Intelligent Email Management White Paper May, 2003 IP Telephony Contact Centers Unified Communication Services
T able of Contents: Section 1: Section 2: Section 3: Section 4: Section 5: Executive Summary The Challenge The Solution: Avaya Email Management Overview of Avaya Email Management Components Improving Agent Productivity and Quality Assurance Section 5.1: Quality Analysis Process Section 6: Email Management Effectiveness: Intelligent Workflow Driven Processing Section 6.1: Section 6.2: Section 6.3: Analyze Workflow Qualify Workflow Outbound Workflow Section 7: Improving Customer Satisfaction Section 7.1: Section 7.2: Section 7.3: Section 7.4: Section 7.5: Section 7.6: Auto Acknowledge Auto or Agent Directed Response Avaya Email Routing and Resource Matching Avaya Business Advocate for Avaya Interaction Center Routing Multiple Interactions / Document Matching Send Request to Subject Matter Expert Section 8: Intelligent Email Analysis Section 8.1: Section 8.2: Section 8.3: Section 8.4: Section 8.5: Sender Identification / Information Customer Segmentation Keyword Matching Content Analysis Determining Languages Section 9: Management Reporting and Analysis Section 9.1: Section 9.2: Email Specific Reports Email Specific Drill-Through Reports Section 10: Appendix A: Conclusion System Requirements
Section 1: Executive Summary Many companies struggle with processing their increasingly high volumes of email efficiently and effectively. This can result in poor customer service and lost revenue opportunities. Fortunately, Avaya has developed a robust set of tools to better manage customer-initiated email. The Avaya Email Management system provides intelligent tools to both reduce response times and improve the accuracy and quality of responses. Section 2: The Challenge In today s economy, companies are increasingly looking for ways to cut costs while staying competitive. With the increase of multiple communication channels like email and web, customers are demanding immediate service to their inquiries. Specifically, with email, expectations for a response to written inquiries are getting shorter. Are companies responding in a fast and accurate manner to their high valued customers? The reality is that companies are doing a poor job in managing customer emails. A recent survey by Jupiter Research showed that while 88% of customers expect a response to their email within 24 hours, only 54% of companies surveyed meet this expectation 1. The slow and impersonal attention to a customer s emails can drastically damage the company s reputation and may cause customers to defect to the competition. Further, companies are struggling with high email volumes and paying the high price for not incorporating better cost effective means to handle customer s interactions. With the figure below, Gartner measures that the cost of contact per contact type for poorly implemented email can be as high as $28! $40.00 $30.00 $20.00 $10.00 $- Web Self- Service E-mail Web chat Phone selfservice Phone high low average $5.00 $0.25 $0.65 $28.00 $1.50 $2.50 $34.00 $3.00 $7.50 $12.00 $0.85 $1.85 $30.00 $2.50 $4.50 Gartner Copyright 2003 Figure 1: Cost of Interaction by Channel Type Source: Kolsky, Esteban, Customer Self-Service: Reducing Customer Maintenance, presentation, Gartner Group, 2003, slide 10. 1 Jupiter Research, JUPITER RESEARCH REPORTS THAT COMPANIES ARE FAILING AT ONLINE CUSTOMER SERVICE DESPITE GROWTH IN ONLINE CRM SPENDING, press release, http://www.internet.com/corporate/releases/03.02.20-crmforecast.html 1
This means that it can be more expensive to implement email if companies don t incorporate capabilities like email automation and content analysis routing strategies into their business. The good news is that companies can achieve the low cost target if they have the right email technology along with efficient and cost effective strategies. Therefore, incorporating the right email management into customer service is a critical need. By establishing contact queues to respond to emails from customers, companies can improve their efficiency, boost productivity and reduce costs. When evaluating solutions, companies are not simply looking for a point email solution, but the option to have an integrated suite approach that will allow them to incorporate other channels like voice and web. Companies also need to decide to effectively segment, prioritize and intelligently route emails to ensure that responses are appropriate and consistent with their corporate brand. If valued customers are emailing, is the level of service and treatment matching their value? Are they also handled in an intelligent and effective manner? For example, is there a screening mechanism that allows supervisors to scan emails from new agents? Quality and consistency of emails is another major concern since it puts the company s answers in writing. The purpose of this paper is to cover: The Avaya Email Management technology and benefits Improved agent productivity and quality assurance Email effectiveness with intelligent workflow driven processing Customer satisfaction Self-service automation capabilities like Content Analysis Management reporting and analysis System requirements Section 3: The Solution: Avaya Email Management Avaya Email Management, an application within the Avaya Interaction Center software suite, provides intelligent automated and agent-assisted response capabilities to manage high volumes of email efficiently. The Avaya email solution can drive down costs by automating email responses without the need for large numbers of live agents. Automatic responses, suggested responses, and auto-acknowledge can be triggered based on key words or natural language content analysis to determine the intent of the email. In addition, content analysis can be utilized for routing, filtering and providing suggested responses. Avaya Email Management provides personalized treatment and routing. Incoming email can be classified based upon the sender, the subject, or other criteria to create entitlements and route to appropriately skilled agents. These email messages are queued based on the skills needed to answer them and the availability of those skills. They are routed to agents in a predetermined order based on the contact center's current load and agent skills available. The email management system uses business rules to ensure service level. Avaya Email Management can also improve agent productivity and increase speed of service, through a set of templates, agent resources and suggested responses. 2
Below are a few examples of how to obtain some of the Avaya Email Management benefits. Improved customer service by providing rapid auto-acknowledgement messages for emails that arrive during off hours to set customer expectations. Avaya offers built-in date/time functions to indicate in the acknowledgement message how many hours until the contact center agents will be available. Content analysis or keyword searching can also be used to provide a more customized response (for example, distinguish between new messages and replies to a prior email from the contact center). Consistency in email treatment regardless of language. In a multi-lingual contact center environment, automatic language recognition capability can route email to a language-specific workflow that references the appropriate language. Email is delivered with the auto-suggest responses and template to the appropriate skilled agent. Matching the right agent to the right customer email. A customer request may involve several agents (for example, due to multiple specialized requests in a single email or a complex fulfillment process with multiple steps). A special workflow tracks the status of the transaction. Improve quality assurance of outbound email. Content analysis is performed on outgoing responses to determine if a non-standard delivery commitment is being made to the customer. If this is detected, the message can be automatically routed to a Quality Assurance (QA) or review agent for further action. A standard, structured email response with a web site link is provided for common requests (for example, status request for a current open order). Email requests are quickly identified and the appropriate information fields in the message are retrieved and acted on automatically. Tailored responses during times of corporate changes. For example, in the event of a major product recall, companies can use the content analysis capability to pre-sort the emails according to whether the incoming email requests information on the recall program. Automatic response capability retrieves Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) and program information to be included in the response to the customer. Section 4: Overview of Avaya Email Management Components Avaya Email Management delivers intelligent and personalized email service. The process entails: Incoming emails from customers or web forms are delivered to a standard POP3 email server. The email is then polled and parsed by the Avaya Email Management system. Based on keywords, subject or content, emails can be auto-acknowledged or auto-responded for routing to the most appropriate agent. When the agent receives the email, they can use auto suggest templates or type the response. Outgoing emails can then be routed to supervisors to review and then sent back to the customer. 31
Figure 2: Overview of Avaya Email Management Section 5: Improving Agent Productivity and Quality Assurance On the agent desktop, Avaya Email Management gives agents the necessary tools to effectively and efficiently handle emails (email resources, canned libraries, templates and suggested responses). The system automatically presents agents with a screen pop of a caller's data from the desktop application being used with the customer s contact history (across multiple media) to save time and ensure personalized email handling. The Agent interface presents controls and suggested templates to allow easy response to emails that can dramatically increase the speed of response to common questions and ensure quality answers. The agent interface also includes spell check to ensure correct spelling and grammar. 4
A screen shot of the Avaya Web Agent interface for Email is shown in Figure 3. Figure 3: Agent Interface Section 5.1: Quality Analysis Process To ensure high quality responses, the Quality Assurance (QA) routing process can be configured within the Avaya email workflow. This process has the following features: The Outbound email flow automatically runs when the agent "sends the email" to allow for business rules to be run on email before it is sent to the customer. Business logic encoded in the workflows determines which responses will be sent through a quality assurance process. Options can be configured for including all email from a specific agent, a random (%) sample, and/or specific content analysis topics (e.g. legal, confidential, bad language etc). Items that are selected for review are routed to an "approver" who can reject the email causing it to be returned to the agent with comments on how to fix it. The approver can alternatively make edits and send the email. This mechanism can be used as a mechanism of observing a new agent and providing training feedback. 5
The QA Review Agent has the ability to approve a response and send it out, edit the response and send it out, or reject the response (with or without comment) and return it to the originating agent. Avaya Email Management also comes with email alerts, which provides the capability to set a timer to monitor for the timely receipt of an information request from an agent or customer. When configured, the appropriate time interval is set automatically by the Outgoing workflows. This capability allows the agent to meet any special service-level requirements set for the customer such as follow-up work, or when the email requires and answers from and outside subject matter expert. When the timer expires, the agent is alerted automatically and can decide whether to follow-up on the current status of the request or to pursue another contingency. Section 6: Email Management Effectiveness: Intelligent W orkflow Driven processing An important component of Avaya Email Management is its ability to enable customized and intelligent workflow to suit the needs of the contact center s unique business requirements. Steps in the email management process are managed through the use of the Interaction Center Workflow Designer engine. A Workflow Designer tool provides a mechanism to specify powerful retrieval, delivery, and information retrieval capabilities for email-related transactions. Three standard types of sample workflows are provided as a starter set with Avaya Email Management. Analyze workflow - for initial email processing Qualify workflow - for routing to a contact center agent Outbound workflow - for handling subsequent email routing from an agent Section 6.1: Analyze Workflow The processing sequence provided by Analyze Workflow begins after the email is retrieved from an external POP3 Email Server and ends with the email transaction provided to the Qualify Workflow for delivery to the appropriate contact center agent. The Analyze Workflow analyzes the email by examining To and From address fields (for example, to determine the routing destination and customer). Content analysis is applied to the Subject and/or Body of the message. Intent of the email is identified to a level of detail that can be used for determining auto-acknowledgement and either an automated response and/or input to subsequence routing to a contact center agent. Important characteristics of the email (for example, size of the message, whether attachments are included) are determined automatically by identifying and parsing various fields within the email. These fields are stored in a customer history folder or Electronic Data Unit (edu), which is used to pass important information about the email from one Interaction Center component to another. Any combination of these fields may be used for subsequent analysis and use in email response and routing. The To Address might reference a special contact center group (for example, support@yourcompany.com) to which certain emails will 6
always be routed. The combination of the From Address and Mail Priority might be used to provide expedited routing for selected high-value customers. If additional information about the customer is maintained in a database, then the From Address is used for a database lookup (for example, to retrieve a customer number or credit history). Figure 4: Example of Analyze Email Workflow 7
Section 6.2: Qualify Workflow The Qualify Workflow provides the routing logic needed to deliver an email to the appropriate agent, after the Analyze Workflow has determined the email intent, customer information, and disposition. As the Analyze Workflow accomplishes its processing, routing hints are created and used to match work to an agent or agent queue depending on agent availability and skill level. Figure 5: Example of Qualify Email Workflow Section 6.3: Outbound Workflow The Outbound Workflow for outgoing emails is triggered after the contact center agent has completed their current work on the current email transaction and "sends" the email. Depending on the activity intended by the agent, the outbound email could be a direct response destined for the customer or a request to an external subject matter expert (SME). The Outbound Workflow routes the request, possibly invoking a subsequent review by a quality assurance supervisor or setting the time for an automatic alert for later action by the agent. 8
A functional view of the email Outbound Workflow steps is provided in Figure 6. The remaining subsections provide more details on the specific activities that take place during each step of the Analyze and Outbound Workflows. Figure 6: Example of Outbound Email Workflow 9
Section 7: Improving Customer Satisfaction Avaya Email Management comes with a number of capabilities that increase prompt email responses and thereby increase customer satisfaction. Section 7.1: Auto Acknowledge An auto-acknowledgement informs the customer that the mail was successfully received and will be processed soon. The email message to the sender is informational only and additional processing of the email continues after the acknowledgement is sent out. This is in contrast to an auto-response where the answer/response is sent back to the customer with the expectation that the contact is finished. The content of an auto-acknowledgement can be different, depending upon the desire of the contact center. The first option is to send out a standard auto-acknowledgement upon receipt of the email, with no or little analysis of the email itself. This allows for a timely automated response, but at the expense of some specificity such as reference to email intent or to what area the email has been forwarded. A second, more intelligent auto-acknowledgment can be provided. A combination of content analysis, keyword search or segmentation is used to determine which specific type of acknowledgment should be sent (e.g. "Thank you for your recent sales inquiry about our new software."). For example, different acknowledgments could be used for "Sales" email versus "Services" email. These auto responses serve to let customers know that correspondence was received, and set the expectation as to when to expect a response. Section 7.2: Auto or Agent Directed Response With auto response, companies are able to respond to a customer inquiry or request automatically without human intervention. Fully automated responses work best when there is a high confidence level that the intent of the email has been correctly identified and the business cost of providing an incorrect or inappropriate response is relatively low. An example is when a request is for information (for example, product features or requirements) rather than a business commitment. If the confidence level is medium to low or the business cost associated with providing the wrong response is high, an agent response is the better option. This decision can be tuned as part of the business rules for this type of email. An agent should not be expected to develop a response for every email. Each agent has his/her own writing style and responses will vary in content and quality. Once the intent of an email is determined, a suggested response(s) will be presented to the agent. The agent always has the option of tailoring it. Results from determining the intent of an email are used to create search parameters into the Self-Service Knowledge Base to retrieve suggested responses and response templates. The matched responses are returned along with a confidence score indicating the closeness of the response to the selected topics. Templates are "form letter" responses that automatically answer customer email requests. 10
Section 7.3: Avaya Email Routing and Resource Matching Avaya Email Management provides the capability to use the routing information gathered during email analysis to make basic routing decisions. The routing capabilities are implemented within the Qualify workflow. Examples of some of these basic email operations might include: Routing/decisions based on a pre-specified mailbox (To). Routing/decisions based on keywords in email header or body (From, To, Subject, Body). Blocking of the delivery of junk mail to agents based on patterns in email body (This is not the main mechanism for junk mail screening, but is a mechanism to customize for specific business rules). Routing/decisions based on pre-specified senders (To customer lookup). Routing/decisions based on identified topics in the subject and body based on content analysis. Routing/decisions based on identified language of the email. Section 7.4: Avaya Business Advocate for Avaya Interaction Center Routing (Available in Release 6.1) Avaya Email Management capabilities will utilize Avaya Business Advocate algorithms for predictive and skills-based routing capabilities. Advocate is a set of capabilities that provides new methods and added flexibility for selecting an agent for an email or an email for an agent. Advocate is an optional add-on component to the base Interaction Center system. Using Business Advocate for Interaction Center, the contact center manager defines business goals that specify what kind of service to provide for various customer segments and/or for various types of work (email, voice calls, web chat). It is these business goals that drive the routing and work distribution decisions while providing contact center managers with a way to measure the value that the center brings to the business. As work comes into the system, its characteristics (qualifiers) that will be used as input to Business Advocate for routing are identified. Each connector (channel) has its unique way of identifying work type and storing the relevant information about the contact. For example, the email connector may store the From Address, To Address and Subject of the email. In addition, the output of content analysis, key word search or other identifying email information can be used to further qualify the piece of email. Examples of further CA qualification might include language, product and customer type. Section 7.5: Multiple Interactions / Document Matching The processing cycle for an email transaction often involves multiple email items. Emails can be exchanged with the sender to get additional information or confirm data. A subject matter expert (SME) can be requested to provide additional information or provide approval to proceed with a transaction. A copy of the actual email can be sent to a supervisor for quality assurance purposes. These different emails must be tracked and kept together for later processing and historical purposes. The Avaya Email Management system provides the capability of matching incoming emails with previously received emails for a particular transaction. The various emails are available for review by the agent to assist in processing the customer request. 11
Section 7.6: Send Request to Subject Matter Expert To ensure that the customer receives the right answer to their email inquiry, email agents can engage a Subject Matter Expert (SME), an individual who is capable of assisting the agent in responding to a service request. Several capabilities are provided to support convenient collaboration between the agent and an external SME: Agents are able to send email to SMEs for help during the processing of the work item. The SME can be within or outside of the company domain. As part of this capability, an agent has the option to include the original received email (text and/or file attachments) plus any annotations. When sending email to a SME, information is embedded in the outbound message to support matching a received response from the SME to the original email. An agent has access to a SME address book when originating outbound mail, or (at the agent s option) can manually input a TO, CC or BCC address. Avaya Email Management is able to identify a received email as a response to an existing email item from either a customer or a SME. The response received back is automatically tracked and tied to the original email and routed back to the agent or group of agents that was specified when the SME mail was sent outbound. 2 The agent is able to include one or more responses from the SME when composing an outgoing mail message to the customer. The response to the customer may include text and/or file attachments. Section 8: Intelligent Email Analysis Avaya Email Management has the ability to sort and route incoming emails as well as analyze incoming emails based on the sender information, service levels and message content (through keyword matching and intent). Avaya Email Management with Content Analyzer can also determine the language of the incoming email. Section 8.1: Sender Identification / Information The From (sender s) email address can be used to identify the customer from a customer database and to retrieve a customer record with basic information. The retrieved information is displayed on the agent s desktop. Having customer summary information enables an agent to handle a customer s email more effectively and efficiently. Avaya Email Management can search customer information databases that are located on other systems. 2 Email alerts provide the capability to set a timer to monitor for the timely receipt of an information request from an SME or customer. When configured, the appropriate time interval is set automatically by the Outgoing workflows. This capability allows the agent to meet any special service-level requirements set for the customer or request class. When the timer expires, the agent is alerted automatically and can decide whether to follow-up on the current status of the request or to pursue another contingency. 12
Section 8.2: Customer Segmentation The customer record can be used to provide the value of the customer to a company for use in customer segmentation. This allows a company to assign different service levels based on the value of that customer. High value customers can be routed immediately to a particular customer service representative for personalized services. Other customers are routed through normal process steps. Section 8.3: Keyword Matching The customer s intent of an email can be determined by searching the subject line and/or body of the email for key words that are associated with different topics. Key words can consist of a single word or a phrase. It is important to note that the different tenses of a word are treated as different words. A word of a different tense can often change the meaning and intent of an email. When using keyword matching, all variations of a word(s) should be considered. While subject intent can often be determined, the sender does not always imbed the right key words within the subject line. If subject intent cannot be determined, the body of the email must be analyzed to determine intent. Therefore, another limitation with keyword searching in a subject line is that it is difficult to determine a sub-topic within a subject. As an example, the subject identified is computer service, but is that service for hardware or software? If hardware, is the hardware a processor, keyboard or monitor? Ultimately, Avaya Email Management provides both options, keyword matching and Content Analysis, depending on the company s business needs and email processing model and preference. Keyword matching is used also to retrieve specific information from a portion of an email. Email is checked against pre-designated customer account numbers (for example, in order to differentiate service levels based on customer value). This information can be used also by the Analyze Workflows to provide additional routing hints to downstream routing workflows. Regular expressions to specify the search text are supported. This allows a pattern with known format (for example, a Social Security Number or Customer Identification Number) to be easily located and used as a key for subsequent routing or database lookups. Keyword matching is most useful in situations where the keywords can be unambiguously identified within the message. This is because the keyword returned may represent one of several possible email addresses: the sender s address, an address to be used as a destination for the response, or an unrelated address from an embedded message (for example, within a forwarded piece of email). If the email body is well structured (for example, some type of form which has only one field designated for an email address), then keyword matching may be appropriate. Section 8.4: Content Analysis Since emails often have informal and ambiguous language, content analysis and natural language processing is needed to enable enterprises to effectively and intelligently process and discern value from the information in the email. Avaya Email Management imbeds the Content Analyzer 3 (CA) feature module. CA is an optional component that allows the system to automatically perform content analysis 3 The underlying content analysis engine is based on the Relationship Modeling Engine (RME) licensed from Banter, Inc. 13
on incoming email. It extends email analysis beyond simple keyword matching. Complex natural language processing and statistical analysis algorithms are applied to text of the email and derive a likelihood match between that text and a list of possible topics. While keyword searching can determine if a given keyword is contained in a message, the presence of the keyword alone is often insufficient to determine the actual meaning or intent of the message. An example of this is provided in Figure 7 where keywords such as "Lincoln" or "Ford" could have multiple meanings depending on the actual context of the message. Presidents Automobiles Nixon Ford Corvette Lincoln Madison Tacoma Dublin Cities Figure 7: Limitations of Keyword Matching Content Analyzer can analyze text written in languages other than English. This information can be useful when qualifying and routing a piece of email in a multi-lingual contact center environment. It can also be used to recognize and react (via specialized email routing) to unsupported languages. Supported languages for text classification are English (both U.S. and U.K.), French (both Parisian and Canadian), German, Spanish (both Castilian and Latin American) and Japanese. Section 8.5: Determining Languages A contact center may be servicing an area where multiple languages are prevalent. If the routing of a call to particular agent skill group is dependent upon language, the company may want to route inbound emails based on language. Many companies have difficulty in accomplishing this. 4 With the Avaya solution, the body of the email is passed to the Content Analyzer server to determine the dominant language of the email. The accuracy of the identification depends on the size of the message as well as the number of different languages that it contains. 4 The underlying content analysis engine is based on the Relationship Modeling Engine (RME) licensed from Banter, Inc. 14
Avaya Email Management with Content Analyzer can identify the dominant language of the email for any of the following languages: English (U.S. and U.K.), German, French (Parisian and Canadian), Spanish (Castilian and Latin American), Portuguese, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Korean, and Chinese (Simplified). Section 9: Management Reporting and Analysis Avaya provides operational reporting support for management of contact center activity to drive revenue and improve operational costs, improve productivity, and more importantly, increase customer intimacy, retention and satisfaction. The integrated customer interaction repository and suite of standard predefined reports provide detail and summary views across multiple sites, multiple ACD vendors and multiple communication channels (Voice, VoIP, email, Web Chat and Web Self-Service). The Avaya reporting package provides a rich and consistent set of real-time metrics across all channels thereby substantially reducing the effort to manage multi-media contact centers. Ten email-specific reports are included with Avaya Email Management. Section 9.1: Email Specific Reports Detailed Agent Response Time Range Report Detailed Agent Group Statistics Report Detailed Agent Interactions by Channel Detailed Reports by Channel and Trends Monthly Traffic Trends Report Traffic by Hour Report Email Account Summary Report Section 9.2: Email Specific Drill-Through Reports Detailed Agent Response Time Range Report Detailed Agent by Queues Report Detailed Agent Response by Date Range Report Mail Account Summary Report The 3-D graphical, web-based monitoring of real time and historical contact center performance allows for efficient management of agent activities and verification that the system is achieving service level goals. The ability to create and maintain customized reports aids in the assessment of customer service and marketing activities unique to each business. The predefined data collectors and standard reports are automatically combined with full multi-channel data for complete cradle-to-grave contact analyses. 15
Section 10: Conclusion By using the Avaya advanced email automation technology, companies can successfully cut costs and improve efficiency with measurable agent productivity gains and intelligently route emails throughout the contact center. Companies can also experience enhanced customer satisfaction by the timeliness, quality and accuracy of email responses. As a result, companies can deliver excellent customer service and increase revenue opportunities! Appendix A: System Requirements Agent Desktop OS Windows NT/2000/ XP Servers OS Windows 2000 Solaris 8 Databases Microsoft SQLServer 2000 Oracle 8.1.7 16
About Avaya Avaya enables businesses to achieve superior results by designing, building and managing their communications networks. More than one million businesses worldwide, including 90 percent of the FORTUNE 500, rely on Avaya solutions and services to enhance value, improve productivity and gain competitive advantage. Focused on enterprises large to small, Avaya is a world leader in secure and reliable IP telephony systems, communications software applications and full life-cycle services. Driving the convergence of voice and data communications with business applications and distinguished by comprehensive worldwide services Avaya helps customers leverage existing and new networks to unlock value and enhance business performance. reach IP Telephony Contact Centers Unified Communication Services 2003 Avaya Inc. All Rights Reserved. Avaya and the Avaya Logo are trademarks of Avaya Inc. and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. All trademarks identified by the, SM or TM are registered trademarks, service marks or trademarks, respectively, of Avaya Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Printed in the U.S.A. 04/03 EF-LB2082 avaya.com