What you need to know before outsourcing your email management

With the growing avalanche of emails flooding our inboxes on a daily basis, many businesses are finding themselves faced with the complex task of managing their electronic correspondence. The figures speak for themselves: on average, each employee receives 88 emails a day, according to statistics published by Arobase for 2015. According to the same source, French executives and company directors spend an average of more than 5 hours a day checking their inboxes.

To avoid being overwhelmed by this large volume of emails, many companies are opting for outsourcing as the wisest solution. If you’re considering delegating the processing of your emails, find out the key points for a successful outcome.

How exactly does outsourcing email management work?

Outsourcing email management involves entrusting all or part of the processing of your electronic correspondence to an external service provider. This approach frees you from low added-value tasks, allowing you to dedicate more time to your core business.

In today’s digital age, email plays a crucial role in customer relations. Interaction between a company and its customers via email is becoming increasingly important, and takes many different forms. Often, it is customers themselves who first contact the company via the email address displayed on its website or on social media. They may also simply reply to emails sent by the company itself.

It can happen that a company is faced with a high volume of emails, exceeding its internal management capacity. Chaotic handling of this influx of emails can damage the company’s image. Unanswered emails or late responses lead to a significant drop in customer satisfaction. Poor management can also result in the loss of crucial information, or even misunderstandings, leading to the loss of customers.

It is important to note that email overflow also affects the well-being of employees, becoming a source of stress that can impact on their productivity. To promote business growth, it is therefore recommended to implement an email processing strategy based on outsourcing.

When should you outsource your email processing?

Outsourcing incoming emails makes sense in the following situations:

During periods of peak activity, when a large number of emails are received. This approach can be adopted permanently or for a limited period.
If you are committed to providing fast, accurate responses to your customers, but are having difficulty responding to some of your emails.
If you want to free yourself completely from managing your customer relations by email.
If you don’t have a competent team to deal with your emails.

What are the advantages of outsourcing email management?

Outsourcing your email management has a number of significant advantages:

Adding value to the company: this approach enables the company to respond effectively to all customer requests via email, while adding real value by freeing up time to concentrate on the core business.
Optimising the management of incoming e-mails is becoming essential, especially when companies receive hundreds of messages every day. By entrusting this task to a specialist company, every customer e-mail is handled properly, from sorting to response, guaranteeing customer satisfaction.
Saving time is another significant benefit, with 56% of users spending 2 hours a day dealing with their emails, according to the results of a study carried out by ORSE (Observatoire de la Responsabilité Sociétale des Entreprises). Outsourcing considerably reduces this lost time, improving overall efficiency.
The extended availabilityof the outsourcing company, operating outside business hours, ensures continuity of service, boosting customer satisfaction and increasing sales.
Increased flexibility proves to be an advantage of outsourcing at times of peak activity, offering the possibility of quickly adjusting the service to fluctuations in email volume, thus ensuring uninterrupted customer service.
The tailor-made service offered by a specialist company such as ProContact meets the unique needs of each business, with the possibility of defining the scope of intervention at the start of the partnership, whether one-off or permanent.

Key points to consider before outsourcing email processing

Before you outsource your email processing, there are a number of key points to consider.

The service provider’s range of services

It is important to clearly define the scope of the outsourcer’s work right from the start of the collaboration. The most common option is “full service”, where the service provider takes charge of the entire processing of email traffic, from the receipt of messages to their delivery to the appropriate recipients, including the management of outgoing mail.

However, the choice of “full service” is not automatic. A preliminary analysis phase is required to identify the types of e-mail that can be outsourced. All mail can be outsourced, with the exception of technical mail involving a dispute with a supplier or customer. In this case, it is advisable to set up a level escalation system, routing “complex” e-mails directly to your address once they have been received, so that they can be processed internally.

The service provider’s ability to deliver quality responses

The success of email outsourcing depends on the service provider’s ability to provide quality responses. To achieve this, it is imperative that your company understands the nature of the messages that arrive in your inbox. In the event of an error, such as the incorrect classification of crucial messages, the company could suffer serious consequences.

It is recommended that you set up a quality control system to assess whether the service provider’s responses are of at least the same quality as those produced in-house. This control requires the emails to be traceable, as well as access to the statistics provided by the offshore service provider to gain an overall view of the emails received.

Finally, the service provider must continually enrich its knowledge base to guarantee and maintain the quality of responses. This implies a better understanding of customer knowledge in order to respond effectively to their expectations.

Choosing an offshore company specialising in e-mail management

The choice of external service provider is crucial if you decide to outsource all or part of your customer contacts. First of all, you need to check that the service provider is capable of providing a service of equivalent quality to that provided in-house, an assessment made easier by the traceability offered by many e-mailing tools.

It is also essential to ensure that the service provider can effectively communicate data on e-mails received and processed, which is important for assessing the quality of the services provided and ensuring optimum follow-up.

Finally, although most companies opt for outsourcing in order to cut costs, it is not advisable to choose excessively cheap offers at the expense of quality. To obtain a satisfactory service, it is advisable to find a balance between cost and quality of service. Entrusting e-mail management to an offshore company such as ProContact is therefore a good way to benefit from satisfactory services at more affordable prices.

ProContact, the outsourcing expert

Entrust the management of your emails to ProContact. We can accommodate and manage your emails, whether on a one-off or permanent basis and according to your preferences. This can be done directly via your email address or via routing.

Trained to handle email communications, our agents will offer your customers a rapid, personalised response tailored to their request. What’s more, our business expertise allows us to provide a service that exceeds your expectations. As an offshore company, we guarantee the best value for money.