E-mail Overload on the Agent Desktop: How to avoid overload
1 Sep, 2004
By: Anand Ranthidevan,Leslie O’Flahavan,Marilynne RudickAn overflowing e-mail inbox is no longer limited to busy executives and their administrative assistants. It has permeated across all levels of our businesses and into our everyday lives. Some don’t mind the volumes and others may even welcome the distraction, but in the case of contact center agents who are tasked with providing fast and effective customer service, e-mail overload can negatively impact both productivity and customer satisfaction. Something as innocuous as a few spam e-mails or jokes forwarded by friends can disrupt the quality of response your contact center agents provide.
Critical Communication Channel
E-mail volume has increased, not just because it is cost-effective, but also because many customers prefer to use it rather than waiting on hold. Because e-mail has become as ubiquitous as the phone itself,smart contact centers are embracing the channel and establishing structured e-mail management systems rather than viewing e-mail as a necessary agent evil. The key is for contact centers need to use tools and mechanisms to help manage incoming e-mails, to ensure that agents respond accurately to priority customer e-mails.
This is best done by deploying an e-mail response management system. Regardless of the specific tool selected, the critical first step is to understand the generic process of managing e-mail overload.
E-mail Management Process
The fundamental concept behind any e-mail management process is to filter out and categorize e-mails before they get to the agent. Based on a set of standard parameters, each e-mail should be routed automatically to the right agent or team within the contact center. With this initial filtering and routing in place, contact centers should then use the features available in most e-mail management systems to monitor the effectiveness of e-mail handling, applying corrective actions by a process of constant learning.
Identify E-mail Categories
E-mails that come into your contact center would obviously include customer communications—feedback, information requests and complaints. Agents also receive personal e-mails as well as internal e-mails from within the organization—from supervisors, colleagues and the HR department, among others. While most internal e-mails are business-oriented, some inevitably include personal notes as well. Another common e-mail category, and often the leading cause of distraction, is junk or spam e-mails sent from outside the contact center. These e-mails typically go to the same e-mail addresses that your customers use to communicate with you. By first identifying these broad categories, you can help plan how to set up your e-mail filters and the particular team structure into which you can divide your contact center agents.
Tackle Spam First
Junk e-mails that are spammed to contact center e-mail aliases pose a particular problem since they come disguised as customer communications. The best starting point is to create a specific “team” in your e-mail management system called the “Spam Team” and ensure that the very first filter that you run on all incoming e-mails is the Spam filter. Your e-mail management system vendor should be able to provide you with the basic set of rules and logic that go into any Spam filter. These typically include known Spam domains, as well as specific keywords and the use of symbols in the e-mail “from” field. Among the most common of these are: sales, $, success, !!, as well as adult content keywords.
Identifying and routing Spam e-mails to a “Spam Team” allows you to assign specific agents and/or e-mail administrators to monitor the e-mails in that particular mailbox, and then either block certain domains altogether, move non-spam back to the next filter step or improve the spam filter rules configured in the system.
Regardless of your best efforts, the ingenuity of spammers means that some junk e-mail will get through to your agents. Creating a category called “Spam” in your e-mail management system will allow agents to route such e-mails back to the “Spam Team”. An administrator can then analyze these specific e-mails that slipped through the net and make appropriate modifications to the spam filters.
Filter Internal and Personal E-mails
There are multiple approaches to handling personal and internal e-mails—including those from supervisors and other departments in the organization, as well as those exchanged among contact center agents. One approach is to separate your internal e-mail system from the e-mail management system that you use to manage customer communications. Another approach is to allow internal e-mails to also use the same system, but to filter and route them to a different folder or even an entirely separate mailbox.
A radical approach would be to block all internal e-mail communications. However, that can adversely affect your ability to communicate with your contact center agents and also prevent necessary formal and informal exchanges among the agent community. Furthermore, blocking all internal emails would effectively block critical customer communication that is forwarded (or transferred/assigned) from one agent or team to another. It is thus important that the e-mail management system you deploy is able to differentiate such forwarded or transferred e-mails from regular internal and personal e-mail communications.
Retain Customer-Agent Associations
It is common to take longer to read and respond to a query when there is no familiarity with the sender. This is especially true for the contact center agent. E-mail overload increases when it takes agents longer to effectively respond to e-mails; it descreases when they are able to quickly resolve the customer query. Contact centers should utilize the filtering and routing capabilities of the e-mail management system to identify and retain customer-to-agent associations, or next best, customer-to-team associations.
Sidebar: Email in Your Center
In today’s environment, email is a necessary tool. However, many agents have become overloaded with email messages, and not just those from customers. On any given day, agents receive countless internal emails from other agents, referring agents, executives, managers, supervisors, friends as well as legal, HR, marketing and other departments outlining new policies and procedures. Here’s what some of you are telling us about email now and in the future.
“Email is necessary, to be sure, but I’m not sure it’s evil, if it’s managed properly. A typical contact center environment is extremely fast-paced, and e-mail is an effective way to distribute valuable information to the floor, including key metrics. The liability of e-mail is when it’s used in place of face-to-face personal communication, so vital when it comes to developing and coaching front-line reps, for example. It can be a crutch, and that’s a trap that we all fall into from time to time.” – Michael Bruno – Founder and Managing Partner, Dialogue Partners, Memphis, TN.
“Generally the only favorable e-mail handling I''''ve seen was almost by accident where it went to a single person at a small company who just happened to be good at responding. I have encountered a couple of manufacturing companies who did a pretty good job for ordering parts. In general the companies that use forms on the web to classify the e-mail and route it directly to the right department do a better job than those using an e-mail link on the web site.
To be most effective, contact centers need to first, develop a strategy that treats e-mail as a unique communication channel with it''''s own SLAs (service level agreements). Second, use workforce management software to determine the workload requirements for e-mail, and schedule accordingly to handle that load. Third, determine the skills necessary on the part of the agent to respond to e-mail in a way that sends out the kind of image of your company that you desire (i.e., correct spelling and grammar, professional style, and so on). Finally, schedule e-mail to be distributed to agents with the right skills and use a tracking tool to validate turnaround times are meeting SLAs.” – Mark Stanley, Principal, Crestview Consulting, Inc. XXX, CA
“[Email] can be overwhelming if it’s not managed properly. Our staff doesn’t feel as though it’s a logjam. Maybe that’s because our department provided training to use time management when reading/organizing e-mail and to adhere to the company policy for no “personal” e-mail. We also provide a PC for personal e-mail and Internet use before and after shifts or during lunch periods.” - Georgeanne Pellettieri, Director of Advocate Health Care’s HealthAdvisor Contact Center, Downers Grove, IL.
1. What do you think the root cause is – for example, does the overload stem from too many personal emails, improper email standards, ineffective email management system, or is it an inability to manage essential and non-essential information? Maybe all of the above?
2. Have you seen any center that has tackled and adeptly conquered the agent email overload? How’s that being done?
3. How can and should email communication be streamlined to give agents maximum time with customers?
4. What’s do you think the future of email communication in the contact center?
5. Where can people go for help in managing this growing issue?
Work Your FAQs Harder, Not Your Agents
By Leslie O’Flahavan and Marilynne Rudick
You''ve hired more customer service agents; they are working overtime. Despite this, callers in queue are waiting twice as long as the service agreement specifies, and the volume of e-mail is growing exponentially. Regardless of how you staff, you can''t keep up. What''s the solution? Hire more agents? Outsource?
How about working your FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) harder? To reduce contact center volume, most companies have already provided customers with Frequently Asked Question pages and other self-service options: searchable knowledge bases, order tracking, and more. The idea is clear: The easier you make it for customers to serve themselves, the fewer agents you’ll need to provide customer service.
But your FAQs have to do more than take up cyberspace. Whether you are a small company with 10 FAQs on a single web page or a Fortune 500 with the latest CRM solution, your object is the same: provide accurate, well-written, up-to-date answers to your customers’ questions (and reduce contact center volume when customers help themselves). Don’t let your FAQs become a graveyard for scraps of information no one can find or use. Follow these techniques for writing FAQs that can really lighten the load for your agents.
Six Techniques for Writing FAQs that Help Reduce Agent Workload
1. Choose the appropriate question word. It may seem obvious, but each question word—who, what, when, where, why, how—requires a particular type of information for a complete answer. Why questions should be answered with reasons; how questions should be answered with procedures or steps in a process; when questions should be answered with times or dates, etc.
Amazon.com does a good job choosing the appropriate question word. The company provides the right information for each question word in its FAQs for its Advantage program members. For example, the FAQ “Why must my financial institution be in the United States?” has a reason answer: “Amazon.com can only disburse payments using U.S. dollars, and the systems we use are only set up to handle payments within the U.S….” The question “How will I know that I''ve been paid?” has a procedure answer: “The bank that Amazon.com uses to send payments will send you a paper direct deposit notification by mail…."
2. Organize FAQs in a way that’s easy for the user to grasp.
One major mortgage company’s FAQs can’t be helping customers, or agents, very much. Consider the following 10 categories of customer service FAQs:
• Account Maintenance
• Documents
• Escrow
• Insurance
• New Loan Servicing
• Payments
• Soldiers and Sailors Civil Relief Act
• Payoff
• Taxes
• Year-end
But these categories are disorganized. It is impossible for customers to predict where to find the answer they need because the FAQ categories differ so much in scope—and the categories overlap. Imagine that a customer has this question: “Will my mortgage taxes be paid before the end of December?” Should he click the Taxes category or the Year-end category?
Thermador, kitchen appliance manufacturers, organizes its FAQs into logical groups, by product:
• Pro Series
• Ovens
• Electric Cooktops
• Ventilation
• BBQs
• Gas Cooktops
• Ranges
• Dishwashers
• Refrigerators
And, within most of these product categories, FAQs are grouped into two sub-categories: Pre-Purchaser Questions and Technical Questions. Thermador makes it easy for users to determine where to find the answer they need.
3. Place the FAQs section near other kinds of help. Help is help, right? So, Norelco’s Customer Care section provides access to several types of help, including FAQs, all from one web page. Norelco''s two FAQs sections—"FAQs Before You Buy" and "FAQs After You Buy"—are grouped with other help at Customer Care. The other kinds of help include a glossary of terms, live web chat, an online product registration form, downloadable instruction booklets, and a Find-An-Authorized-Dealer tool: You supply your zip code and it lists nearby dealers. Norelco also presents thorough contact information near the FAQs: phone numbers, e-mail addresses, snail mail addresses, and the fax number.
4. Integrate user questions into page text throughout the site. Why segregate user questions in the FAQ silo? Excellent help provides answers when and where customers need them. Janus Capital Group’s page describing the Roth IRA anticipates two questions IRA investors often ask:
• "Want information on moving a Roth IRA from another financial institution to a Janus Roth IRA?"
• “Want to see an overview of all our funds, including performance?”
These frequently asked questions about Roth IRAs appear where users will want them—in the upper right corner of the Roth IRA page.
5. “Deep link” answers to other relevant information at the site.
Your FAQs should not be a final destination; they should be a gateway to detailed information in other parts of the site. So, take users to the information they need by “deep linking” answers to the rest of your site. For example, the National Institutes of Health''s Questions and Answers About NIH does a great job of deep linking. The answer to, "Can I volunteer for NIH research studies even if I''m healthy?" links users to the pages that explain what kinds of studies healthy volunteers can take part in:
"The NIH Clinical Center provides an opportunity for healthy volunteers to participate in medical research studies (sometimes called protocols or trials). Healthy volunteers provide researchers with important information for comparison with people who have specific illnesses. Every year, nearly 3,500 healthy volunteers participate in studies at NIH. Visit the Clinical Research Volunteer Program to learn about the benefits of volunteering."
These links take users to complete information at the Clinical Research Volunteer Program page, thus reducing the likelihood that they will need to call or e-mail to find out what kinds of research studies need healthy volunteers, how to volunteer, or whether they’ll be compensated.
6. Use a consistent format for answers. J.D. Pahre, e-service consultant to RightNow Technologies, advises RightNow’s customers to set up a format for all the answers in their knowledge bases. “Consistency really helps the end user,” he explains. Pahre recommends that each answer follow the same overall format. “For example,” he says, “a software company might begin each answer with a screen shot, then a description, and so on.” He also reminds his customers that little consistencies matter too. “Answers should be formatted cleanly and consistently. If you use a star bullet point in one answer, do it in every answer.”
The Microsoft Knowledge Base also presents its articles on error messages in a consistent format. Each article includes the following headings:
• Symptoms
• Cause
• Resolution
• More Information
With consistent headings, users can scan an article quickly to discover whether it contains the information they need. When they can predict how information will be displayed, users are more willing to continue to try to help themselves, and less likely to call or e-mail your agents.
The Future: A Single Source of Information for All
A major trend in the evolution of self-service is to use FAQs or knowledge base content as a single source of information for everyone. Linda Pell, Senior Director of Consumer Affairs for Kellogg Company has taken this approach. “We have a single source of information, one we leverage across all the channels,” explains Pell. “Our call center staff, our IVR, and our web site all draw on the same knowledge base.” The approach is working for Kellogg. Pell reports that over the last two years, the percentage of customers who chose a self-service option went from 5 percent to 14 percent.
Cisco System’s Technical Assistance Center (TAC) has used a central knowledge base to provide accurate, up-to-date information to its agents in Sydney, Brussels and San Jose. According to La Veta Gibbs, Director of Cisco’s Customer Interaction Network, “It was really important that the TAC have a single, dynamic repository for information. We started with an internal system, but moved it to the public web site so customers could have access too.”
And Cisco rewards customers for their self-service efforts. “We guarantee that the average speed of answer is faster for customers who go to the web first,” she says. If customers open a trouble-shooting ticket online, “they get a 30-minute head start to the engineer,” says Gibbs. “We’ve embraced the power of the web,” she adds. “We’ve moved from answering the same question over and over to being the keepers and holders of information our customers can really use.”
Lighten Agent Loads and Extend Company Reach
Usable, hard-working FAQs will lighten your agents’ workloads. Immediately after Air Canada made a customer knowledge base available, the carrier’s e-mail load dropped from 10,000 per month to around 4,000. And excellent self-service content can reach “customers” you didn’t know you had. “With an e-mail address and a phone number, a company might get 1,000 calls or e-mails a day,” explains Pahre. “But the same company might get 4,500 visitors to the knowledge base, and maybe only 45 calls or e-mails. The knowledge base also connects with the ‘ghosts,’ the customers who might not have called or e-mailed. My agents’ workload goes down tremendously and I’ve served a lot more customers.”
