Getting "SPAM" Email Out Of Your Business
January 29, 2004 • UNWANTED "SPAM" EMAIL is a growing problem in almost every business today. It is now estimated that unwanted email will cost billions of dollars each year in lost productivity and expenses. State and Federal governments are also taking notice and have proposed a host of new legislation to deal with people and organizations that SPAM others. However, it is unlikely that SPAM will ever fully go away in the near future so organizations are stuck with the balancing act of encouraging customer information flow yet reducing unwanted email solicitations.
Email is one of the most valuable communication tools ever devised. In a matter of seconds, people can reach other people from around the world at virtually no expense. Much like the telephone in the 20th Century, email has become yet another seemingly indispensable form of communication. However, much like the telephone, solicitation through this medium has created a backlash from consumers and businesses alike that can not deal with the shear volume and indiscretion of these messages.
In response to these issues, many businesses have taken the following measures to try to better manage and/or reduce the volume of "SPAM" solicitations received:
Limit customer feedback to written letters only. Companies such as Southwest Airlines require all customer communication be more traditional by written letter. Southwest's explanation for this is listed on their website: "Call us traditional, but we elect to steer clear of the chat-style, respond-on-demand, quick casual format and focus on meaningful Customer dialogue. This is not because we don't care. It's because that style counters our commitment to Customer Service." Although companies such as Southwest only receive feedback in this manner, other companies receive feedback in many forms yet still receive a substantial volume of written communication. For example, The Disney Corporation receives over 600,000 customer letters per year about their theme parks. Although traditional and formal in nature, written communication is typically more time consuming and costly to the customer therefore the exclusive use of such medium is limited. With that advent of newer forms or communications, many companies tried a different approach.
Limit customer access to call centers only. The most common reaction to the various forms of communication touching a company is to try to consolidate and encourage ALL forms of communication to flow through the call centers through the use of 800's. While this might be of value to some customers, hold times, triaging, and simply communicating by phone are not of value to all customers. With the proliferation of email and other communication tools, phone interaction is moving out of favor with many people. In fact, a recent META group study found that 80% of business people prefer to communicate via email rather then phone. The end result of this process is the limiting of customer communication and information flow. The relationships of customers now become more distant and loyalty wanes. So companies are trying the second approach.
Add systems to "process" emails received. When companies realize that many call centers still receive 20% (and growing) of their traffic from email, they have added email management systems to better scan emails for keywords, send auto-responders, and triage throughout the organization. The results have been mixed at best. Customers receive impersonal "canned" auto-responses, often are personally responded to in days instead of hours, lack centralization and utilization controls, and are still allowing for SPAM email to be received through published email addresses. Worse is the fact that emails are displayed on websites and other places that open the door for SPAM solicitations and abuse. Which leads us to our next common reaction.
Limit and/or even eliminate email addresses and contact info on websites. In many cases organizations' customer basess grow larger, customer communication and support is viewed more as a necessary evil than an opportunity to better understand customer needs and strengthen loyalty. How else can one explain the lengthy hold times and phone triaging that takes place. If your calls were truly important to them, as they commonly state in their hold music, then your calls would be better managed than that. In truth, many organizations do NOT yet find your communication "very important" to them therefore they make the process of finding how to reach them on their websites about as easy as finding a needle in a haystack. So some have found another answer.
Structure communications into submit forms. Many companies, especially those who understand that virtual communication will still be preferred by many of their customers, have decided to better structure the feedback they initially receive through the use of submit forms on their websites. These forms, commonly linked to buttons that say "email us" or "contact us" are the companies way to say to their customers "Please communicate with us in a way in which we can manage it" by adding fields that are necessary to more effectively deal with the communication the first time around.
For example, most website feedback forms commonly ask for such things as the browser type and version from the user to help better isolate the problems. If this were sent via a regular email, communication back and forth (taking time for each person to respond) would have likely been necessary to obtain this information. The irony with the use of submit forms is that once submitted most typically only generate an email to the person responsible for managing it - in most cases to his/her inbox. This email thereby limits not only the organizations' ability to communicate back and forth with the customer as needed, but also effectively eliminates the organizations' ability to collectively act on, manage, and report on ALL of the feedback received.
So what is the answer? The answer is to better understand the value of "why" customers prefer to communicate in certain manners and what "value" it can provide to you. When looking at the recent proliferation of email, one can conclude that email communication from a customer in most cases is quick (unlike call waiting), convenient (24/7-unlike many calls), easy (most people can do it), cheap (unlike letters), and personal (requires no talking and middle men). However, what email lacks most is what most organizations today find of value: structure, centralization and utilization.
The Customer Feedback Center™ was designed by Customer Feedback Solutions to address the specific values customers achieve through the use of email, while at the same time addressing those areas that organizations value the most. The CFC provides a unique combination of user-defined submit forms, email, and written correspondence management in one centralized and easy to use system. Through the use of the CFC, companies can now more effectively communicate and interact with their customers to improve their products and services, which in turn will strengthen the loyalty of these customers, while reducing the cost of customer management.
The CFC eliminates the need for ALL email addresses to be posted, published, and placed on your website thereby effectively eliminating the SPAM email you could receive but still allowing for an open form of communication with your customers. Through the use of the CFC, you can now help take the SPAM out of your business.
For further information about customer feedback management, contact the CFS Corporate Research Department at: corpresearch@custfeedback.com or at (800) 465-8430.
