E-Mail Battle of the Bulge Produces New Opportunity

August 8, 2001

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.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, a leader in strategic marketing and training, reveals that more companies are implementing e-mail management software to battle customer e-mail backlog and consequently rocketing this market to a projected $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," said Frost & Sullivan 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."

Editor's Note:

Is e-mail management a problem in your company? If so, how does your company cope? Please share your ideas by clicking the Add Comments option below and posting your comments, ideas, and, solutions.

Not ready for e-mail management software? Try a smaller-scale solution - color coding incoming messages - as described in an AccountingWEB Outlook Tip.