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E-Mail
as Costly as Telephone Support
E-mail is inherently no less expensive than live telephone customer
support, according to customer relationship management (CRM) experts
at a seminar in San Jose, Calif.. The only way to significantly
reduce the cost of support, according to the experts, is through
effective Web self-service support.
More than 50 Silicon Valley executives attended today's seminar,
entitled, "Web Self-service: Get the R.O.I. without the R.I.S.K.,"
featuring keynote speakers Tim Hickernell, senior program director
at META Group; Maria Kernen, former vice president, customer operations,
of NTT/Verio; and Bo Wandell, president of SafeHarbor Technology
Corp, which sponsored the seminar.
The experts were quick to point out that e-mail is not the same
as Web self-service. E-mail and Web chat are good channels to use
for reducing online transaction abandonment rates, when customers
quit an online support session, but not to reduce costs of support,
according to the speakers.
"Companies in their customer support efforts should use e-mail
as an optional bridge between Web self-service and live assistance,"
said Hickernell, "and avoid deploying e-mail as a self-service
substitute."
Web self-service is an online customer support environment accessible
on a company's Web site and designed to help customers immediately
and easily find answers to commonly asked questions about that company's
products or services.
A strong Web self-service environment should be able to solve the
majority of a customer's basic questions or problems, with assisted
support used as an escalation tool for high-value customers or for
users that can not find answers through self-service, Hickernell
advised.
"Blending Web self-service with assisted service (i.e. e-mail
or telephone) creates a coherent customer service capability that
increases customer satisfaction," he said.
"Doing Web self-service right is not easy," said Kernen,
who led efforts to outsource Web self-service support at NTT/Verio,
a global IP services provider and part of the NTT Communications
family of companies.
NTT/Verio recently launched a new Web self-service environment
with the goal of lowering operating costs and improving customer
satisfaction. The company hired SafeHarbor Technology, a business
process outsourcer, to create and manage the self-service environment
and optimize it on an ongoing basis.
"The savings with Web self-service are dramatic," said
SafeHarbor's Wandell. "The average cost of telephone support
or even e-mail can be as high as $10 to $33 per session, and costs
scale up with volume, but Web self-service can be around $1 per
session and costs continue to fall as usage rises."
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