Email remains the go-to communications method of choice after the phone for all businesses and organisations around the world with 4.48 billion people worldwide using it, forecasted to rise to 4.73 billion in 2026. AI has revolutionised the management of email known as ‘email orchestration’ streamlining processes, unearthing customer insights, patterns and trends, improving communications and customer experience. Email should now be viewed as an intelligent business enabler and not just a communications tool.
Poorer Customer Experience
In 2023 Forrester discovered that CX among brands in the US declined for a second year in a row. Despite more than 80% of business leaders indicating that improving CX is a high priority, only 6% of brands saw a significant increase in 2023, compared to 10% the year prior.
It is ironic that customer service feels poorer than a few years ago when we didn’t have all the channels of communication available to us. With more channels and greater usage these are becoming increasingly difficult to manage and control, especially as hybrid working is the norm, and systems and customer service have become increasingly fragmented lacking centralised management. Consequently, managers don’t always know what is happening in the conversations between agents and customers. If you don’t know what problems your customers are having, then how are you going to fix them?
What is Email Orchestration?
Email orchestration is a digitally designed AI and automation solution that delves into the detail of processes, email content and the systems on which your business operates on. Moving beyond the basic traditional email management,‘email orchestration’ is reactive and proactive, seamlessly integrating into the front and back-office systems, revealing the hidden treasures of data to help you optimise your environment and not just manage it.
A lot of companies are operating in the dark on how to improve their customer experience because they don’t know what the problems are and where they sit within the process. Omni-channel contact centres have a myriad of channels to engage with customers, from email, voice, social media, reviews, comments, to text messages. That is a lot of channels for agents to manage and the data garnered from them is so huge and overwhelming that many companies do not analyse it to their advantage, and it often sits being unused.
Email is the Hidden Treasure
Believe it or not email is the answer to bring the disparate channels of communications together and help reveal the hidden treasures of data that lie within emails that previously would go unnoticed and unused. Revealing issues thatcustomers are facing and challenges in processes that can be improved all using disruptive technologies such as AI and automation solutions that can streamline your processes, communications, and customer experience. Email is a business enabler that is integral to your business strategy for growth and success and not just a communications tool.
In a recent Gartner webinar poll of more than 2,500 executives, 38% indicated that customer experience and retention is the primary purpose of their generative AI investments. This was followed by revenue growth (26%), cost optimisation (17%) and business continuity (7%).
Imagine the conductor in an orchestra bringing all your individual email interactions, actions and attachments together in perfect harmony feeding into and reading from your business management systems e.g. your CRM, the contact centre, the sales department, the marketing department, warehouse, logistics etc.
Take control of your customer’s journey and revolutionise your email function. Helping to eliminate siloed working and encourage employees across departments to work together ensuring everyone is utilising the data in the emails to make intelligent strategic decisions and improving the agent and customer service by streamlining processes through AI and automation.
Email through a New Lens
Traditional email orchestration is focused on campaign management and triggering emails based on certain fields within a CRM. True email orchestration is about looking across your shared inboxes through a new lens and unlocking the intelligence that lies within emails to make intelligent and strategic business decisions. Orchestration is about taking control of your data journey and guiding your customers to more efficient and effective outcomes. It is about being able to design an email interaction strategy that works for you.
Prioritising and Categorising
Analysing and orchestrating emails as they come in, enables businesses to add the next best actions to email, highlightingany potential patterns that fall outside business as usual. Emails (across multiple shared inboxes) can be categorised for individual products or services or even departments. Ensuring they are being sent to the correct person or department, saving time and effort of forwarding and risking the enquiry getting lost or being sent to the wrong person and the delay in dealing with it. This increases productivity, efficiencies, and customer service, and removes siloes and delivers an email based on content rather than email address (something that Outlook is unable to do).
Identifying Trends and Patterns
Advanced AI algorithms can help businesses understand more about their customers enabling them to build stronger relationships and develop a personalised service for them.
Identifying patterns and key words by analysing customers’ buying behaviours and predicting behaviours and matchingthem to data from other digital interactions such as WhatsApp, social media, webchat and reviews and comments online.
Providing intelligence to segment customers based on their demographics, buying behaviour, details etc, that will assist sales and marketing teams to devise more targeted and personalised campaigns.
Understanding Sentiment
AI analytics can analyse customer sentiment, analysing customers emotions and categorising if it is negative, neutral or positive. Identifying if customers are upset, angry or happy so businesses can understand their experience and improve it. This can be done by analysing voice calls and through text as well.
Training and Development
Quality management and recruiting contact centre agents is always a challenge. AI analytics can be structured to help you with identifying training gaps. Companies can use data not only to improve customer service but also, to uncover areas where they can cross sell or use for training and developing staff.
Integration is Key
Email orchestration is ultimately about integration, so people, processes, technology and data are all working in harmony together. Transforming previously fragmented systems into a single cohesive communications ecosystem.
Security, Data Privacy and Compliance
There are huge concerns around security, data privacy and compliance regarding email and the data it carries. A solution provider will ensure that your email orchestration solution is secure complete with regular updates, compliances and GDPR, vulnerability scanning / penetration testing, patches and encrypted communications.
Announcing the Concert
Businesses need to step back and look at email as a business enabler and not just a communications tool. By implementing email orchestration, they can integrate fragmented systems together in a single comprehensive system so every system talks to each other. Making employees roles easier, streamlining and simplifying processes and increasingproductivities and efficiencies. It is not just about simplifying the management of processes but taking a deep dive into your customers’ data that is buried in emails and other digital interactions and extrapolating that knowledge to make intelligent business decisions that can help you grow your business.