EGain: E-Mail Customer Service Could Improve

By David Sims

TMCnet Contributing Editor

 

EGain Communications, which sells customer service and knowledge management software on-premise or on-demand, reportedly has published its 2008 international benchmarking report for the retail sector.

 

The report benchmarks and compares e-mail customer service and Web self-service offered by retail companies in North America and the United Kingdom. The research found that North American retailers performed worse than the United Kingdom in e-mail response quality, but better in Web self-service and speed of e-mail response.

 

However, the research shows that there is significant room for improvement in both these areas. As if we had to be the ones to tell you that.

 

Last month, TMCnet’s Jai C.S. reported that eGain placed in the Leaders Quadrant by Gartner (News - Alert) in their much-quoted series of reports, “Magic Quadrant for E-Service Suites 2008.”

 

EGain used a “mystery shopping” approach to evaluate customer service performance. Posing as prospective buyers of high-value products and services, eGain researchers contacted retail businesses through e-mail, showing an obvious intent to buy, and also evaluated the self-service capabilities offered by these businesses.

 

The objectives were to assess the responsiveness and quality of e-mail customer service, the range of “Web self-service” options offered, and the ability to escalate to agent-assisted service.

 

Interestingly, only the North America research included such aspects of customer service as interaction channels offered, and multichannel and multi-agent service consistency.

 

In North America, 25 percent of the companies failed to respond to customer e-mails, 65 percent responded to e-mails within 24 hours, but 55 percent of the responses were “poor” or “below average” in quality.

Forty-five percent scored “above average” or “exceptional” in Web self-service, but 55 percent received “poor” or “below average.”

 

Which, considering that “average” is midpoint and “poor” is below that, would be about what you’d expect.

 

Sixty-five percent of the North America sample responded to e-mails within 24 hours, compared to only 36 percent in the United Kingdom, and 25 percent of the North America sample completely failed to respond to customer e-mails, compared to 35 percent in the United Kingdom.

 

This report consolidates the findings of the “2008 State of Customer Service in North America” and the “2007 State of Customer Service in the United Kingdom” research studies. The combined sample consisted of more than 240 companies, with $250 million or more total annual revenue, and included 50 retailers.