You've got backlog... It could become a 2 billion market, says Frost & Sullivan
20th August 2001, 1 pm GMT
Flooded with rising volumes of customer e-mail, companies face a problem with only two answers: assign more customer service agents to e-mail response duties, or deploy an e-mail management response system.
Research by Frost & Sullivan reveals that more companies are implementing e-mail management software to battle customer e-mail backlog and consequently rocketing this market to an unprecedented $2 billion by 2007.
"The dramatic growth rates in the e-mail management software market can be explained by the fact that the technology is an effective solution to a pressing customer service need," says Frost & Sullivan Industry Analyst Katrina Howell. "Companies are able to assign a fraction of the agents that would otherwise be required to respond to e-mail volumes reaching into the thousands."
The backlog of e-mail accumulated during any given day has caused customer care centers to ask employees to stay overtime.
Some companies even have e-mail parties at night and on weekends where employees struggle to respond to the customer queries.
Moreover, companies are increasingly aware of the consequences of delaying a response to customer e-mail inquiries.
Studies have revealed that the number one complaint of online customers is the failure of a company to respond to an e-mail message within three hours.
"Within the space of a few years, e-mail has become one of the most common forms of customer communication" says Howell.
"This has transformed e-mail into a severe pain point for numerous businesses, giving rise to the pressing need to adopt e-mail response management systems."