44% of Major UK Companies Are Losing Revenue by Completely Ignoring Incoming Emails
Email Customer Service Performance Declines From 2004 Level
Slough, United Kingdom, May 12, 2007 --(PR.com)-- According to research announced by eGain (OTCBB: EGAN) today, 44% of major UK companies are ignoring emails from their customers, resulting in lost revenues. eGain's "state of customer service" tracking study found that 38% of the companies surveyed did not respond to emails and 6% did not even offer email contact options on their web sites. The 38% no-response rate represents a decline in performance from a 30% no-response rate found by eGain in a 2004 study.
Conducted and compiled in the December 2006 - March 2007 timeframe, the survey included 125 major UK companies across an array of industry sectors. Analysts posed as prospective customers and sent emails requesting information on high-value products and services through web forms or email addresses published on company web sites. The companies were then evaluated on the speed and quality of their responses(1).
The study also revealed a number of other shortcomings. Two-thirds of the companies (67%) failed to respond within 24 hours, widely regarded as the minimum required service level for email queries in many industry sectors. This is a downturn from 2004, when only 52% of the companies failed to respond within 24 hours. Furthermore, only 19% of responding companies provided accurate responses, which clearly means that speed often came at the expense of quality. Only 18% of companies sent an automatic acknowledgement as an initial response to the customer's email, a simple best practice used to set customer expectations. This is again a decline from a 20% auto-acknowledgement rate in 2004.
The telecommunications sector performed the worst with 58% of companies ignoring emails. Of those that did reply, almost half delivered "poor" or "fair" responses. The retail sector was the best overall performer in responsiveness, giving some kind of answer to 70% of the emails. However, only 49% of retail responses were rated "good."
The financial services sector, which often involves time-critical interactions, posted a drastic decline in performance, with only 14% of companies responding within an hour, compared to 54% in 2004. When evaluated in a 24-hour time horizon, only 37% of companies responded in that timeframe, versus 46% in 2004. Of those organisations that did reply within 24 hours, one in three (31%) were categorised as "fair" or "poor." Additionally, only 11% of companies sent auto-acknowledgements, again a decline from 23% in 2004.
The study also included an in-depth analysis of the travel and local government sectors.
"The lack of importance placed on customer emails is a worrisome trend. Given the increasing popularity of electronic channels with customers, this downward trend in email customer service responsiveness and quality is shocking," commented Andrew Mennie, General Manager and Vice President EMEA eGain. "The failings uncovered by this research, as well as the gulf developing between the best and worst performers, indicates potential for improvement. UK companies in financial services and other sectors must make strides to improve email customer service to stay competitive," he concluded.
About eGain
eGain (OTCBB: EGAN) is a leading provider of customer service and contact centre software for in-house or on-demand deployment. Trusted by prominent enterprises worldwide, eGain has been helping businesses achieve and sustain customer service excellence for more than a decade. The world's largest companies rely on eGain to transform their traditional call centres, help desks, and web customer service operations into multichannel customer interaction hubs. These hubs enable dramatically improved customer experience, unified multichannel customer service, end-to-end service process efficiencies, and enhanced contact center performance.
eGain Service™ 7 is the industry's most comprehensive customer interaction hub software suite and the first solution to support short message service (SMS) customer service interactions, as well as next-generation web self-service, chat, cobrowsing, email, fax, postal mail, notification management, call tracking and resolution, knowledge management, and service fulfillment.
eGain Service is built on eGain CIH™ Platform, the industry's most comprehensive, integrated and flexible customer interaction hub platform. Based on a 100% J2EE architecture, it includes out-of-the-box integration with leading business applications, content management systems, and call centre infrastructure solutions. With its fine-grained service-oriented architecture (SOA), eGain CIH platform enables rapid development of powerful applications. Additional information on eGain Service can be found at: http://www.egain.com/products/multichannel_service.asp
eGain OnDemand™, the industry's first-ever on-demand eService software, is a proven, robust and scalable solution that has been used by companies of all sizes, in the last eight years, to rapidly build customer interactions hubs. Additional information on eGain OnDemand can be found at: http://www.egain.com/products/on_demand.asp
Headquartered in Mountain View, California, eGain has an operating presence in 18 countries and serves over 800 enterprise customers worldwide. To find out more about eGain, visit www.eGain.com or call the company's offices: London: +44 (0) 1753 464646; Dublin: +353 1 8472290; United States: +1 800 821 4358.
(1) Rating methodology: Response times were grouped into seven categories:
-- No response
-- < 1 hour
-- 1 - 24 hours
-- 24 - 36 hours
-- 48 hours
-- No email facility
The quality of response was grouped into five categories:
-- Good: accurate and complete response
-- Fair: the response contained some information, but required researchers to click on links for more details
-- Poor: the response contained some information, but asked researchers to call a phone number to get the answer
-- Unrelated: answer unrelated to question
-- No reply
Media contacts
eGain UK
Kerry Hallard / Nicola Craft
Buffalo Communications Ltd
Tel: +44 (0) 207 292 8680
Email: egain@buffalo.co.uk
Melody Curtis
eGain Communications Ltd
Tel: +44 (0) 1753 464687
Email: mcurtis@egain.com
###
Conducted and compiled in the December 2006 - March 2007 timeframe, the survey included 125 major UK companies across an array of industry sectors. Analysts posed as prospective customers and sent emails requesting information on high-value products and services through web forms or email addresses published on company web sites. The companies were then evaluated on the speed and quality of their responses(1).
The study also revealed a number of other shortcomings. Two-thirds of the companies (67%) failed to respond within 24 hours, widely regarded as the minimum required service level for email queries in many industry sectors. This is a downturn from 2004, when only 52% of the companies failed to respond within 24 hours. Furthermore, only 19% of responding companies provided accurate responses, which clearly means that speed often came at the expense of quality. Only 18% of companies sent an automatic acknowledgement as an initial response to the customer's email, a simple best practice used to set customer expectations. This is again a decline from a 20% auto-acknowledgement rate in 2004.
The telecommunications sector performed the worst with 58% of companies ignoring emails. Of those that did reply, almost half delivered "poor" or "fair" responses. The retail sector was the best overall performer in responsiveness, giving some kind of answer to 70% of the emails. However, only 49% of retail responses were rated "good."
The financial services sector, which often involves time-critical interactions, posted a drastic decline in performance, with only 14% of companies responding within an hour, compared to 54% in 2004. When evaluated in a 24-hour time horizon, only 37% of companies responded in that timeframe, versus 46% in 2004. Of those organisations that did reply within 24 hours, one in three (31%) were categorised as "fair" or "poor." Additionally, only 11% of companies sent auto-acknowledgements, again a decline from 23% in 2004.
The study also included an in-depth analysis of the travel and local government sectors.
"The lack of importance placed on customer emails is a worrisome trend. Given the increasing popularity of electronic channels with customers, this downward trend in email customer service responsiveness and quality is shocking," commented Andrew Mennie, General Manager and Vice President EMEA eGain. "The failings uncovered by this research, as well as the gulf developing between the best and worst performers, indicates potential for improvement. UK companies in financial services and other sectors must make strides to improve email customer service to stay competitive," he concluded.
About eGain
eGain (OTCBB: EGAN) is a leading provider of customer service and contact centre software for in-house or on-demand deployment. Trusted by prominent enterprises worldwide, eGain has been helping businesses achieve and sustain customer service excellence for more than a decade. The world's largest companies rely on eGain to transform their traditional call centres, help desks, and web customer service operations into multichannel customer interaction hubs. These hubs enable dramatically improved customer experience, unified multichannel customer service, end-to-end service process efficiencies, and enhanced contact center performance.
eGain Service™ 7 is the industry's most comprehensive customer interaction hub software suite and the first solution to support short message service (SMS) customer service interactions, as well as next-generation web self-service, chat, cobrowsing, email, fax, postal mail, notification management, call tracking and resolution, knowledge management, and service fulfillment.
eGain Service is built on eGain CIH™ Platform, the industry's most comprehensive, integrated and flexible customer interaction hub platform. Based on a 100% J2EE architecture, it includes out-of-the-box integration with leading business applications, content management systems, and call centre infrastructure solutions. With its fine-grained service-oriented architecture (SOA), eGain CIH platform enables rapid development of powerful applications. Additional information on eGain Service can be found at: http://www.egain.com/products/multichannel_service.asp
eGain OnDemand™, the industry's first-ever on-demand eService software, is a proven, robust and scalable solution that has been used by companies of all sizes, in the last eight years, to rapidly build customer interactions hubs. Additional information on eGain OnDemand can be found at: http://www.egain.com/products/on_demand.asp
Headquartered in Mountain View, California, eGain has an operating presence in 18 countries and serves over 800 enterprise customers worldwide. To find out more about eGain, visit www.eGain.com or call the company's offices: London: +44 (0) 1753 464646; Dublin: +353 1 8472290; United States: +1 800 821 4358.
(1) Rating methodology: Response times were grouped into seven categories:
-- No response
-- < 1 hour
-- 1 - 24 hours
-- 24 - 36 hours
-- 48 hours
-- No email facility
The quality of response was grouped into five categories:
-- Good: accurate and complete response
-- Fair: the response contained some information, but required researchers to click on links for more details
-- Poor: the response contained some information, but asked researchers to call a phone number to get the answer
-- Unrelated: answer unrelated to question
-- No reply
Media contacts
eGain UK
Kerry Hallard / Nicola Craft
Buffalo Communications Ltd
Tel: +44 (0) 207 292 8680
Email: egain@buffalo.co.uk
Melody Curtis
eGain Communications Ltd
Tel: +44 (0) 1753 464687
Email: mcurtis@egain.com
###
Contact
eGain Communications
Jamie Abayan
650-230-7532
www.egain.com
Jamie Abayan
650-230-7532
www.egain.com
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