Email and search still neglected

A while ago I quoted a piece called 'Email is becoming so passe' which discussed the takeover of email by social networking forums as communication tools between friends - of course we all know that email is prob the number one way we communicate with each other at work, and so its the same desire with customers, who prefer to use email as their main communication channel with organisations.

Email is the number one task executed on the web, in front of search. Its funny that the following tends to occur in banking, and many other industries:

EMAIL

The email channel is poorly managed, under resourced and generates a fairly woeful customer experience. Email is the number 1 way customers want to interact with us - and we offer a poor service.

Here are some basic stats - from eMarketer: "Two-thirds of adult respondents said they preferred e-mail for communicating with businesses. Just as many—and this is the important part—said they expected to still prefer e-mail five years from now. "; many companies experience up to 25% of emails left unanswered - thats 25% of a lot sales opportunities going out the door, and customers left feeling unloved and uncared for by their existing or potential provider; of the emails that get through, over half fail to answer queries or sell effectively to meet customer needs.

This is a massively underutilised channel - time to change the situation. Some instructions to create quality email output:

1. Create robust reporting for any embedded or dedicated email teams
2. Aim for a response time in line with customer expectations - most customers expect a response within a 4 to 48 hour window - are you within this 90-100% of the time?
3. Build competency in written language skills, rather than assuming call centre agents can write as well as they speak
4. Regularly check the quality of response, ensuring restatement of the question(s) and content quality
5. willingness to assist/sign up customer,
6. direction back into assisted or self-service channels where applicable
7. Amazingly, I have to recommend spelling and grammar checks ... a larger proportion than you think is failing here

SEARCH

Search engines on sites, as well as the search engine optimisation that brings customers to sites, is often using old, defunct or unfamiliar technology - if Google possesses 70% of the market, why would we feel the need to create new behaviours and ways of searching? Search also possesses the most power in terms of advertising dollars online, and increasingly offline, so why ignore it as a medium? Up to half of all users start their online experiences using a search engine - to them 'its the internet' - ever seen someone type a url into a search engine rather than the address bar? Why would you think they would do that? What behaviour has been entrenched here?

Some further tips:

1. Dont create new behaviours for customers to learn - understand the way they currently hunt or trawl for information
2. If you do create new behaviour, make it better, easier, simpler, more engaging, ACCURATE
3. Make the connection between search and content, and content and application so easy to be compelling enough to complete - end-to-end process analysis here is critical
4. Set targets and objectives for search functions - not just for SEM campaigns, but also for SEO and internal search
5. Scrutinise keywords and tags regularly - sites grow organically where there are multiple content providers etc

Treat email just as importantly as your other channels - whether the emails come from the website, internet banking, an email address given out by your bankers, wherever. It might just prove to be the most powerful channel you have.

And invest in search - both organic search listings in engines, and on your own site. Compare your sites search results with how a Google or Yahoo would search your site - understand how different experiences are being delivered.