Customer e-mails: mail-order companies are the fastest to reply
Nearly nine out of ten mail-order companies respond within 24 hours
Targeted IT support takes the pressure off contact centres
The majority of mail-order customers will only wait a day.
Mail-order companies are always quick off the mark
Mail-order companies in Germany are the fastest when it comes to answering e-mails from customers. Eighty-six per cent of companies respond within one day and deal with each e-mail enquiry within two days. Other industries are significantly slower to respond. Telecommunication providers, for instance: not a single telephone company manages to respond within 24 hours. Three out of four companies take up to three days to send their customers a reply. These are the findings of the latest novomind survey "Reality Check: Customer Communications" conducted in collaboration with the management and business research institute IMWF Institut für Management- und Wirtschaftsforschung.
Mail-order companies’ experience gives them a head start
As far as e-mail communication is concerned, mail-order companies are well ahead of other industries-even though they particularly feel the brunt of the rapid rise in the number of customer e-mails. That’s because, as the interface to the end customer, online shops frequently also provide customer services on behalf of several different brand producers at the same time. Eighty-six per cent of German online shoppers contact the Web shop direct if they have any queries regarding a product or the purchase process, so the producer generally does not come into the equation. In addition to this, the mail-order companies’ business is transacted to an ever-greater extent via the Internet. Last year, mail-order companies generated nearly every second euro of their turnover online. For 2009, the Bundesverband des Deutschen Versandhandels (Association of German Mail-Order Business) expects to see growth reach the ten per-cent mark. As a result, customer communications via electronic channels continue to increase. In order to be able to handle the volume of e-mails, mail-order companies are providing their contact centres with more IT support, among other things.
More IT support enhances service quality
Specialist e-mail management software is not only designed to raise processing speed but also reply quality. These intelligent systems speed up response times by interpreting more than 80 per cent of all incoming e-mails correctly, classifying them and forwarding them to the appropriate recipient within the company. Connected to a central knowledge database, the system automatically generates reply suggestions with which the customer service agents can compile fast, specific and personalised replies to enquiries. These answers can be processed and new knowledge modules are constantly added to the database so that all customer service agents always have access to the latest information. What this means for the companies is that they spend less time and money per customer enquiry while constantly improving the quality of the service they offer.
Background information
The Reality Check: Customer Communications survey represents the findings of a mystery call/mailing survey, which was conducted for novomind AG in collaboration with the management and business research institute IMWF Institut für Management- und Wirtschaftsforschung. Service tests to assess the quality of the customer services provided by German companies, ministries and public authorities were carried out between October and December 2008.
novomind AG: innovative software for professional customer communication
Hamburg-based software company novomind is the fastest-growing company in the fields of electronic customer communication and mail management. As a leading provider of innovative solutions for digital customer communication, novomind AG offers software for service-based, personalised interaction with customers. This achieves noticeable increases in the efficiency of customer administration, as well as a fast return on investment. The service portfolio of the Products Business Unit includes the novomind Self Service Suite™. This software package contains all of the communication modules required for a customer service centre, which revolve around a central knowledge base: e-mail management, virtual customer consulting and systems for interactive real-time communication. In its Services Business Unit, novomind AG implements complex eBusiness applications. More than 40 big-name companies have already opted for novomind technology, including Citibank, Otto and the Deutsche Rentenversicherung Bund (German Pensions Association). Club Bertelsmann, EnBW and Mexx, as well as public sector institutions such as the German Bundestag and the Federal Ministry of Economics, are already using novomind systems successfully to back up their customer communication, increase their turnover and improve their public relations.