Managing email inquiries is a problem many companies simply don’t realize they have. An inability to manage inbound emails causes organizations to miss sales opportunities and deliver poor service to existing customers. How many inbound email messages does your company get daily and what is your response time?

One article stated that “…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.” Unfortunately, the 51% of companies not responding to customer service inquiries that we noted here, is on a steady decline. A follow-up study, again by Hornstein Associates, reported that in 2009, just 45% of companies responded to customer service inquiries within 24 hours.

Bold Software customers effectively utilizing Email Management are able to simply and effectively route emails into the correct workflow. This post illustrates two typical customers who use Email Management in their daily operations.

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As the methods by which website owners communicate with their visitors have grown, we became increasingly aware that our flagship product name, “BoldChat” was only partially descriptive of the technologies we sell and our customers use.  But that’s only one reason we chose to launch BoldCCM as a better way to communicate our suite offerings which integrate live chat, click-to-call, email management, and remote control capabilities.

The second reason came from macro-market forces which continue to redefine how businesses interact with their customers.  The dialogue generally revolves around convergence, integration, and single contact resolution (for both sales and support).  We thought, therefore, that a new name – one that embraced this holistic view of customer interaction – was needed.  BoldCCM was born.

CCM stands for:

Customer
Communication
Management

Two product offerings bear this name which means they both offer users the ability to interact with website visitors in multiple ways.  You can learn more about these products and the benefits of integrated website communication management by following the link.

For months now, the economy has challenged businesses of all sizes to pull out every cliché they can muster. It seems every marketing department is chasing “low-hanging fruit” while business development professionals are busy with “synergistic win-win relationships.”

Meanwhile, IT departments are looking for “best practices” that will “increase efficiency” while executive teams are encouraging “paradigm shifting organizational changes.”

Though it may be counterintuitive, we think that enterprise-sized e-tailers can save money by thinking inside the box. Here’s what we mean:

Consolidate Communications: We know from our own proprietary research that a website visitor’s communication technology preference is dependent upon where they are in the buying process. In a given moment then, there are people on your site who want to chat with you, initiate a click to call with you, email you, be actively assisted, or have no communication with you at all. Putting each of these communication methods into its own box and under its own management is wasteful. Enterprises should consolidate all of these methods under one umbrella with the same interface and staff. We recently launched an integrated suite to accomplish just that. Learn more about BoldCCM.

Get in the Driver’s Seat: Taking control over your own live chat, click-to-call and email management solution is valuable to an enterprise for two reasons. First, it saves money in the short-run because it avoids costly fees associated with ongoing professional services engagements. Secondly, it enables companies to build intellectual capital around an increasingly important competency. We recommend, at least, that firms develop a working knowledge of live chat reporting metrics and proactive invitation logic.

One Chat Resolution: Many enterprises who utilize live chat for support should consider an active co-browsing or full remote control capability. If your product line is complicated or if you sell computer-related items, the ability to actively view and interact with a target customer’s PC could allow you to resolve their buying or support issue in one session. This not only provides a positive experience for the customer, but avoids costly escalations.

How quickly do you respond to sales inquiries that arrive via email? How about support issues? Stop for a minute and really think about your answer to these questions. Can you quantify them? If phrases like, “pretty fast” and “we’re not so bad” are the best you can do, then you’re like most companies.

In fact, you might be better than most. A study of small and medium-sized North American companies revealed that 51% of businesses never responded to emails with high-value purchase intent. A more recent study by Hornstein Associates shows a steady decline in customer service response rates since 2002. In 2007, only 33% of companies responded to emails sent to customer service within 24 hours, down almost half from a high of 63% in 2002.

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As the saying goes, “necessity is the mother of invention.”  And with economic downturns, companies face that necessity and are driven to improve efficiency and reduce costs (hopefully without sacrificing their brands in the process.)

With that in mind, here are 5 technologies that may be helpful for your business in a tight economy:

5. Pitchengine:  Pitchengine is a great way to publish your own press releases, for free, and have them indexed by search engines quickly. PR is valuable, but can be expensive and Pitchengine provides an inexpensive option for self-managed PR.  If you have to make cuts to your PR budget, Pitchengine can help you keep PR alive during the downturn.

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If someone gave you a hammer and said, “Build a house,” you could probably get it done. It wouldn’t be efficient, it would take longer and cost more, and you are likely to only discover issues that can’t be fixed quickly with just a hammer. But if the only tool you knew was a hammer, you might not even know how to start finding a better tool. What options exist? Where do I look? What are they called?

Your email situation in this metaphor is the house, and Microsoft Outlook is the hammer, and solving the problem is tough because there is no standard name for products like BoldMail that help you manage email in a team environment far more effectively.

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