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"Emailtopia is the leading provider of software and services for managing corporate email infrastructures. Providing email solutions since 1997, emailtopia has a distinguished client base that span multiple verticals including financial services, banking, retail, insurance, and government agencies. emailtopia's flag ship product,
Response Manager, allows companies to manage, track and store emails with partners and customers."
Source : emailtopia
E-mail Response Management
Email Response Management is also known as :
Mail Management Software,
Email Management,
Email Analysis and Response Solutions,
Email Management Services ,
Mail Management Solutions,
Email Archiving,
E-Mail Management Guidelines,
Email List Management,
Email Management System,
Email Management Tools,
Email Management Info,
Email Storage Management,
Email Policy Management,
Correspondence Management Software,
Email Marketing Software Solutions.
Email Response Management Software
Table of Contents
- Table of Contents
- Introduction
- "How do Your Customers Contact You?
- Think Big, But Start Small
- Enterprise Functionality without the Enterprise Cost!
- The Solution " Response Manager
- Return On Investment ("ROI")
- Intangible Benefits:
- Tangible Benefits:
- Features
- Powerful, System-Wide Rules Engine
- Rule-based Wizards
- Intelligent Messaging Assignment
- A Library Of Standard Responses
- Status Reports
- Administrator Control
- System-Wide Alerts
- Email Messages By Category
- Complete Email Communication History
- Integration Made Easy
- Case Studies
- Sales and Marketing
- Financial Services
- Customer Support /Call Centers
- About emailtopia
- Response Manager System Requirements
Introduction
The Internet has provided an easy, low cost channel for
providing customer service and customer interaction. As a
result, email communication is growing faster than any other
means of customer interaction. Email inquiries used for
customer service is expected to increase from 2.9 billion
messages in 2005, to 7.2 billion by 2010.
The explosive growth in email communication means that a
company's online relationship with its customers will be critical to
customer satisfaction and retention.
While email is the fastest-growing channel for customer service,
a third of all U.S. companies don't even bother to open the
customer e-mails they get, let alone respond to them.
Meanwhile, roughly 45 percent of companies that do answer e-
mail take up to 24 hours; the rest can take as long as three
days.
The reason, for this failure in customer service is that only about
25 percent of all U.S. companies have deployed an email
response management system.
Customer-based organizations
have not invested in the appropriate technologies. Many are still
relying on Outlook or other homegrown applications.
Timely response will become more of a challenge in the future,
because industry experts estimate that the volume of email for
customer support will increase from 30 to 100 percent annually
over the next two years. With the cost of call center service
requests averaging approximately $53 per call, while email
support queries cost only about $3 per message, companies will
likely encourage email as the preferred means of
communication.
Managers need new tools to effectively manage corporate email
assets flowing in and out of the organization, to better service
the email customer.
"How do Your Customers Contact You?
Most business managers understand that delivering benefits to
the customer is paramount to excellent customer service and
generating revenue. However, many businesses fail to identify
and implement practical technology and processes that actually
work to deliver the benefit.
For example, Customer Relationship Management is a term
often used, based on the premise that the organization is in the
business of acquiring customers, maximizing their value,
servicing their needs, and retaining them and that all processes
work to support that effort. Managers understand that well
enough, but struggle with the complexity of traditional CRM
solutions that take major commitment and cultural changes
within the organization to implement. In addition, CRM software
was a tool only available to large organizations which could
afford the large price-tags, putting this type of technology out of
reach for most small to medium sized businesses and
departments within large organizations. Ironically, it's these
businesses with their complex divisions of labor, limited budget
and focus on customer service that stand to benefit most from a
CRM solution.
Organizations struggling with how to service the customer
better, need to realize that CRM is nothing more than a general
set of principles that provides an actionable framework for
thinking about the customer when the customer interacts with
the company. Communication has to be at least a dialogue with
the customer. Many businesses have achieved a higher level of
communication via the phone and face-to-face.
Automatic Call Distributors and Integrated Voice Response
systems effectively route customers to the appropriate service
agent trained in being responsive to what the customer wants
and needs. But how do businesses that have incorporate sales,
service, and marketing into the online channel where no human
contact exists? A web site provides content that outlines the
benefits of products and services allowing buyers to transact. It
is designed to be attractive and informative; however it
frequently falls short in understanding the customer experience,
navigating through the self-service environment of the Internet.
The business manager needs a way to visualize the customer's
needs and implement tools to deal with customers that interact
through the Web so they are never lost, mismanaged, avoided,
or forgotten.
Think Big, But Start Small...
Do you know how much email is received each day in your
customer service corporate Group Mailboxes?
Who replied to those emails?
How long did it take?
What are customers asking?
Are they being given the right answers?
Who followed up later with those customers?
Where are those email messages now?
Where are those customers now?
How much is it costing you to pay someone to manually route
and answer email?
Email response management software is designed to allow
businesses to categorize, prioritize, route, track, respond to,
store, and learn from customer inquiries submitted via email.
This software automatically analyzes email, generates automatic
responses, and intelligently routes email to the appropriate
service agent. At the same time, status reports allow
administrators to monitor response time and search detailed
communication history providing an audit trail for reviewing
customer issues and escalation resolution. These critical reports
help managers understand key information on how customers
are "won" or "lost".
Automatic email Distribution and Management software provides
a win-win situation for both email customers and companies,
since email customers get speedy and appropriate responses,
and businesses are able to satisfy their customers with timely
professional email. Like Automatic Call Distributors (ACDs)
which handle call volume and improve responses for call center
customer service, this software helps organizations effectively
manage high volumes of incoming email, understand their
customers' needs, and customize services and marketing efforts
accordingly.
The Solution " Response Manager
Response Manager is EMAILTOPIA's easy to use email
response management solution that fits a wide range of client
requirements of all sizes servicing sectors such as Financial,
Online Retailers, Non-Profit, Government, Call Centers and
Small-Medium Business.
Response Manager is a virtual email facility that routes incoming
email to such group email boxes as sales@, info@,
marketing@, support@, and routes outgoing responses based
on classification through an associated database of rules with
handling instructions. This means Response Manager will
forward email to the right service agents, allowing management
to gather usages statistics; properly balance email load and
volume; and generate manager reports accessible via a browser
that detail the activity of specific users, how well the company's
email is being handled, average email customer response time,
and much, much more.
Department managers can use this data to create reports that
provide invaluable insight into service agent skill levels, training
requirements, staffing levels, peak email time, and gauging
customer service levels.
Response Manager is able to offer rich features, a sophisticated user
interface, and increased performance and functionality at very
competitive prices. While prices of other competing solutions can
average well over $50,000, Response Manager is designed to deliver
the features of these expensive systems for a fraction of the cost.
Return On Investment ("ROI")
When it comes to spending in today's economic times, the
mantra for many organizations is ‘show me the return on my
investment.' No other email response management product
offers the ROI that Response Manager, with respect to both
intangible benefits as well as the equally important tangible.
Here's the checklist:
Intangible Benefits:
- The email customer is valued equally: The email customer
will never be forgotten, mismanaged, avoided, or lost by even
one service agent in the organization.
Benefit: email messages addressed to the company will be
treated with equal importance as email addressed to individuals,
ensuring Response Manager begins pulling its weight almost
immediately. Response Manager will help any organization that
wants to better manage relationships with existing customers
and help grow its overall client base.
- Low Risk Proposition: Response Manager is priced very
competitively and requires minimal hardware, software, and
training and can provide immediate positive results to the
customer.
Benefit: Unlike other products that require company-wide
consensus, evaluation of the complete IT architecture and
business processes, and in-depth financial analysis, Response
Manager's low cost assurance of business benefits makes
buying a very low risk solution.
- Management Reports: Many reports are available that
provide detailed information on all aspects of email handled by
service agents.
Benefit: Employee efficiency and the quality of customer service
can be measured, and resource planning is aided by accurate
email service statistics.
- Automatic Message Assignment: The process of handling
inbound email to group mailboxes such as sales@, info@, and
support@ will be automated and routed to appropriate service
agents based on the next available agent (Round-Robin); by
service agent availability (Load-Based), manually (service
agents can pick and choose), or by message time, date, content,
customer address, and correspondence history (Pre-defined
rules).
Benefit: Insurance that all messages are assigned promptly and
efficiently, and that the productivity of all users is maximized.
- Communication History: For any message the entire history
including received date and time, reply dates and times, users
involved, etc. is available to service agent managers by using a
search engine with in the software.
Benefit: Enables managers and other staff members to be
brought up to date quickly on specific issues and provides the
security of a complete audit trail of all customer correspondence.
This functionality is also effective to generate a quick summary
for customer escalation and resolution, eliminate the "10 page"
threaded email and the "he said" " "she said" scenario.
- Standard Response: Instantly reply to incoming messages
with standard, predefined responses, with or without user
intervention.
Benefit: Productivity, accuracy and consistency are increased
and compliance with customer service excellence is maintained.
Managers are given the help they need to ‘Pre-Plan' responses
to customers that tie marketing, sales, and customer service
messages together.
- Technology Integration: Response Manager integrates with
standard email clients such as Outlook. A customizable Agent
browser interface is available as well.
Benefit: Training time and costs are reduced since users are
already familiar with the interface. Installation time and costs are
reduced, since no proprietary software needs to be installed at
the desktop. And, the software is server-based so there is no IT
set-up at the desktop level.
Tangible Benefits:
As an example of how Response Manager can make a visible
impact on the business by cutting costs and increasing revenue
for high and quick ROI, look at the following simple ROI
calculations 4:
- Maximize the marketing money spent to acquire each lead
monthly
Marketing Expenses =$30,000
Leads Generated =500
Cost Per Lead =$60 Per Lead
Benefit: If 20% of those leads visited the Web site and
requested more information at info@, or requested product
pricing at pricequote@, and received a delayed response or no
response at all, your organization would experience an
opportunity cost of $6000 ($60 per lead x 100). Response
Manager helps managers track service agent email activity
through a reporting engine so they maximize the marketing
dollar at each customer touch point.
- Maximize the marketing money spent on new customer
acquisition:
Marketing Expenses =$30,000
Leads Generated =500
Conversion to Customers =10%
New Customers =50
Customer Acquisition Costs =$600
Benefit: If Response Manager could help an organization "win"
only five more customers per month how would that impact the
bottom line revenue? Multiply the cost of your product by the five
new customers Response Manager would help you "win" to
determine the increased revenue the organization would
receive. For example, if your product costs $500 and five
customer purchased, that would equal $2,500 in revenue.
Features
Powerful, System-Wide Rules Engine
Response Manager allows you to create rules for both inbound
and outbound email messages that are server-based, so they
are in effect for all users. For example, you can create rules that
automatically assign messages to users, move messages
between group mailboxes, send reply messages, or delete
messages.
Rule-based Wizards
Create rules with an easy to use wizard that can direct email to
an appropriate person or location for easy retrieval. Actions are
taken at the server level for increased coverage, so that team
members no longer need to save and forward important email
messages, flooding inboxes in the process.
Intelligent Messaging Assignment
There is no need to manually drag and drop messages.
Intelligent messaging assignment eliminates the need to have a
human agent manually redirect or forward email messages to
the appropriate staff. The right email goes to the right person the
first time, providing documented accountability and
responsibility.
Response Manager automates the routing of inbound email
messages to multiple service agents or other appropriate staff,
through four difference allocation schemes:
Round Robin"automatically assigns email messages in
sequence to each user in the group.
Load-Based"routes email messages based on user availability.
For example, if a user is on vacation, email will be routed to the
next user.
Manual"routes email messages to the "unassigned" folder so
users can pick and choose.
Pre-defined Rules"Routes email messages by time, date,
message content, customer address and correspondence
history.
A Library Of Standard Responses
Eliminates the need to type the same response over and over
again. Pre-defined standard responses allow a consistent,
professional reply to common customer inquiries, such as
pricing and upgrade requests. To provide more personalized
responses automatically, "variables" may be inserted in the
standard responses. What's more, the standard response library
offers the ability to pre-plan messaging to customers, allowing
marketing, support and customer service messages to be tied
together. Response Manager's flexible software also increases
productivity by offering the service agent the choice to reply
instantly, modify the pre-configured message, or use the Rules
Engine to perform an auto-reply without user intervention.
Status Reports
Response Manager's status report feature allows you to stay up-
to-the-minute on email status in your organization. There are
many ways to monitor (viewed through a browser) your
customer service team during communication with email
customers:
Keeping track of such information as service levels, average
reply time and number of emails received is now a snap with
Response Manager's reporting module.
Administrator Control
Response Manager is designed so that, if necessary or desired,
an administrator can approve all messages before they are sent.
Financial organizations, for example, designate their
Compliance Officer as the administrator to check email before it
leaves the mail server. A very intuitive "checkbox" interface
allows system parameters to be configured and modified quickly.
System-Wide Alerts
When email messages go unanswered, companies risk losing
customers and revenue.
Response Manager allows you to develop performance criteria
that the system will monitor. When criteria is not met, an email
alert is sent to the team manager, so the situation can be
remedied immediately.
Email Messages By Category
Messages may be automatically assigned categories, allowing
email to be organized according to specific activities. For
example, all pricing inquiries collected at the server level can be
grouped into the Sales category. You can also change a
message's category or assign a message to a category for
reporting purposes. This function allows you to see how many
messages there are related to a certain product or topic.
Complete Email Communication History
In an Internet economy, implementing and maintaining a
consistent and complete view of the customer is essential to
maximizing profitability. Response Manager automatically stores
inbound email messages and email replies for later analysis
(tracked in the back-end SQL database). Subject, user, group,
timeline, closed messages or other user-defined terms can be
used to search the email history. For any message, the entire
history is always available (received date and time, reply date
and time, users involved, etc.). The easily retrieved data
provides an audit trail for reviewing customer issues, questions,
and escalation resolution, and eliminates the "he said, she said"
scenario.
Integration Made Easy
Response Manager works with any email client that supports
IMAP (Outlook 2000, 2002, 2003 and Outlook Express. The
system is configurable in minutes"no other software is required
on the desktop. Response Manager's easy-to-learn interface
and intuitive design mean that quick deployments are
guaranteed.
Case Studies
Sales and Marketing
Problem: As the VP of Sales, you are concerned about inbound
email inquiries being answered promptly. Also, after they have
been re-routed to the proper sales agents, you're not sure what
happened to those leads.
Details: The marketing group is asking you to report on the
effectiveness of the latest marketing campaign to drive
prospects to your Website. You are unsure when and how often
the person who is responsible for checking your info@ email
account is doing so and forwarding those email messages to
your sales team.
You have no reporting tool to determine how quickly your sales
team is responding to these inquiries.
You have several sales reps working remotely and have no
method to retain those email inquiries for future reference.
The Response Manager Solution: Since Response Manager is
intelligently and automatically re-routing the inbound email
messages to the correct sales representative, you are
eliminating the step of having a person manually re-routing the
email messages, thereby saving both time and money.
Utilizing the reporting engine of Response Manager, you are
able to accurately show the average response time for each
inquiry. By using Response Manager's category system, you
automatically tag for future reference the email messages that
are a result of the marketing campaigns.
The audit trail feature allows you to also track who did what and
when with each email…even your remote staff.
Financial Services
Problem: You're running a world-class, online financial services
company. Delivering prompt, courteous and accurate responses
to potential investors is crucial to long-term success.
Details: When dealing with email inquiries, you are required to
provide a detailed audit trail of all correspondence, and, in most
cases, would need a compliance offer to approve the email
replies.
You need to install an automatic email distribution and
management system in order to guarantee that your staff is
providing legally accurate information, as well as creating the
detailed audit trail that can be accessed on demand.
The Response Manager Solution: With Response Manager,
the company is able to ensure that all incoming email messages
are tracked, routed and answered in a timely manner. Incoming
email is routed to group inboxes, where seven team members,
using a Web browser, access Response Manager's powerful
tools to manage and reply to incoming messages in an accurate
and professional manner.
All incoming and outgoing messages are stored in the relational
database, providing management with the ability to track email,
view group activity, be alerted of messages that are not
completed within a designated time frame, and access the full
reporting engine " including a full audit trail of all historical
correspondence to a potential investor.
The company also takes advantage of Response Manager's
unique routing ability to have all defined outbound email replies
routed to their compliance offer for approval before the final
delivery to investors.
Customer Support /Call Centers
Problem: You are the Director of Support and responsible
for a team of product support specialists. Customer
satisfaction is your key mandate. Currently, 50% of your
support inquires are by email. You don't know which team
member picked up which email messages, or if you have the
right person answering the right questions.
Details: To increase staff efficiency, you would like to match
specific support issues to specific specialists on your team.
Your company is promoting a higher level of customer
service and offering guaranteed 4-hour response on support
questions.
You have no method to track your team's success rate of
meeting the corporate customer satisfaction mandate. You
also would like to map support email messages to your
existing support problem tracking system.
The Response Manager Solution: Creating rules inside the
Response Manager's rules wizard, you are able to define
key word searches on the inbound support email messages
and route them automatically to the appropriate support
team member.
The Response Manager alert system will notify you by email
if support email messages go unanswered within the
guaranteed 4 hours. The daily user summary report gives
you the ability to track your team's average response time.
Using the Response Manager's ‘Assign a Ticket Number to
a Thread' option, your team now has the ability review an
audit trail on email messages by utilizing a ticket number
generated by your order tracking system.
About emailtopia
emailtopia was founded in 1997 and is the developer of
Response Manager, an intelligent server-based software email
response management tool. Headquartered in Toronto,
emailtopia has deployed Response Manager at numerous
corporations internationally, including TD Waterhouse, Primus,
ING Direct, AmeriCredit, Chicos, Scholastic, Oreck, Acadia
University, CI Funds, Union Gas, Circuit City, Heifer
International, NBC and International City/County Management
Association. These companies rely on Response Manager to
eliminate their administration challenges when dealing with
email inquires and to reduce costs associated with manually re-
routing emails to the appropriate staff.
Response Manager System Requirements
Response Manager Server
Operating System: Windows 2000 SP4, or Windows 2003 Server
Memory: 1G RAM minimum (2G if running SQL Server on the same
computer).
CPU: Pentium IIII 1GHz
Web Browser: Internet Explorer 6.0 or greater (for running Response
Manager Admin)
Hard Drive Space: 4 G
DNS: A valid Internet host name registered with DNS;
e.g. "responsemanager.example.com" for the computer.
Database Server
Response Manager uses Microsoft SQL Server as its DBMS. For trial
purposes only, we include a 5-user version of SQL Server (MSDE) in
the installer. (Due to MSDE's limitations, such as a 2.3G maximum
database size, most production environments will require a non-
MSDE SQL Server product, such as the Standard Edition with 5
CALs.)
If you have an existing SQL Server 2000 server, you may instead run
Response Manager with it if you wish. For optimum performance we
recommend running it on a machine other than the Response
Manager server.
Admin Client
- Windows 2000 SP4, or Windows XP SP2 or WIn2003
- Internet Explorer 6.0 or greater
Mail Client
Mail Program: Outlook 2000, (Windows - Internet-Only version)
Windows Outlook XP, Outlook 2003; Windows Outlook Express 5.5 , 6.0
emailtopia
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Suite 200
Toronto, ON M5H 1K4
tel 416.239.4826
fax 416.239.8193
www.emailtopia.com
info@emailtopia.com