Recommended: System Errors? Click here to Fix your PC »
Conducted and compiled in the December 2006 - March 2007 timeframe, the surveyincluded 125 major UK companies across an array of industry sectors. Analysts posedas prospective customers and sent emails requesting information on high-valueproducts and services through web forms or email addresses published on company websites. The companies were then evaluated on the speed and quality of theirresponses(1).
The study also revealed a number of other shortcomings. Two-thirds of the companies(67%) failed to respond within 24 hours, widely regarded as the minimum requiredservice level for email queries in many industry sectors. This is a downturn from2004, when only 52% of the companies failed to respond within 24 hours. Furthermore,only 19% of responding companies provided accurate responses, which clearly meansthat speed often came at the expense of quality. Only 18% of companies sent anautomatic acknowledgement as an initial response to the customer's email, a simplebest practice used to set customer expectations. This is again a decline from a 20%auto-acknowledgement rate in 2004.
The telecommunications sector performed the worst with 58% of companies ignoringemails. Of those that did reply, almost half delivered "poor" or "fair" responses.The retail sector was the best overall performer in responsiveness, giving some kindof answer to 70% of the emails. However, only 49% of retail responses were rated"good."
The financial services sector, which often involves time-critical interactions,posted a drastic decline in performance, with only 14% of companies respondingwithin an hour, compared to 54% in 2004. When evaluated in a 24-hour time horizon,only 37% of companies responded in that timeframe, versus 46% in 2004. Of thoseorganisations that did reply within 24 hours, one in three (31%) were categorised as"fair" or "poor." Additionally, only 11% of companies sent auto-acknowledgements,again a decline from 23% in 2004.
The study also included an in-depth analysis of the travel and local governmentsectors.
"The lack of importance placed on customer emails is a worrisome trend. Given theincreasing popularity of electronic channels with customers, this downward trend inemail customer service responsiveness and quality is shocking," commented AndrewMennie, General Manager and Vice President EMEA eGain. "The failings uncovered bythis research, as well as the gulf developing between the best and worst performers,indicates potential for improvement. UK companies in financial services and othersectors must make strides to improve email customer service to stay competitive," heconcluded.
About eGain
eGain (OTCBB: EGAN) is a leading provider of customer service and contact centresoftware for in-house or on-demand deployment. Trusted by prominent enterprisesworldwide, eGain has been helping businesses achieve and sustain customer serviceexcellence for more than a decade. The world's largest companies rely on eGain totransform their traditional call centres, help desks, and web customer serviceoperations into multichannel customer interaction hubs. These hubs enabledramatically improved customer experience, unified multichannel customer service,end-to-end service process efficiencies, and enhanced contact center performance.
eGain Service 7 is the industry's most comprehensive customer interaction hubsoftware suite and the first solution to support short message service (SMS)customer service interactions, as well as next-generation web self-service, chat,cobrowsing, email, fax, postal mail, notification management, call tracking andresolution, knowledge management, and service fulfillment.
eGain Service is built on eGain CIHÂ Platform, the industry's most comprehensive,integrated and flexible customer interaction hub platform. Based on a 100% J2EEarchitecture, it includes out-of-the-box integration with leading businessapplications, content management systems, and call centre infrastructure solutions.With its fine-grained service-oriented architecture (SOA), eGain CIH platformenables rapid development of powerful applications. Additional information on eGainService can be found at: http://www.egain.com/products/ multichannel_service.asp
eGain OnDemandÂ, the industry's first-ever on-demand eService software, is a proven,robust and scalable solution that has been used by companies of all sizes, in thelast eight years, to rapidly build customer interactions hubs. Additionalinformation on eGain OnDemand can be found at:http://www.egain.com/produ cts/on_demand.asp
Headquartered in Mountain View, California, eGain has an operating presence in 18countries and serves over 800 enterprise customers worldwide. To find out more abouteGain, visit www.eGain.com or call the company's offices: London: +44 (0) 1753464646; Dublin: +353 1 8472290; United States: +1 800 821 4358.
(1) Rating methodology: Response times were grouped into seven categories:
-- No response-- < 1 hour-- 1 - 24 hours-- 24 - 36 hours-- 48 hours-- No email facility
The quality of response was grouped into five categories: -- Good: accurate and complete response-- Fair: the response contained some information, but required researchers to clickon links for more details-- Poor: the response contained some information, but asked researchers to call aphone number to get the answer-- Unrelated: answer unrelated to question-- No reply
Media contactseGain UKKerry Hallard / Nicola CraftBuffalo Communications LtdTel: +44 (0) 207 292 8680Email: egain@buffalo.co.uk
Melody CurtiseGain Communications LtdTel: +44 (0) 1753 464687Email: mcurtis@egain.com
