The Paradox of Email Support
Back when the Internet was still a novelty, the conventional wisdom was that customer service through E-mail would save companies a bundle. It hasn't worked that way. Not by a long shot.
Recent research I've seen shows that the average E-mail to customer service costs somewhere between $9 and $12 to handle (depending on which study you believe), where the average phone call costs between $8 and $10. So not only is E-mail not saving any money, it may actually be more expensive for most companies to handle.
It gets worse, though, because the volume of E-mails does not reduce the volume of phone calls any. Instead, companies are handling more customer interactions when they support customer E-mails.
What's Going On?
She Who Puts Up With Me works in the technical support operation of a small software company, and has some interesting insights.
First, E-mails often don't contain enough information to answer the customer's question, requiring a series of follow-ups. Each follow-up must be read, understood, and answered, which takes time. More time than it would take to ask the question over the phone.
Second, E-mails often don't fit into the "cookie-cutter" answers which companies have prepared ahead of time. There seems to be a broader diversity of questions than what you expect over the phone.
Also, my own observations are that (a) there is no equivalent of self-service automation in E-mail the way there is over the phone. Most attempts to auto-answer E-mails seem to fail; (b) E-mail is harder to manage than phone calls, in that if you don't have enough people to answer the phone, some callers will give up or try again later. E-mail just piles up; and (c) Most people type a lot slower than they talk. Providing coherent written answers is also a harder skill than providing coherent spoken answers.
What's the Solution?
E-mail seems destined to add significantly to the customer service costs of any company which accepts E-mail inquiries. That, as is becoming apparent, is a fact of life.
There are several options, which I list from least attractive to most attractive:
Bite the bullet and pay more to serve your customers. You don't gain anything by going this route, and it will cost more money, but since customers are beginning to expect E-mail support, many companies will feel it is inevitable. Unfortunately, the usual result of this path is many unanswered E-mails from customers, since there are almost never enough resources to answer every question promptly. There is also a huge risk, since E-mail is easier to misunderstand than a phone call, and it doesn't go away. One rude E-mail can cause orders of magnitude more damage than one rude phone call.
Refuse to accept E-mail. I've seen this at a few large companies, often with the explanatory note that they're simply not prepared to give good service through E-mail. In my mind, this is better than accepting E-mail but handling it poorly, since it at least offers the customer an explanation.
Force customers to go through hoops. A good example of this is PayPal, which only accepts E-mail through a web form, and which forces the customer to go through several levels of self-service before getting to the form. This is the equivalent of making it hard to reach a live person on a phone call, except more aggravating, since it deprives the customer of the use of his or her own E-mail management tools (i.e. Outlook). The only thing worse is to make the customer go through the hoops, then not answer the E-mail.
View E-mail as a marketing opportunity. Odds are, the people answering customer E-mail have a lot more information about what customers want than the marketing department has. E-mail gives a company the chance to establish a real dialogue with a customer, much more so than a two-minute phone call, since E-mail is often longer and more detailed. At the very minimum, people who answer E-mails should also be gathering marketing data (i.e. who's sending E-mails, and what are they asking). At a higher level, a customer E-mail opens the opportunity for an upsell. Imagine, for example, having a list of customers who asked for a specific feature, and being able to send them an E-mail offering an upgrade with that feature (i.e. "Bob, two months ago you E-mailed me asking if our product could renoberate the frazmitron. We just announced a new version with auto-renoberation, and I've taken the liberty of putting you on the list of people eligible for a discounted upgrade if you preorder....").
Unfortunately, most companies view customer service as a cost, not an opportunity. That's why most companies' service is so bad. With E-mail, this misperception is being repeated once again.
They key is to realize that your customers vote with their feet based on how you treat them. Providing exceptional service is often no more expensive than providing poor service, and it pays off handsomely in the long run. It is nothing more or less than where management puts its priorities.