An e-mail response management (ERM) system simplifies, streamlines, and speeds up communication with the clients. It is the centralized system to route, track, and respond to high volumes of customer e-mail and Web-form submissions. It helps the mail administrator to manage the mail server from a single workstation, check the health status of mailboxes, monitor various queues, set thresholds and alarms, take appropriate action in case of any problem, take backups, and restore mail boxes.

Customer satisfaction is the strategic goal for all organizations involved in the delivery of customer service. The administrator in a BPO set-up would be completely lost without an ERM in place. Its qualitative gains can be summed up as follows.

• It distributes and tracks messages sent to generic e-mail inboxes such as sales@, support@, and info@ and directs them to the right person in the organization who can address the issues in the most effective and time-efficient manner.
• It easily accesses the entire e-mail history of any customer inquiry, thus giving the employees access to accurate information that results in more personalized service for customers.
• It improves customer satisfaction with faster responses and turnaround times and delights customers by significantly decreasing their waiting time and providing them with almost instantaneous feedback.
• It gives the management insights into customer trends and employee performance by generating statistical reports on the productivity of individual staff members as well as entire departments.

TECHNOLOGY OPTIONS

E-mail response management systems function in a client-server environment wherein agents are installed on the mail server that interacts with the enterprise management system (EMS). It also helps in server monitoring and management. The EMS can be configured to receive traps from mail agents and take appropriate action as defined by the mail administrator.

With the basic principle being the same for all products, the differentiator lies mostly in the features being offered.

Sophisticated tools have heuristic intelligence capabilities, to auto respond to standard queries and processes with minimal agent intervention.

Categorization is the most distinctive feature that makes a tool superior. Most ERM systems are currently based on either statistical-mathematical techniques or pattern-based procedures. Using the statistical approach, a system learns the statistical characteristics of different categories through an analysis of sample texts where the relative frequencies of words play a key role. In the pattern matching categories, searching by keywords is much more relevant.

Some ERM tools also come equipped with language recognition methods, making them the more superior. Such tools help in forwarding a query, even in a blended environment, to the right agent. That is, even if the query comes on an IVR, the tool is able to handle the call and pass it to the correct agent.

Most ERM tools usually come as part of a larger CRM package. This is what the vendors are also pushing today, partly because it is on the higher end and partly because it ensures higher agent efficiency. Therefore, depending on the workload, an agent can double up answering mails or taking calls.

Blended environments are helpful in providing better customer care, as the agent is able to access the entire history of customer interaction irrespective of the medium.