Tech Solution: Email Management Tools

In an effort to be responsive -- and remain cost-efficient -- many companies are allowing customers to email questions. However, when there's no system in place to process and respond to emails expediently, customers get even more frustrated and lash out at unsuspecting live agents -- or worse, take their business elsewhere. That undesirable outcome can be averted with email management software that can automate emails received and give customers accurate answers quickly.

eGain Mail

Delivery Model: on-premises or on-demand

Price: For the on-premise solution, $1,500 per user; on-demand pricing is $120 per user per month.

Business Benefits: Agents can use Web-based forms and other structured input methods to consistently capture valuable customer data, allowing the implementation of an effective email workflow that helps agents respond personally and accurately. While creating responses, agents can access the customer's complete case history in order to create a more-targeted response.

Functionality: Predefined workflows help manage incoming email and Web-form inquiries, while a service-level agreement (SLA) triggers automated email routing and monitoring. Web-based consoles are available for a range of users -- from agents to system administrators -- and agents directly contribute to and access a common knowledge base that helps accurately resolve complex inquiries. Analytics and real-time alarms provide operational performance management.

Contact: eGain at 1-650-230-7500; or visit www.egain.com.

Kana Response

Delivery Model: on-premises or as a hosted service in Kana's Enterprise On-Demand model

Price: Starts at $50,000 based on the number of agents and size of deployment.

Business Benefits: The solution helps improve customer satisfaction with auto-acknowledgments and personalized answers delivered within SLAs. An intelligent agent desktop and productivity tools improve efficiency, and an advanced reporting console provides real-time metrics to monitor and improve service delivery, optimizing e-service operations. The software also supports long-term growth and volume spikes with industry-standard architecture that delivers distributed scalability.

Functionality: Rules-based service intelligence captures, analyzes, categorizes, prioritizes, and routes each message to the most appropriate agent or queue. Agent-to-agent collaboration via real-time chat enables coworkers to share expertise and reach a more accurate answer faster. The solution also features an intuitive reporting dashboard with real-time statistics and more than 100 operational reports available in multiple formats and versions.

Contact: Kana at 1-650-614-8300; or visit www.kana.com.

Talisma Email

Delivery Model: licensed or hosted

Price: Starts at $100 per user per month (hosted) or $1,500 per user (licensed) for enterprises; pricing for small-to-midsize businesses also available.

Business Benefits: Users can respond rapidly, accurately, and securely to thousands of emails per day. Intelligent routing, an intuitive user interface, and knowledge and productivity tools enable agents to achieve high rates of first-time resolution and improved customer satisfaction. Automated response technology immediately reduces the number of customer emails that require agent action.

Functionality: The application features intelligent rules with configurable routing based on subject lines, Web-form or email content, automatic response, and categorization engines. The software also measures and optimizes performance with real-time management dashboards, agent timers, and extensive management reports as well as a configurable Quality Control Outbox that can hold selected emails for supervisor review.

Contact: Talisma, an nGenera company, at 1-800-474-1149; or visit www.talisma.com.

Contact Editorial Assistant Christopher Musico at cmusico@destinationCRM.com.

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