Need suggestions for Email Management Systems for Call Centers

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criccio

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I hope you all can help me out and point me in the direction of solutions you may have had experience with.

I work for a regional telecom or CLEC if you're familiar with the term. We have an ever growing call center that deals with a ton of different issues ranging from helping old ladies with Outlook Express to troubleshooting BGP routes in our core network.

The problem we are having is distributing workflow from email. Currently, all of the techs use Outlook 2007 and have two inbox's; their personal inbox and the "Technical Support Mailbox" that is shared between all of the techs.

As emails come in, whether it be an automated alert (we have a few different types such as Nagios, HP OpenView, Genview, etc...), a customer email, one of our agents/vendors or even other departments, it is up to a technician to decide to work on something and then tell the rest of the techs that he/she is taking said email.

That is where our problem lies. When we were smaller and maybe 6 techs working total, we had no problem working with each other and distributing workflow among ourselves. As we grow, with so many personalities in the call center, relying on each person to do their due diligence and not just do the whole "if i ignore it long enough someone else will get it" attitude.

We also have no way to track who worked on what email at a later date. Once the tech is finished with an email he/she will move it to a designated folder and there is no way after the fact to know who that was.

Believe me, I would love nothing more than just make the techs just do their jobs and be responsible but with so many of them now its just not feasible.

We are now aware that there are dedicated Email Management Systems designed specifically for call centers that do exactly what we want, however they seem to be incredibly expensive (eGain quoted us $60k a year!)

So, that's our story... What do you suggest?
 
Perhaps what you guys really need is a complete contact center solution? Maybe something like Contactual (8x8) or Five9?

These are hosted remotely but can probably (I know Contactual/8x8 will do so depending on the size of the deal) interop with your SIP service to drop call costs down, but will also allow for queuing of emails/and calls - that way, incoming emails for support get distributed equally without the headache of having to notify everyone that you are working on a ticket (also probably will increase productivity since there'd be statistical reports available on who is doing work vs who doesn't).


I can go into a lot of detail about this - I supported Contactual's product for quite some time (not there anymore but still know a great deal about it) and it's probably will be less than 60k a year... a lot less. Shoot me a PM if it tickles your fancy ;)
 
No offense but you are all wrong in your approach of the problem, you need a HelpDesk/Management software.
You don't need to manage your email but to manager your work/tickets.

Your help desk software will deal with the "[email protected]" account and from it's setting it will dispatch to the group or person in charge depending on who it's from, subject or other setting you may have set.

If it's a group thing then one of you will eventually login into the system and take the case in charge, other people won't have it on their list since someone else took it.

It's that easy! 60k forget that! There great software for that for couple hundred a year and even some open-source software.
 
VanFanel89 said:
Perhaps what you guys really need is a complete contact center solution? Maybe something like Contactual (8x8) or Five9?

These are hosted remotely but can probably (I know Contactual/8x8 will do so depending on the size of the deal) interop with your SIP service to drop call costs down, but will also allow for queuing of emails/and calls - that way, incoming emails for support get distributed equally without the headache of having to notify everyone that you are working on a ticket (also probably will increase productivity since there'd be statistical reports available on who is doing work vs who doesn't).


I can go into a lot of detail about this - I supported Contactual's product for quite some time (not there anymore but still know a great deal about it) and it's probably will be less than 60k a year... a lot less. Shoot me a PM if it tickles your fancy ;)
Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestions, we'll definitely have somewhere to look now. :D

altivec said:
No offense but you are all wrong in your approach of the problem, you need a HelpDesk/Management software.
You don't need to manage your email but to manager your work/tickets.

Your help desk software will deal with the "[email protected]" account and from it's setting it will dispatch to the group or person in charge depending on who it's from, subject or other setting you may have set.

If it's a group thing then one of you will eventually login into the system and take the case in charge, other people won't have it on their list since someone else took it.

It's that easy! 60k forget that! There great software for that for couple hundred a year and even some open-source software.
Click to expand...

The problem with that is we already have a ticket system (homegrown) that we use and it works quite well. We have a software department that develops it and we can add/modify things in it with an email to them. Apparently an EMS isn't something they can do, unfortunately. Either way, this is the article that got us looking into EMS systems:

http://www.icmi.com/Resources/Artic...ring-Email-Management-in-the-Call-Center.aspx
 
I should have mentioned that most HCC (hosted call centers) have a built in ticketing system as well - i.e. emails come, distributed into queue based on routing rules and then distributed to agents depending on who is available or who was the last one to handle a ticket.

Now because you have a homegrown ticketing system in place, it makes things a bit more complex - you have to basically integrate an EMS with the ticketing system... perhaps your homegrown system could be modified to add a queuing system as well? I don't think using Outlook is the right approach... I think using an external app (or a webpage) would work best and Outlook is used for your 'personal' mailbox...

With Contactual, for example (and I use contactual cuz like I said - I supported the software) - you can use it for email queuing, conversion into tickets and then communication back and forth via email with the customer which updates the ticket. At the same time - there's a backdoor API that allows you to sync between the Contactual database and your own database, so if an email came as a ticket into Contactual, it would also be duplicated in your own system.
 
That's great advice and I really am thankful for it. Of course if I didn't have to work with other departments in order to implement all this we'd really be golden. Either way, I have something direction now so again, thanks!
 
I have a client that uses zendesk.. it does the job.. takes all emails to a "suppport@domain" address and automatically creates a ticket.. they grab a ticket, do what is needed, and close out the ticket.. I think it is $50 per person per year.. you can see who closed out tickets, how long it took, etc..
 
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