Hi Joe

We have used one or two products in the past. More recently we have introduced the new Microsoft CRM for a small Contact Centre Department and if you are a Microsoft based company then this might be a really good way to go as it integrates so well with Office and Exchange etc. It is now avaiable as a service and also, if important to you, an emarketing module is in development.

The main tool we supply are online interactive virtual assistants and these have been shown to significantly cut down customers chasing the contact centre, up to 20% by phone and 50% by email, as well as feed FAQs with a 'human touch'. They can also be used to interact with backend databases e.g. order tracking and you get loads of stats and customer insite.

Lisa at nationalrail.co.uk is our main reference

Hope that gives you some ideas.

All the best

Nick

thevirtualzone.co.uk

On 10:49:52 19 September 2008 joem wrote:
>I am looking for an improved email management tool for our
>customer service team. We have 10 (and growing) full-time
>in-house agents using Timpani/LivePerson. It mostly works
>well, especially the FAQ section and the ticket streaming,
>and we like the software as a service model where we don't
>have to host it locally.
>
>However, while the tool will create tickets and ticket
>threads, it does not identify that a customer may have
>tried twice or more to contact us about the same issue,
>using the same enquiry form. LivePerson treats them as
>two separate ticket strings, and hence my agents end up
>answering the query twice. At extremely busy times when
>response times are slower, frustrated customers might (i)
>enquire where there order is (ii) re-email asking why it
>has taken a few hours to respond (iii) threaten to cancel
>if an order isnt responded to by xx deadline, then (iv)
>cancel.
>
>Our agents, see (i) above first, and answer, maybe after
>the customers email (iii) come in, and a whole spiral of
>miscommunication can occurr.
>
>The result is we send out an order that the customer no
>longer wants, costing us a fortune, and we've answered the
>same thread 5 times when it could have been handled with
>just one email.
>
>Anyone out there got/is using a cost effective solution?
>Any answers very gratefully received.
>
>Joe Murray
>Worldstores.co.uk

Hi Joe

We use a ticket / client communication management system called ZenDesk www.zendesk.com and have been very pleased with it. It's a hosted service and pretty user friendly.

It can handle incoming email as grouped per email address so you can see outstanding issues together and it will encourage customers to work within the 'ticket' concept.

We used to use Kayako products but we didn't want to host the solution ourselves anymore and found them to be getting too complicated for our needs.

Thanks

Tim

http://www.deeson.co.uk/emedia/