Expensive customer communication: companies need to shape up

Many companies utilise inefficient advisory channels  
Nine out of ten companies advise their customers via e-mail, telephone and contact forms, but by doing so they miss out on considerable savings. Those ways of communicating are sometimes over five euros per customer query more expensive than more automated advisory channels. But the latter are not used nearly as much: not even half of companies offer FAQ pages, and live chats are used by just two per cent. These are the findings of the novomind survey entitled "Reality Check 2009". 
  
Live chats and FAQ pages are more economical  
When a service consultant advises a customer by phone it costs the company around six euros per enquiry. But e-mails and the use of contact forms are similarly expensive. In comparison, live chats only cost around two to three euros, because four customers can be dealt with at once using an intelligent live-chat system. A page which answers frequently asked questions (FAQs) is even cheaper and costs around ten cents per customer visit. 
  
Relieving the burden with additional advisory channels  
Despite the higher costs involved it is impossible to do without telephone, e-mail and contact forms altogether. However, the three common advisory channels and the staff in service centres can be relieved of a lot of their work by more automated communication systems. A company’s FAQs answer standard questions straight away and do not take up any of consultants’ time. More complex issues can be dealt with using live chats, because customer queries can be answered in real time so there are no delays like there are when you answer e-mails and so on. This means customer questions are processed more quickly. 
  
Training courses alleviate quality shortfalls  
When advising through relatively expensive channels, companies should safeguard their efficiency so that customer queries are brought to a close quickly. In practice, however, there are considerable quality shortfalls. Advice often takes too long without answering the customers’ questions satisfactorily. Only half of telephone queries are answered correctly, and in e-mail handling this drops to a sobering 28 per cent. These quality shortfalls can be largely cured using tailored staff-training courses and a central knowledge pool which can be accessed by every communication channel. 
  
novomind AG: innovative software for professional customer communication  
Hamburg-based software company novomind is the fastest-growing company in the fields of electronic customer communication and mail management. As a leading provider of innovative solutions for digital customer communication, novomind AG offers software for service-based, personalised interaction with customers. This achieves noticeable increases in the efficiency of customer administration, as well as a fast return on investment. The service portfolio of the Products Business Unit includes the novomind Self Service Suite™. This software package contains all of the communication modules required for a customer service centre, which revolve around a central knowledge base: e-mail management, virtual customer consulting and systems for interactive real-time communication. In its Services Business Unit, novomind AG implements complex eBusiness applications. More than 40 big-name companies have already opted for novomind technology, including Citibank, Otto and the Deutsche Rentenversicherung Bund (German Pensions Association). Club Bertelsmann, EnBW and Mexx, as well as public sector institutions such as the German Bundestag and the Federal Ministry of Economics, are already using novomind systems successfully to back up their customer communication, increase their turnover and improve their public relations. 

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