Email answering service — how does it work?
Email is the most popular way for customers to communicate with support teams. 54% of customers claim to have used email to reach a support consultant last year. Answering service to email is a core service for a business to have and is a core team to train as they communicate with more than a half of the customer base.
An email management service team needs to be fast and efficient — customers expect to see an answer from a support representative within an hour or less. Anything longer and customer satisfaction KPI drops. At the same time, maintaining a first response KPI for answering service email is much easier than for chat, where initial first response time is 45 seconds or less.
Setting up an email response answering service team is not easy. It could be managed if the following steps are followed:
24/7/365 response
54% of customers expect to see better customer service than they did a couple of years ago. 71% of customers expect to get an immediate response — for 60% of responders, immediate means 10 minutes or less. BPO answering service email teams must note that when fulfilling their KPI requirements.
Create help desk tickets
Call and email answering service agents and virtual receptionists can also redirect all incoming emails and calls from customers and clients, and create help desk tickets. This could optimize the performance of the support team — even though they might not be involved in the email answering service, their flow will be interrupted by the need to respond to customers’ emails.
Escalation of requests
Providing email answering service, dealing with easy to moderate customer inquiries, and following callers via email are the direct responsibilities of the support teams. Sometimes, though, escalation is required. It is necessary if:
- The support consultant doesn't have the necessary information to help out a customer
- The support consultants lack soft- and hardware to resolve the issue
- The issue must be addressed by someone in a superior position
- The issue must be addressed by the development team
Correct and streamlined escalation procedures will ensure there are no interruptions and the customers do not have to wait for a resolution for a long time.
Complete omnichannel approach
47% of users in the US say they connect with the support teams in 5 different ways. 73% say they use different channels to make their purchases. It is in every brand’s interests to provide multi-, or better yet, omnichannel customer support. Email answering service will help any business be closer to an omnichannel approach and provide the customers with convenience they need when talking to the support representatives.
Introducing an email answering service solution to answer customers’ inquiries and email marketing campaigns and even to set appointments is one of the best ways to connect with your customers.
Another way of customer service: answering emails and KPIs
SupportYourApp’s team now consists of 800 professionals who are 100% dedicated to providing the best services, including email answering service. In order for our team to provide the best services to our client’s customers.
To ensure the best and most reasonable email answering service, we at SupportYourApp have established and have been maintaining tough and strict KPIs. Surely, there are clients who prefer setting first response KPIs themselves. In this case, we abide by the client’s rules and provide their customers with email answering services in accordance with them.
Moreover, no matter what first response time KPIs are prescribed to us — 1 hour, 4 hours or 24 hours, our team not only maintains them, but also does everything to provide the customers with the fastest possible answers.
The average email first response time for the teams of SupportYourApp is 15-30 minutes. We make sure every customer gets the information they need and their issues are resolved as fast as possible.
This way we ensure 95% customer satisfaction KPI no matter what project, product or a service we provide email answering services for.
