't companies try to cater to those needs?
The customer-service representative for the New Economy will be equipped to handle multiple channels of customer contact. While communicating effectively via different channels may seem to require specialized skills, these skills are necessary for any generalist who handles incoming requests in a virtual contact center.
In fact, communicating professionally with customers should be a companywide priority. This requires that the entire business focus on how it presents itself across multiple channels, which means adopting policies for professionalism and writing standards for E-mail communications as well as more formal business documents.
Another major challenge with servicing customers via E-mail is the asynchronous nature of electronic messaging. On the phone, two people can engage in a quick back-and-forth exchange to get to the root of a problem or issue. Having the same conversation via E-mail can take a lot more time and what seems like many more discrete exchanges to finally reach a resolution. Sending E-mails back and forth asking, "What do you mean?" seems counterproductive to some observers.
This problem is compounded by the length of time that can elapse between E-mail interactions, and the fact that many customers review their E-mail sporadically. Thus, if a customer-service exchange requires six E-mails during the course of two days, the lack of immediacy in reaching a resolution seems highly inefficient.
Still, those customers who choose to use E-mail aren't likely to appreciate an E-mail response that tells them to call a toll-free number.
The key here is to respond quickly, try to handle a request through the customer's chosen medium, and be as brief and clear as possible in order to reduce the back-and-forth that may arise.
Many companies are experimenting with automated responses to inbound E-mail inquiries. For example, vendors such as Brightware, eGain Communications, and Kana Communications offer tools that not only handle automated responses based on rules, but can also trigger requests to customer-service reps to initiate outbound calls back to the customer.
While such technologies can be helpful in addressing response immediacy, customer-service departments should use this option judiciously because canned responses, or requests that the customer fill out a Web form or call the toll-free number, may be too light on information for many customers' needs.
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