According to the Harvard Business Review, a company in the United States can expect to churn half of its customer base
every five years. Significantly, the Yankee Group reports that two-thirds of this turnover is the direct result of poor customer service.

It follows then that retaining your valued customers means providing them with unsurpassed, personalized service they simply can’t get from your competition. This emphasis on customer loyalty and retention becomes even more compelling when you consider the fact that it can cost up to ten times more to attract and secure a new customer than it does to keep one you already have.

Today, meeting customer expectations for personalized service means accommodating individual preferences for multimedia contact options.

An effective e-mail response management (ERM) system is a critical component of this multimedia approach to customer contact. According to the Pelorus Group, 42 percent of top-ranked Web sites either took longer than five days to respond to
customer e-mail or never responded at all. Addressing this critical challenge can create both opportunity and competitive differentiation for a business committed to optimizing its e-mail response strategy.

A basic ERM system must analyze incoming messages, route messages to agents, send automatic responses when appropriate, supply response tools, and track messages accurately.

However, turning e-mail response management into a competitive advantage for your business requires more. Specifically, your ERM system must:

• Ensure timely and relevant responses to customers

• Provide an extensible platform that integrates with other customer-support and service applications

• Streamline your support organization and processes

• Scale with your needs

Source: Cisco Whitepaper