Death by email

Grudders

We are a long-established SAAS company in the fintech industry. We've always had high email traffic in our CSM team. This can range from straightforward correspondence to more complex queries. Whilst we can upload and reply to emails into our CRM, this relies on our CSM remembering to do it. Also, it's creating a culture of working from our inboxes.

I'm considering moving our customers away from email and moving into our case management system as we do our support tickets. Has anyone had any experience with this topic? I'd loved to hear back from you.

Michelle Wideman

@Grudders, can you outline what is the problem you're trying to solve? Example-are you trying to move away from email because CSM's are not documenting email correspondence in the CRM? If that's the case, what about looking at integrating your email with your CRM? Or are your customers complaining about the existing process so you want to move it into case management? My cautious would be know your customer, if they're not complaining about the current process, changing customer behavior can be tough, especially if it's working.

Rich Rans

@Grudders I'd be curious as to what customers are emailing their CSMs. I frequently see too many support issues being emailed to the CSM. If they are not support type issues, are they so urgent they couldn't wait until their next session with their CSM (assuming a high touch model)?

I have not seen a situation where CSMs use a ticketing model, unless you are implementing some kind of pooled CSMs.

Javed Maqsood

Agreed with @Michelle Wideman.

If you are trying to address customer issues, questions etc via email and there are too many of them, there may be a problem with your onboarding or adoption phase tasks / playbooks.

If it's related to product performance, customers may need to go to support

My suggestion would be to understand why there is high amount of email traffic and address, if possible. Operationally, if you are trying to increase your responsiveness by integrating into CRM, I don't see any problems with that approach.

Javed

afettere

From an ops perspective, many CRMs can automatically sync your emails, so perhaps confirm that is/is not possible for you.

From a maturity perspective, CS platforms can also sync email. You may want to investigate if your organization has some budget for a dedicated CS platform for tracking things more holistically than a CRM can.

Neha singh

Hi Grudders,

I know what you are facing since I have been in the exact same position. However, in my organisation client success and support were clubbed together. (not sure if this is the case with you). This led to insane amount of emails pouring in, mostly queries around product usage and issues. Hence I agree with @Javed Maqsood about separating client success and support queries.

My team suffered because empathetic CSMs absolutely capable of adding value to the client by strategically supporting business outcomes, were busy attending to support queries.

I know of cases, where an alias email is set up for support queries and it is linked with Salesforce or any other CRM being used to queue and process them. This has 2 advantages:

1. Since its a alias, the client has no option but to go through the system for raising query and follow up questions. In the absence of a rep, they are focussing on the solution or becoming cognisant of a product limitation (instead of ranting and complaining). The CSMs can support the client in achieving their business outcomes beyond the ticketed issue
2. Being linked to an internal system CRM or JIRA, you re able to parse the quality and quantity of queries and take remedial action on product, servicing or sales front.

Neha.