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The Nightmare before Christmas – UK Retailers jeopardise £5.5 billion in sales through poor customer service

Roberta Galazzo — 2010-07-27T08:25:47Z

Eptica warns: prepare now or pay later

Cambridge – 27th July 2010: UK retailers are risking their share of the £5.5 billion* Christmas sales boom by not being able to effectively handle the seasonal spike in customer service demand, which can increase by as much as 400%. Eptica (www.eptica.com), the leading provider of multichannel customer interaction software, warns that firms failing to ensure their customer service can cope at the most important trading period of the year could see their peak Christmas sales figures reduced by 5% or more.

Leading up to the festive season, contact centres are inundated with customer enquiries often involving large numbers of questions around the same topic. This increasing volume of routine, frequently asked questions (FAQs) can quickly lead to poor or slow service resulting in heightened customer frustration and lost sales at a time that represents 50-70% of a retailers' annual revenue.

Research using Eptica's customer base has shown that by reducing seasonal inbound FAQs and more efficiently responding to customers' enquiries at peak times, retailers can increase sales by an average of 5%. Dee Roche, European Marketing Director at Eptica commented: “We looked at before and after scenarios at 280 organisations across a wide range of sectors and found a similar uplift in sales. This is achieved by businesses using increases in efficiency as an opportunity to redeploy customer service resources to sales conversion activity and on delivering high quality service and advice to help potential purchasers. These benefits can only be realised by diverting low value questions away from customer service agents.”

Retailers can experience four times their normal level of customer enquiries in the build up to Christmas including more than twice the normal volume of inbound emails. For contact centres that handle thousands of calls and emails a day, this increase represents a very significant volume of customer enquiries. A contact centre receiving just 500 calls and 750 emails a month could easily see that number increase to 2,000 calls and 1,500 emails respectively. Without the right systems in place it's impossible to identify which enquiries are potential sales and which are basic FAQs so that they can be filtered, prioritized and handled accordingly. The challenge for retailers is to ensure that enquiries that would result in a sale, if they are handled promptly, aren't lost because agents are tied up dealing with basic questions.

One company in Eptica's study was able to half the number of inbound contacts it received from 6,000 to 3,000 during a peak customer service month, while increasing its sales compared to the same period the previous year. The company also achieved a reduction in the cost of handling each contact, from £6.50 to £1.70, resulting in a customer service saving of nearly £34,000 in a single month. The company achieved this by migrating routine questions online to be answered through Eptica's advanced natural language meaning based customer self-service and email response management software. Both were deployed on a Software as a Service basis and were up and running 5 weeks after the company's decision to go ahead.

With consumers starting their Christmas shopping months in advance the increase in customer enquiries for retailers can gain momentum as early as September. The spike that this creates in customer service continues to build through the January sales season into the end of February. Retailers will continue to face a high volume of post Christmas enquiries in to 2011 as customers contact them on issues such as gift returns and product support, and the cost of handling these can quickly eat in to profits.

There is still time and a variety of measures that retailers can take to ensure they effectively cope with the surge in customer enquiries and make the most of the sales potential of Christmas. Solutions such as Eptica Web Self-Service enables merchants to deflect emails and calls from the contact centre by making information easily available to customers on the retailer's website. The systems dynamic knowledge base expands with each new enquiry enabling a company's website and customer service channels to work together to improve customer engagement, give customers better information, resolve enquiries faster and maximize every sales opportunity.

“The festive season is the busiest time for contact centres as they are inundated with customer enquiries, often around the same topic. Retailers should do everything they can to maximize the positive effect of Christmas and any additional uplift in sales as a result of customers wanting to purchase now to avoid the increase in VAT next year. We strongly recommend retailers take time to review their systems and take action now so that they have ample time to bed in new systems ahead of the Christmas sales surge. ” added Roche.

-Ends-

Notes to editors * UK shoppers have spent £5.46bn online in December 2009, IMRG

Haven Holidays Case Study

Zuzana Pankova — 2010-07-21T10:58:59Z

Excellence in Multichannel Customer Service Celebrated at Eptica Customer Service Innovation Awards 2010

Zuzana Pankova — 2010-07-12T08:49:25Z

Haven, Republic and Capita recognised for using technology to raise the bar in customer service

Reading – 12 July 2010: UK customer service best practice has been recognised at the Eptica Customer Service Innovation Awards. The winners, including leading UK holiday company Haven and fashion retailer Republic Limited, were announced by Paul Barnes, UK & Eire MD for Eptica, at the company's Annual Customer Summit at The Royal Horseguards Hotel, London.

Eptica (www.eptica.com), the leading provider of multichannel customer interaction software, created the awards to celebrate excellence and innovation in customer service. The awards are won by firms that have achieved outstanding business results and demonstrated a forward thinking approach and strategy in their use of Eptica technology.

‘Further Mile' Award 2010 - Haven

Haven, the leading provider of UK family holidays and short breaks, scooped the Eptica ‘Further Mile' Award 2010 for the significant results the company achieved in managing inbound enquiries to its contact centre through optimising the customer's online experience. Deploying Eptica Self-service and Email Management has enabled Haven to reduce the volume of inbound emails by 46 per cent and cut email handling times by 40 per cent. In just four months, Haven's strategy of diverting routine questions online and redeploying support staff to respond to holiday enquiries has seen the company increase its sales by 5 per cent.

Online Customer Service - Republic

Republic, the leading multi-brand fashion retailer, won the award for Online Customer Service. Republic.co.uk has adopted a self-service approach on its Top 10 Hitwise ecommerce site making the answers to customer questions easily accessible and instantly available online. To date, just 6.7 per cent of customers using Eptica Self-service on Republic's website go on to submit an enquiry by email, thereby dramatically reducing the volume of incoming enquiries needing a response. The website's customer self-service is also seamlessly integrated with Eptica Email Management. The technology accurately analyses the text of an inbound email customer enquiry to provide the customer services agent with the ‘best answer' meaning that Republic's agents have been able to reply to customers faster and more effectively. As a consequence 90 per cent of customers now have their enquiry resolved through their first email contact.

Best Service Improvement Project - Capita

Capita, the UK's leading business process outsourcing and professional services company, won the award for Best Service Improvement Project for the efficiencies and quality of service enhancements it delivered to a major public sector contract. Handling more than 300,000 inbound calls and 20,000+ letters each month against a series of strict Key Performance Indicators, Capita deployed Eptica Contact Assistant to improve the consistency of its customer service. It was also required to increase customer satisfaction, increase first contact resolution rates and reduce operational costs. The centralised knowledge management system achieved this through providing agents with fast access to approved customer service content, enabling Capita to reduce call handling time from 180 to 160 seconds and cut agent training time by 20 per cent. The results are even more impressive when you consider that the project was scoped, implemented and up and running in just six weeks from the initial contract being signed.

Dee Roche, European Marketing Director at Eptica, commented: “With these awards we wanted to champion innovation within customer service and highlight the fantastic work that our customers are undertaking. Customer service is always important, but in an uncertain economic it is absolutely vital and can make or break a firm. Each of the winners has delivered tangible benefits that not only improves their company's bottom-line, but will also make a real difference to the service that their customers experience.”

Eptica's Multi-channel Customer Interaction Management software enables website and customer service channels to work together to improve quality of service, resolve enquiries faster, reduce costs and maximize every sales opportunity.

Eptica is based in the UK, France, Spain and Singapore and operates worldwide through its network of partners. Eptica was awarded the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 EMEA in 2009 for the third consecutive year.

Eptica Reduces Haven's Inbound Contact Giving Its Contact Centre A Break Of Its Own

Clare — 2010-05-18T10:53:39Z

Haven Increases Sales 5% and Reduces Inbound Contact 46% with Eptica's Web Customer Service Software

Haven, the leading provider of UK family holidays and short breaks, has opted to deploy Web Customer Service software from Eptica (www.eptica.com), provider of multichannel customer interaction software, as a means of effectively managing inbound contact to its contact centre and optimising the customer's online experience. Subsequently, Haven has reduced the volume of inbound emails by 46 per cent and cut email handling times by 40 per cent. In just four months, Haven's strategy of diverting routine questions online and redeploying support staff to respond to holiday enquiries has increased its sales 5%.

Haven has been one of the most prominent figures in the UK holiday market for the last 40 years and currently has 35 award-winning UK family Holiday Parks nationwide. As a result of more and more consumers wanting to holiday in the UK, Haven has experienced a huge increase in traffic to its website and consequently inbound enquiries to its contact centre.

Haven wanted to offer the best possible guest experience from the first point of contact and as such deployed Eptica's Email Management software at the end of December 2009 and Self-Service in January 2010, with the results from both being immediately evident. Eptica's self-service offers a refreshingly easy to navigate and intuitive customer help experience which answers the majority of customers' routine questions automatically online, to date only 4.8% of Web self-service users escalate to email. From the time Epticas Self-service was implemented through to the end of April 2010, Haven's contact centre received just 12,000 email enquiries compared to 24,000 for the same period the previous year despite, increasing its sales.

By also utilising Eptica's self-learning knowledge base, which automatically analyses the text of inbound emails and offers agents a ‘best response' to answer them, incoming emails are processed more efficiently, cutting response times down from two minutes thirty seconds to just one minute forty seconds.

As a result of the reduced contact and decreased handling times, Haven has been able to redeploy agents from the Internet customer service team into the sales team which has reduced customer service costs and achieved an increase in contact centre conversion of calls to sales by 5%.

Sean Power, Sales Manager at Haven Holidays commented: “Prior to Eptica our agents were handling a high volume of routine, frequently asked questions that were hindering our sales conversions. Due to Eptica successfully answering these questions on our website, we've improved customer experience, reduced inbound emails by 46% and our agents are consequently able to spend more time helping customers pick the best holiday option for them which in turn has increased our sales conversion rates by 5%.”

Haven has 4 core contact centre teams, a dedicated holiday advisor team of over 65 agents, customer care which comprises of 25 agents, guest relations which comprises four agents and finally an internet team that comprises of two and a half agents, down from six last year. Furthermore, during the summer months Haven has traditionally had to increase its number of agents by 10 to 12 per cent to cope with the volume of enquiries, an additional expense they will be able to avoid this year.

Sean continued: “During one of our peak periods last year we were receiving one call or email for every three bookings. Considering we can book up to 15,000 holidays a week, that is a lot of inbound contact to deal with. Using self-service to reduce that by 46 per cent has not only enabled us to dramatically decrease our handling times, it improves the online customer experience. Our customers can now easily find the answer to straightforward questions on our website without always having to make direct contact.”

The importance of reduced handling times and inbound contact can be highlighted further through the fact that during peak times – such as school and bank holidays – 60 per cent of bookings are made less than two weeks before departure, including an average of 350 bookings for next day departure and 300 actually on the day.

Indeed, booking a holiday can at times be a stressful experience but Haven continually strive to ensure that the whole journey, beginning to end, is as smooth and trouble free as possible.

Sean continued: “When we first decided to deploy online customer service, we wanted to create the same customer experience online as that when speaking to an agent and Eptica has seamlessly allowed us to do just this. We did look at a number of options but Eptica's proven technology, approach, delivery and ease of use was unmatched.”

Haven's agents adapted to the software instantaneously. Two of Haven's customer service managers attended a two day supervisors course, hosted by Eptica, before relaying the information to the agents in a half day session. “One agent that couldn't attend even picked up how to use the technology in two hours.” Sean added.

Dee Roche, European Marketing Manager for Eptica, commented: “The purpose of web based customer service software is to improve online customer experience and reduce the strain placed upon contact centres and if it's overly complicated it only serves to do the opposite. Eptica's Web Customer Service software is extremely easy to use, quick to deploy and delivers impressive results immediately.”

Eptica Annual Customer Summit AND Dinner

Clare — 2010-05-11T16:01:03Z

Eptica Annual Customer Summit

Clare — 2010-05-10T10:47:18Z

Eptica maintains its position as 2009 European market leader

Clare — 2010-04-01T09:16:44Z

April 2010 – Eptica (www.eptica.com), the European provider of multichannel and multilingual customer interaction software, concluded 2009 with a 20% growth in turnover and an increase in consolidated profit of 10%. The company signed an average of three new customers per month throughout the year including leading brands such as Republic, Haven Holidays, Fortis Insurance, Viking Direct, Go Compare and Virgin Holidays.

Eptica was also one of only a few online customer interaction solution providers to feature on the Deloitte Technology Fast500 EMEA 2009 of fastest growing technology companies. Paul Barnes, Managing Director of Eptica UK and Eire, commented: “This is the third consecutive year that Eptica has been ranked in the Deloitte Technology Fast500 and is a result of our continuous 370% growth over the last 6 years.”

Eptica is seeing increased demand for its comprehensive suite of self-learning multichannel customer service software as increased competition and economic factors drive more organisations to improve customer service, reduce costs and increase sales. Eptica's Web Self-service and email management software is proven to reduce inbound customer contact and email handling time by as much as 60%. It can furthermore improve first contact resolution via a company's email channel by more than 90%.

On a global scale, close to 25% of Eptica's turnover came from international territories. Eptica's solution, available in 26 languages including Chinese, was implemented by international companies such as ING Direct and FNAC Italy, Venca Spain and Hong Kong's Health Department. “International turnover has risen quite dramatically in the last 3 years - rising from 5% to 25%.” added Paul.

Eptica also enables European organisations to manage multi language online self-service and email enquiries using a single hosted solution. The technology is ideally suited for companies with inhouse and outsourced customer service operations, across multiple outsourcers and countries, enabling them to manage customer contact using a single, centralised, hosted solution - thus providing improved workflow efficiency, significantly reduced costs and the ability to achieve complete visibility of every enquiry. Companies such as Hotels.com, Pixmania and the global online gaming distributor, Gametap, are amongst those already utilising Eptica's Multi lingual eService solution.

Typically, less than 10% of online customers using Eptica Self-service will go on to submit an enquiry by email, thereby dramatically reducing the volume of incoming enquiries requiring a response. Both Eptica Self-service and Email Management utilise an advanced ‘meaning based' search engine and centralised self-learning knowledgebase. The technology accurately analyses the text of inbound customer enquiries, routes them to the appropriate customer services agent and provides them with the ‘best answer'. Consequently, agents are able to increase productivity and reply to customers quickly, accurately and more effectively.

Eptica's software also enables contact centres to take an active part in controlling inbound enquiries. As agents encounter new questions they can use a ‘one-click' action to flag them as needing an answer to be quickly added to the system's knowledge base and made available to customers via online self-service. This allows a company's Web site and customer service channels to work together to improve customer engagement, give customers better information, resolve enquiries faster and maximise every sales opportunity.

“Poor customer service costs the UK market billions of pounds in lost revenue every year and, especially with recent studies indicating that the UK has one of the lowest levels of customer loyalty in Europe, no business can afford lower its customer satisfaction,” said Paul. “Eptica has a proven track record of dramatically improving customer satisfaction and agent productivity whilst still managing to lower costs. This, coupled with ease of use and quick deployment times has resulted in another extremely successful year for Eptica and, I have no doubt that this will continue in 2010.”

**
About Eptica:

Eptica is the leading European multilingual solution for Customer Interaction Management including Web Self-service, Email Management, Chat, Fax-Letter- SMS and Knowledge management for Customer Service. Available on premise or Saas, Eptica software enables website and customer service channels to work together to improve quality of service, resolve enquiries faster, reduce costs and maximize every sales opportunity. Today more than 280 customers, including some of the world's largest, in 14 countries, use Eptica solutions to deliver excellent customer service at much lower cost. Eptica's customers include: Confused.com, Go Compare.com, Fortis Insurance, Hotels.com, La Redoute, Republic, Brent Council, DatingDirect.com, Capita, Société Générale, South East Water, ING and Barclays.

Webinar

webmaster — 2010-03-25T11:21:28Z

Sharon Biltcliffe, Republic, explains how the high growth online retailer transformed its customer service

September 9th, 1.00-1.30pm
Click here to register

Republic case study

Clare — 2010-03-25T10:32:33Z

Hotels.com case study

Clare — 2010-03-22T15:45:07Z

Webinar: Online Customer Service for Retail

Clare — 2010-03-17T10:00:00Z

Presented by: Paul Barnes, Managing Director, Eptica UK & Eire

Wednesday 17th March 11.00 - 11.30am

REGISTER NOW!

Some of the biggest improvements in ecommerce practices have been in the area of Online Customer Service and improving customer experience. Online retailers are recognising that helping customers to get faster and better service is key to driving more sales, improving customer experience and reducing costs.

This webinar tells the Online Customer Service story of a leading UK fashion retailer and how it has enabled them to:

Deal with their biggest ever Christmas customer service spike without creating a backlog
Reduce inbound contact - only 6.7% of customers that use self-service escalate to email
Improve first contact resolution through its email channel to 90%
Reduce new agent training time by 50%
And how the contact centre is ‘centre stage' in improving online self-service by highlighting the questions that create inbound demand

Find out how through this FREE webinar.

Don't miss it - Join us on Wednesday 17th March at 11.00am.

REGISTER NOW!

Once registered, you will automatically receive a confirmation of your registration and, a few days before the Webinar, you will receive a reminder.

For further information, contact us here »

Contact Eptica Marketing

Clare — 2010-02-24T14:13:52Z

Republic Manages Largest Ever Christmas Customer Service Peak With Eptica

Clare — 2010-02-24T12:50:02Z

Only 6.7% of Web self-service users send email and email first contact resolution increases to 90%

Republic, the leading multi-brand fashion retailer, has chosen online customer service technology from Eptica, European provider of multichannel customer interaction software (www.eptica.com) to manage increasing demand as a consequence of its record breaking ecommerce growth. Despite coinciding with a Christmas surge in enquiries, Republic's investment in improving online service for its customers has enabled the retailer to provide faster responses and increase First Contact Resolution through its email channel to 90%.

Republic.co.uk has adopted a self-service approach on its Top 10 Hitwise ecommerce site to provide visitors with immediate online answers to their questions. To date, just 6.7% of customers using Eptica Self-service go on to submit an enquiry by email, thereby dramatically reducing the volume of incoming enquiries requiring a response.

The website's customer self-service is seamlessly integrated with Eptica Email Management and both share an advanced ‘meaning based' search engine and centralised self-learning knowledgebase. The technology accurately analyses the text of an inbound email customer enquiry to provide the customer services agent with the ‘best answer'. Consequently, Republic's agents have been able to reply to customers faster and more effectively.

Sharon Biltcliffe, Customer Service Manager at Republic, commented: “We experienced a huge customer service peak in December ‘08 and it became apparent that systems were not going to support business growth. One of the reasons we selected Eptica was the simplicity of the system from a user perspective, once we'd decided to go ahead it was up and running within 5 weeks. The contrast before and after implementing Eptica was extraordinary – we couldn't have handled the Christmas peak this year without it.”

Eptica's software also enables the contact centre to take an active part in controlling inbound enquiries. As agents encounter new questions they can use a ‘one-click' action to flag them as needing an answer to be quickly added to the system's knowledge base and made available to customers via online self-service. Similarly, when the contact centre experiences an influx of questions about the same issue such as delivery times at Christmas, the information can be reprioritised and pushed to the top of self-service pages so that customers can find it faster and therefore not need to email.

Sharon Biltcliffe, Customer Service Manager at Republic, adds: “We also use the system's knowledge base to train new agents which has cut training time by at least half. We can take on temporary staff to help us with busy periods and in a couple of hours they can be ready to handle specific types of questions.”

Since the business launched in 2007, the number of email enquiries received by Republic's customer services team had grown month-on-month. Consequently Republic sought to implement a specialist customer self-service and email management system to increase efficiency and maximise the knowledge available to customers during each first contact.

Dee Roche, European Marketing Director at Eptica, added: “Republic is a high growth, dynamic business and its success could have outstripped its capacity to manage customer interactions on a one-to-one basis. Moreover, this approach is simply no longer necessary as so many customer service enquiries can be managed through a fully-integrated approach to customer self-service. Republic has proven that investing in service delivery through a system that evolves with every interaction will increase both business efficiency and revenue performance.”

**
About Eptica:

Eptica is the leading European multilingual solution for Customer Interaction Management including Web Self-service, Email Management, Chat, Fax-Letter- SMS and Knowledge management for Customer Service. Available on premise or Saas, Eptica software enables website and customer service channels to work together to improve quality of service, resolve enquiries faster, reduce costs and maximize every sales opportunity. Today more than 280 customers, including some of the world's largest, in 14 countries, use Eptica solutions to deliver excellent customer service at much lower cost. Eptica's customers include: Confused.com, Go Compare.com, Fortis Insurance, Hotels.com, La Redoute, Republic, Brent Council, DatingDirect.com, Capita, Société Générale, South East Water, ING and Barclays.

Out with Outlook: In with Painless Email Management!

Clare — 2010-02-10T08:00:00Z

Presented by: Frederick Teo, Regional Manager, Eptica

Wednesday 10th February 4.00PM - 4.30pm (SST Singpore)

REGISTER NOW!

Are you one of the many contact centres still using Outlook or Lotus notes to handle inbound customer email and wishing you had a proper email system? Given how difficult it is to manage even a single personal inbox, it must be a nightmare to manage customer email in this way.

Not sorting out email management is one of those 'painful' false economies. A proper system will literally halve the time it takes to handle inbound enquiries - a 100% gain in efficiency which can be used to reduce costs and improve quality of service.

Using case study examples, this webinar will show just how easy it can be to manage email properly and the features that every contact centre should have. If call volumes are your issue, it's even possible to migrate routine FAQ calls through an email channel for lower cost of service and reduced handling time.

Agenda

Getting the right enquiry to the right agent and ensuring it's answered effectively
Managing email reply content so all agents are providing fast, consistent and accurate answers
Migrating calls to an effective email channel for lower cost of service and reduced handling time
Using email management to build an online customer self-service system and cut inbound contact
Achieving complete workflow control and visibility of agent productivity
Gaining invaluable insight about the issues that create customer demand

Don't miss it - Join us on Wednesday 10th February at 4PM (SST Singpore).

REGISTER NOW!

For further information, please contact:
marketing.en@eptica.com

Or contact us here »

Confused.com case study

Clare — 2010-01-27T14:40:37Z

Britannia Hotels case study

Clare — 2010-01-25T14:29:33Z

Fortis case study

Clare — 2009-11-25T16:50:20Z

Download white paper

webmaster — 2009-11-01T17:11:46Z

Out with Outlook: In with Painless Email Management!

Clare — 2009-09-30T17:26:01Z

Presented by: Paul Barnes, Managing Director, Eptica UK & Eire

Thursday 22nd October 11.00 - 11.30am

REGISTER NOW!

Agenda

Don't miss it - Join us on Thursday 22nd October at 11.00am.

REGISTER NOW!

For further information, please contact:
Dee Roche
Telephone: +44(0)7976 815140

Or contact us here »

Webinar

Dee — 2009-09-27T21:41:41Z

Coming Soon!

Customer Service Strategies for Insurers and Brokers

How to Improve Customer Retention and Sales using the Best, Low-cost Customer Service Models

Gocompare.com invests in customer service and retention with Eptica Email Management

Dee — 2009-09-27T21:35:29Z

22 September 2009 – Online insurance comparison service, Gocompare.com, has implemented Eptica's (www.eptica.com) advanced natural language email management system to improve customer experience and efficiency. Handling in excess of one million insurance quotations per month, Gocompare.com has seen a sharp rise in the number of web visitors and enquiries it receives as consumers look for the best possible deal on insurance. Using Eptica Email Management, the business has improved customer service quality and delivery, and reduced the time it takes to resolve customer questions by nearly half the time.

"“As one of the UK's top three price comparison sites, a vast number of people use Gocompare.com because we help them find the right policy, at the right price; with the features of cover that they are looking for," said Lee Griffin, Business Development Director at Gocompare.com. "With the number of customers using our service constantly growing, we've also experienced an increase in inbound enquiries. To manage this growth, we needed an email management system that would enable us to increase efficiency, whilst maintaining the highest level of service possible. We want customers to know that if they use Gocompare.com and they have any questions, we'll answer them quickly."

The Eptica solution uses powerful natural language semantic search technology, which analyses the text of inbound email enquiries and provides Gocompare.com's customer service agents with the best answer from a dynamic knowledgebase of responses to previous customer questions. This capability allows the business to provide fast, high-quality and accurate replies to customer queries, which reduces the level of repeat enquiries and subsequent customer frustration. The software also provides a full audit trail of all customer enquiries and previous correspondence, giving agents a complete picture of customer issues and making it easy for them to respond to enquiries fully and efficiently at first contact.

The Eptica solution also provides a future-proof strategy for organisations looking to improve multi-channel customer service over the long term. As agents respond to customer emails on a daily basis, they are simultaneously building up a robust knowledgebase of questions and replies – a task that has traditionally proven to be a headache for organisations investing in online self-service. This knowledgebase can then be made searchable online to cut email volumes and give customers faster, more accurate answers through ‘Online Help' and ‘Contact Us' pages.

A key requirement for the Gocompare.com team was the ability to gather information and trends from inbound enquiries so that the company could gain a deeper understanding of the issues that matter most to its customers, and make the changes necessary to improve website usability and boost customer satisfaction. After assessing the various solutions, Gocompare.com chose Eptica for its advanced technology, robust reporting capabilities and ease of use.

Paul Barnes, Managing Director at Eptica. said "With Eptica, Gocompare.com has demonstrated a clear commitment to its customers by prioritising the delivery of a genuinely high level of service. And at times like this, that is of course what keeps customers coming back again and again."

For more information, contact: Dee Roche 0044 07976 815140

Eptica sees first half profits soar

Dee — 2009-09-27T21:25:12Z

EPTICA DEFIES ECONOMIC DOWNTURN WITH RECORD REVENUES IN H1 2009

September 2009 – Eptica, a world-leading provider of multi-channel and multi-language customer interaction solutions, has announced record financial results for the first half of 2009 with revenues up by over 25 percent during the six month period and profitability up by 10 percent. The company signed up more than thirty new clients during the first half of 2009, including household brands such as Virgin Holidays and Go Compare. Eptica expects to maintain this level of growth into the second half of the year, with planned expansions into Southern Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.

The current global recession has caused many businesses to re-evaluate how they communicate with both new and existing customers. Eptica's advanced multi-channel applications – which are available in 26 languages – optimise interaction between organisations and their customers, improving the customer experience while at the same time streamlining customer service operations.

"We are in a period of fundamental change, with an increasing number of consumers choosing to interact with organisations online," said Paul Barnes, managing director at Eptica UK and Eire. "Effective customer service is all about making sure customers get the right answers to their queries in a timely fashion, through the channel of their choice. Companies are increasingly acknowledging that customer service is a crucial differentiator – particularly in today's economic climate, where loyalty is weak and churn rates are high. Our numbers for the first half of the year reflect this shift in thinking."

Eptica's multi-channel customer service software increases business efficiency and revenue performance through its unique ability to self-learn from every interaction how best to answer customer queries. Hosted on the premises or on Eptica's SaaS platform, these solutions enable organisations to deliver fast, accurate and consistent responses to customers through all channels including the web, email, phone, fax, letter and SMS.

UK customer wins so far during 2009 include Britannia Hotels, Virgin Holidays, Go Compare, The Postcode Lottery, Office Depot, Viking Direct and Fortis Insurance. Eptica's multi-language capabilities also makes it the solution of choice for an increasing number of international companies, now including ING Direct, Pixmania and Direct Energy.

As part of a phased international expansion plan, Eptica has also announced its first customer in the Asia-Pacific region. In June, by way of recognition within this new territory, Eptica's multichannel suite of customer service solutions received the prestigious ‘Most Innovative Technology' honour in the Asia Pacific Customer Relationship Excellence (APCRE) Awards.

"Eptica has always been at the forefront of online customer service solutions in Europe, and these results not only underscore our leadership in the industry, but also show that more organisations are turning to Eptica as a strategic partner,” continued Barnes. “We are honoured to have our technology recognised by the APCRE Awards, and look forward to helping more organisations in the Asia-Pac region to improve revenue performance by transforming the way they handle customer interaction at reduced cost in the near future."

Fortis Insurance cuts customer enquiry time in half with Eptica Email Management

Dee — 2009-09-27T21:18:38Z

27 July 2009 – Fortis Insurance Solutions (UKFIS), a leading provider of personal lines insurance solutions in the UK, has chosen Eptica's (www.eptica.com) advanced self-learning, natural language, Email Management technology to reduce costs and improve online service and efficiency of its customer and partner communication. In March 2009 UKFIS implemented a phased roll out of the platform, reducing its average customer query handling time by 50 percent, as a result of migrating telephony enquiries from online customers to Eptica's email-based system.

With 250,000 policyholders and over 15 insurance partners, UKFIS is using Eptica Email Management to control multi-channel client contact and staff workload at its headquarters in Stoke-on-Trent. The insurance firm considered customer interaction solutions from several multi-channel solutions providers, before selecting Eptica for its features, ease-of-use, reporting capabilities and overall end-to-end efficiency. In addition to customer facing processes, the company is also using Eptica's technology in-house, streamlining inter-departmental enquiries for its 310 employees.

Since deploying Eptica in March 2009, UKFIS has improved customer interaction across a range of business areas including payment collections, policy renewals and the issuing of duplicate documents. The email management solution has also helped the company deal more efficiently with its insurance partners reducing the amount of unnecessary communication via telephone and post.

"Around 90 percent of our business originates from the web in this highly competitive marketplace and it's absolutely vital that we can efficiently process a large number of customer emails in the shortest possible timeframe to maintain our efficient customer service," said Ray Westwick, head of call centre at UKFIS. "Eptica has dramatically enhanced our customer services operations. Telephone enquiries that previously took up to seven minutes to resolve, now take just half the time via email. In addition, by migrating calls to email we can better distribute and prioritise our workload, enabling agents to deal with urgent enquiries straight away while saving non-urgent requests for off-peak periods."

Eptica's self-learning Email Management software is quick and easy to deploy, helping organisations like UKFIS to immediately improve the speed and quality of their agents' email responses. With an advanced linguistic and natural language semantic search engine, Eptica's technology accurately analyses each inbound customer enquiry from the email text and provides agents with the best response from a self-learning knowledge base of pre-scripted replies. It also provides a future-proof solution for organisations wanting to reduce inbound enquiries by making the Eptica Email Management knowledgebase searchable online via Web Self-service.

With Eptica's Email Management software, UKFIS can create and rollout bespoke web forms and email response content in just a few simple clicks, drastically reducing agent workload, customer resolution times and freeing up telephone lines in the process.

"The aggregator boom has created a real challenge for insurance brokers – customer loyalty has decreased as more consumers turn to the internet in search of the cheapest prices on the market, so today's business is all about being the most cost-effective as well as delivering a high standard of service," continued Westwick. "Eptica helps UKFIS in its strategy to operate the highest quality customer service model at the lowest operating cost, simply through improved management of client contact and staff workload. As a result, we can reward our customers with more competitive pricing in the marketplace."

"The insurance industry has seen a great deal of upheaval during the past five years which has tested organisations' business models to the max," said Paul Barnes, managing director at Eptica. "Customer retention is the number one priority for insurance firms – particularly in the current economic climate – making efficient customer interaction solutions a critical business component."

For more information contact: Dee Roche 0044 07976 815140

Book a Product Demo

Roberta Galazzo — 2009-09-04T09:33:22Z

Customer Service Strategies for Insurers, Aggregators and Brokers

Clare — 2009-07-09T15:21:04Z

Presented by: Paul Barnes, Managing Director, Eptica UK & Eire

Tuesday 28th July 11.00 - 11.30am

REGISTER NOW!

The Internet, the economy and the influence of aggregators have created unprecedented change within the Insurance industry. With competition increasing and customer loyalty decreasing, new approaches to customer service are needed to support revenue performance and reduce costs.

While 90% of new insurance business comes through the Internet, the industry is still heavily reliant on dealing with customers by phone due to lack of effective online customer service and email management. In many cases, inefficient processes for managing policy administration increase costs and adversely affect customer retention.

In a competitive marketplace, a low cost operating strategy for service is needed; but customer satisfaction is key. Using case study insight from Fortis, Confused.com and GoCompare, this webinar will explain how to:

Reduce call volumes by answering routine questions online, automatically
Migrate calls to an effective email channel for lower cost of service and reduced handling time
Reduce paper processes involved in insurance sales and policy administration
Create better workstreams so the right enquiry gets to the right people
Manage transactions such as amendments to policies entirely through self-service channels
And importantly, gain invaluable insight about what customers want and the issues that create customer demand

Join us on Tuesday 28th July at 11.00am.

REGISTER NOW!

For further information, please contact:
Dee Roche
Telephone: +44(0)7976 815140

Or contact us here »

Eptica wins ‘Most Innovative Technology' in Asia Pacific Customer Service Excellence Awards

Roberta Galazzo — 2009-06-24T07:27:59Z

22nd June, 2009: Eptica is delighted to win the prestigious APCSC CRE ‘Most Innovative Technology'award for its multi-channel suite of customer service solutions. As a new entrant to the awards, we are impressed with the rigour at which the APCSC evaluated our technology and our business.

Eptica's multi-channel customer service software increases business efficiency and revenue performance through its has a unique ability to self-learn from every interaction how best to answer a customer enquiry. Available on-premise or SaaS, Eptica enables organizations to deliver fast, accurate and consistent responses through all channels including online service, email, phone, fax, letter and SMS. We are very excited at working with organisations in Asia to enable them to deliver excellent customer service at much lower cost.

In the period of fundamental shift of communication channels we are experiencing today, as more and more customers choose to engage with organizations using the internet, the role of a dedicated online service provider is more important than ever.

“Excellent customer service is about ensuring customers get the right answers, when they want them, through the channel of their choice,” said Mr. Olivier Njamfa, President and CEO of the company.

Customers today are increasingly demanding; they often use several channels before making a single purchase. More often than not, the customer journey starts online with them looking for the best products at the best price.

To cater for the varying needs of customers, Eptica provides comprehensive interaction solutions incorporating different channels. The joined-up, consistent approach to multi-channel customer service offered by Eptica helps deliver quality services, raise business efficiency and maximize revenue.

“We aim to help businesses in Asia to improve revenue performance by transforming the way they handle customer interaction,” Njamfa added.

“Eptica solutions provide organizations with an incredible source of insight about what customers want and the issues that create demand, for fast and effective decision-making”.

About Eptica

An award-winning global provider of online customer service software, Eptica offers practical solutions to optimize interactions between customers and organizations, so as to improve both customer experience and business effectiveness. As a result, over 250 companies, including some of the world's largest, use Eptica to deliver excellent customer service at much lower cost.

Eptica clients include: YeeYoo, Expedia, ING, Societe General, Credit Agricole, Hermes, Total, Exon Mobil, Renault, Axa and Barclays.

Partners

Clare — 2009-06-20T10:41:51Z

合作伙伴

Eptica通过一个全球网络推广其产品，包括致力于更高水平的客户服务质量的解决方案合作伙伴，技术综合者和增值转售商。为了重视合作伙伴关系，我们确保在商业机会上互利互惠，实现收入的增长和事业的成功。Eptica广泛的合作伙伴项目为成员提供技术、销售和市场支持与培训。

整合与咨询
我们致力于整合与咨询的合作伙伴是我们销售力量和服务提供的外延。他们提供外延专业鉴定，为全球和地区的客户根据他们的特殊要求量身定做解决方案。

主机与应用服务提供人（ASP）
把技术解决方案分布在ASP或租用主机的形式日益风行，因此Eptica确保其解决方案已被整合于全球市场合作伙伴关系的ASP或主机提供人。

外包商
主要外包商都把Eptica整合到他们的客户服务系统，以便涵盖客户需求的多元互动通道。

技术合作伙伴
Eptica与行业领先专业人员紧密合作，致力于为我们的客户提供最高质量与最广泛的技术方案和服务。

联系我们获知更多的合作伙伴项目

1. Analytics

Roberta Galazzo — 2009-06-13T08:45:35Z

Eptica Analytics enables you to leverage the data from your customer service operation, providing you with key business intelligence for fast and more effective decision making. Now you can track the performance of your customer service operation in real-time and understand the issues that create customer demand.

See your customer service data come to life through easy to read dashboards
Generate real-time management information to measure and monitor operational performance
Gain MIS for insight into the performance of your customer service operation and whether the call centre meets your quality requirements
Acquire insight into how your customer service operation is performing against key customer service metrics
Monitor call centre metrics such as number and type of inbound queries
Measure service responsiveness against your key performance targets
Monitor agent productivity and first contact resolution
Self-sufficient management reporting provides operational visibility without dependence on IT
Integrated reporting from multiple data sources
Fast generation of detailed information
Rapid implementation

1. Fax-Letter-SMS

Roberta Galazzo — 2009-06-03T16:58:22Z

Use Eptica Fax-Letter-SMS™ to recover time and reduce costs spent on manually processing inbound fax and documents.

Eptica Fax-Letter-SMS™ routes incoming Fax and scanned letters to agents as inbound emails for fast, efficient processing. You can also easily leverage multiple contact methods for responses – for example, by replying to urgent letters by fax, or informing customers by SMS that their request has been processed.

Key information such as customer details, account number and reservation dates can be extracted from the image of any fax or scanned document and used to pre populate fields in applications such as Eptica Email Management, and your reservation and CRM systems.

Flexible and sophisticated workflow enable Fax and letters to be routed as emails and prioritised according to criteria such as guest arrival dates on a holiday booking form – and most importantly, enabling you to operate the most effective enquiry handling process for your business.

Used in conjunction with Eptica Email Management™, pre-defined email response templates and a dynamic, self-learning knowledgebase boost agent productivity, cut response times and ensure all agents are delivering high-quality, accurate answers. Agents can also access details of customers' previous interactions with the company for more effective customer engagement.

Use Eptica Fax-Letter-SMS to:

Reduce headcount costs by recovering lost time spent on manual fax and document input

Remove human error associated with manual data entry of incoming fax or image documents

Minimise processing and response time

Improve quality of service and agents' performance levels

Increase business efficiency by apply sophisticated workflow, response rules and tracking to offline enquiries

Registration: Customer Service Excellence Round Table

Roberta Galazzo — 2009-05-07T12:41:50Z

Optimising Outsourced Email Management: how Hotels.com manage, route, track and answer emails from 32 websites in 9 languages

Dee — 2009-05-06T20:50:40Z

Presented by: Paul Barnes, Managing Director, Eptica UK & Eire

Wednesday 3rd June 11.00 - 11.30am

Hotels.com, the world's most visited hotel booking site, manages email enquiries in 9 languages using outsourced contact centres in 5 countries. Every inbound enquiry is a potential sale, or a booking question, that needs to be handled accurately and fast.

This web seminar will explain how Hotels.com achieves this using a single, multi-language email management solution integrated across all websites and contacts centres. A strategy which has enabled them to drive operational efficiency, reduce transaction times and improve utilisation of outsourced agents.

But you don't need to operate on the scale of Hotels.com to have the same customer service issues in common. You don't even need to be an International company to benefit from the Hotels.com story.

This web seminar will explain how to

• Enable Outsourced contact centres to improve email response times and quality of service

• Operate effective multi-language email management

Join us if you have any of these challenges:

Do you outsource your contact centre operations and have issues with quality of service or achieving visibility of agent productivity and performance?
Are you a pan-European organisation wanting to successfully integrate multi-channel enquiry handling across European websites and contact centres for maximum efficiency and cost savings?
Have you successfully embraced the online space, and are looking now to Europe to reach new consumers. How are you going to deal with customer service?

If these issues don't affect you, read on ...

What about the number of UK consumers, for whom English isn't their first language? In today's multi-cultural society the ability to offer Web Self-service in languages other than English will make you more accessible and gain you sales from a broader range of customers. Being able to successfully manage online self-service in multiple languages such as Urdu or Polish is easier to manage, than you might think.

Using the case study example of Hotels.com this session will cover:

Treating every online enquiry as a potential sale that needs to be handled accurately and fast
Getting new agents, in new locations, quickly operational and ready to respond to customer enquiries
Routing enquiries effectively to the right multi-language contact centres world-wide even though the combination of multi-lingual agents at your contact centres varies at any one time
Improving first contact resolution and consistency of customer service across pan-European contact centres
Gaining visibility of inbound enquiries, agent utilisation and how effectively agents are responding
Using hosted and outsourced services to set-up customer service in new markets with relative ease and minimum risk.

For further information, please contact: Dee Roche Telephone: +44(0)7976 815140 Or contact us here »

Terms

Roberta Galazzo — 2009-04-09T12:23:58Z

Terms

This is a website of Eptica UK Ltd (Company Number 5660648) (a company registered in England and Wales) whose registered office is at 200 Brooke Drive, Reading, Berkshire United Kingdom RG2 6UB. By accessing or using our website you acknowledge that you understand these terms and agree to be bound by them. If you do not wish to be bound by our terms, then you may not use or access our website.

The Content and design of this website is protected by copyright (and/or other intellectual property rights) either owned by Eptica or used under license from third party copyright owners. The Content contains the trade marks, and logos of Eptica. You may print pages and download reports and pdf documents for your personal use but no part of this website may be reproduced or transmitted for any other purpose. Any other usage may infringe such intellectual property rights. You are not permitted to remove or tamper with the Content of this website, or any part of it. Eptica reserves its right to take such action as it thinks fit in these circumstances.

Website availability:

We will try to make our website available at all times, however, we cannot agree that our site will operate continuously, and without interruptions or be error free. As such we can not accept liability for its unavailability. Clients and other persons must not interfere with the working of our site and in particular, you must not attempt to circumvent security, hack, or otherwise disrupt our systems.

Website updates:

We reserve the right to make changes and corrections, or update the website information, including your access to it. Unless stated to the contrary any new content and features shall be subject to these terms and conditions.

Linked sites:

When you enter an independent third party website from our pages, we would like to clarify that we have no control over the content or availability of that website. We also would like to confirm that the link does not mean that we endorse or accept responsibility for the content and we shall not be held responsible for any loss or damage caused to you. Any concerns regarding a website should be directed to its own web master or customer services department.

Complaints procedure:

We take all customer complaints very seriously. In the event of dissatisfaction please contact us at info.en@eptica.com

Date of issue:

This statement was posted to our website on April 8, 2009. The policy will be in full effect until such time as it is replaced.

Contact Us:

If you have any questions relating to our Terms and Conditions please contact us at info.en@eptica.com

First Contact Resolution: How Successful Contact Centres Get It Right

Dee — 2009-04-06T14:01:18Z

Presented by:
Paul Barnes, Managing Director, Eptica UK & Eire

Wednesday 29th April 11.00 - 11.30am

This web seminar is for contact centres, outsourcers and heads of customer service and will focus on the key issues facing contact centres today - how to improve service quality and contain costs.

Log in to find out how a leading UK outsourcer reduced both headcount and operating costs by using an agent knowledge base to turn CSRs into ‘star performing' agents.

According to customer satisfaction surveys carried out before the Agent Knowledgebase was deployed, the biggest complaint of customer service had been the lack of agent knowledge. Now 84% of customers who use the service say their experience of dealing with customer service agents exceeds their expectations.

The key themes for this webinar are cost reduction, service quality and agent utilisation. We'll show you how an Agent Knowledgebase is able to:

improve first contact resolution
reduce call handling time
address compliance issues
support a self-funding productivity bonus so agents can earn more
all of this – and deliver an ROI within 6 months.

This case study will cover the results and a simple guide to:

Essential knowledgebase features
How to introduce an Agent Knowledgebase successfully and get agent buy-in
How to manage your knowledgebase day-to-day
How to integrate call tracking and customer interaction history
How to gain visibility of agent productivity and the performance of your contact centre
Making your knowledgebase future proof: how to deploy across other customer service channels

For further information, please contact:
Clare McRobbie
Telephone: +44(0)118 949 7072
Or contact us here

Register Now! Learn How Email Managment Can Cut Call Centre Costs and Sick Days

Roberta Galazzo — 2009-03-13T09:38:21Z

Presented by:
Paul Barnes, Managing Director, Eptica UK & Eire

Wednesday 25th March 11.00 - 11.30am

When Britannia Hotels invested in new Email Management software it was to streamline its reservation process and automatically convert fax hotel bookings into inbound emails for faster, more accurate processing. The business impact was immediate with a 16% increase in productivity and average handling time cut from 3 minutes to 2.5 minutes for each reservation.

The new system is successfully reducing the Hotel groups' contact centre costs but unexpectedly it is also having a positive effect on agent morale. In the words of Britannia Hotels' Call Centre Manager “We've even seen a drop in sick days and we have a much more focussed team, delivering excellent results. ”

Find out how Britannia Hotels' have used Eptica Email Management to:

Free up valuable management time.
Improve agent morale
Reduce call centre operating costs
Increase agents' earning potential
Reduce sick days amongst call centre staff

For further information, please contact:
Clare McRobbie
Telephone: +44(0)118 949 7072
Or contact us here

33 Britannia Hotels Get Their Fax Right with Eptica

Dee — 2009-03-11T14:30:36Z

11 March 2009: Britannia Hotels, the largest privately owned hotel chain in the UK, has streamlined its reservation process using Eptica's (www.eptica.com) advanced Email Management technology to automatically convert fax hotel bookings into inbound emails for faster, more accurate processing. Eptica, which was rolled out across 33 hotels in December, has already resulted in a 16% increase in productivity and enabled Britannia Hotels to cut the cost of operating its reservation administration.

Hotel bookings received by fax are automatically read and converted into emails by Eptica Email Management then prioritised in the reservation systems' email queue according to the guests' arrival date. Guests arriving at Britannia hotels, regardless of whether they made their booking 10 months or 10 minutes prior to arrival, can be assured that their reservation will be processed. The time taken to process approximately 2,000 daily bookings has been reduced from 3 to 2.5 minutes per reservation.

This year, Britannia Hotels has experienced an increase in bookings. By improving efficiency and cutting the time it takes to process reservations, by around 120 hours a week, Eptica Email Management has resulted in significant operational cost savings for the Group.

Karen Pownall, Call Centre Manager for Britannia Hotels commented: “Eptica has been a win- win investment for us; they have delivered exactly what they specified at the outset of the project. We're a cost conscious organisation and the project fitted into our price bracket, resulting in significant operational cost and service improvements.”

Britannia also reported an increase in staff morale following the Eptica implementation. Karen Pownall explained: “Our administration agents are delighted with Eptica, it is simple to use, easy to maintain and workflow is prioritised. Staff can achieve a greater level of productivity, which is linked to their bonus scheme, increasing their earning potential. We've even seen a drop in sick days and we have a much more focussed team, delivering excellent results. ”

“Eptica has also allowed us to free up valuable management time, which moves managers away from time-consuming administrative tasks to focus on the training and coaching of our team.” Pownall concluded: “Eptica means that all our data is in one place and because it is a hosted solution, we don't have to worry about losing information if we encounter any internal technical problems. We are delighted with the results Eptica has delivered.”

Paul Barnes, Managing Director at Eptica concluded: “We are very pleased to add Britannia to our growing list of travel and tourism clients. The sector has seen an incredible rate of change in recent years due to customers shifting to online channels. Eptica is focussed on providing solutions to maximise efficiency and productivity levels for the customer service challenges that this move creates."

Register Now! Learn How Britannia Hotels Use Email Management to Cut Call Centre Costs and Sick Days

webmaster — 2009-03-02T21:33:40Z

Presented by:
Paul Barnes, Managing Director, Eptica UK & Eire

Wednesday 25th March 11.00 - 11.30am

The new system is successfully reducing the Hotel groups' contact centre costs but unexpectedly it is also having a positive effect on agent morale. In the words of Britannia Hotel's Call Centre Manager “We've even seen a drop in sick days and we have a much more focussed team, delivering excellent results. ”

Find out how Britannia Hotel's have used Eptica Email Management to:

Free up valuable management time.
Improve agent morale
Reduce call centre operating costs
Increase agents' earning potential
Reduce sick days amongst call centre staff

For further information, please contact:
Tanya Stroud
Telephone: +44(0)118 949 7072
Or contact us here

Book a demonstration

webmaster — 2009-02-28T22:35:00Z

Case Study : Hotels.com

webmaster — 2009-02-26T21:33:55Z

“Eptica enables us to manage email from 32 websites, in 9 languages. As the world's most visited hotel booking site, Eptica was the only solution able to meet our requirements.”

Ursula Toulson Director of operations programme management Hotels.com

Home Text

webmaster — 2009-02-26T21:07:48Z

Eptica is Europe's leading provider of multi channel and multi language customer interaction solutions. Eptica enables you to deliver improved quality of service, increased sales and dramatic cost savings by answering every customer enquiry more effectively.

With Eptica, your Web site and customer service channels work together to improve customer engagement, give customers better information, resolve enquiries faster and maximise every sales opportunity.

Web Self-service, Email Response Management, Fax, Letter, SMS, Secure Email, Live Chat, Call Tracking, Contact History, Agent Knowledge base and Analytics. Use Eptica to deliver an end-to-end improved customer experience - from your Web site to customer service advisor.

2. Case Studies

webmaster — 2009-02-24T19:19:15Z

Hotels.com
Hotels.com, the world's most visited hotel booking site needed a robust multi –language email system that would enable them to monitor real-time activity globally

Eptica results:
Eptica was deployed in 9 languages
It is used by Hotels.com's outsourced, multi-lingual contact centres to manage enquiries from 32 global websites
The solution has improved efficiency and response times

TUI
Requirement to manage online communication through contact centres and a network of 217 branches
Difficulties with tracking and reporting on email interactions and maintaining service levels

Eptica results:
Customer service agent productivity increased 50%
90% of email enquiries now resolved same day
Detailed insight gained into customer behaviour

La Redoute
Part of the Redcats Group, number 3 worldwide in home shopping
Dealing with thousands of online contacts every day

Eptica results:
Eptica built online self–service customer portal
Increased agent productivity by 40%
Reduced post sales contacts by 30%

Confused.com
The UK's leading Insurance aggregator, handling around 13 million quotation searches and rising
Needed a robust and easy to use and FSA compliant email system providing complete visibility of all enquiries

Eptica results:
Advanced semantic processing and knowledgebase system to manage email enquiries and improve quality and efficiency of replies
Repeat emails reduced by 25%
Email handling time reduced by 60%

South East Water
New billing literature, which featured a customer service email address
prominently on the front of customer bills, caused in-bound email traffic to rise five-fold
South East Water couldn't cope with the sudden increase using their existing email system. It would also be impossible for South East Water to sustain their Ofwat response targets

Eptica results:
Improved levels of service by means of speedier and more proficient responses has enabled South East Water to meet industry standard response times and increase agent productivity by 9.7%

Opodo
Online channel proving to be the fastest growth area for contact centre Email volumes exceeding 8,000 per day
Existing system not able to cope or provide management and reporting to the level required

Eptica results:
Eptica deployed into live environment within 12 weeks
Multiple brands handled through a single system
Routing, email reply content and branded email templates selected automatically
Significant benefits to customer service and productivity within 3 months

Republic
Republic sought to implement a specialist customer self-service and email management system to reduce inbound contact, increase efficiency and maximise the knowledge available to customers during each first contact

Eptica results:
Republic dealt with their biggest ever Christmas customer service spike without creating a backlog
Email deflection rate via Eptica Self-service: 93% - only 6.7% of customers using self-service escalate to email
First contact resolution has increased to 90% through its email channel
Agents actively improve online self-service by highlighting the questions that create inbound demand
New agents' training time reduced by 50%

Fortis
Fortis selected Eptica's self-learning Email Management technology to improve online service and the efficiency of its customer and partner communication

Eptica results:
Customer enquiry handling time cut by 50% - enquiries which previously took Fortis up to 7 minutes to resolve by phone now take half this time by email
Improved management of customer contact and staff workload has significantly reduced service costs
The Eptica system uses agents' email responses to create a Web Self-service system to enable customers to answer their own questions on your website

Eptica provides multi-channel customer interaction solutions for more than 200 customers and is ranked on the 2009 Deloitte Technology Fast500

1. Case Studies

webmaster — 2009-02-24T19:11:36Z

Hotels.com
Hotels.com, the world's most visited hotel booking site needed a robust multi –language email system that would enable them to monitor real-time activity globally

TUI
Requirement to manage online communication through contact centres and a network of 217 branches
Difficulties with tracking and reporting on email interactions and maintaining service levels

Eptica results:
Customer service agent productivity increased 50%
90% of email enquiries now resolved same day
Detailed insight gained into customer behaviour

La Redoute
Part of the Redcats Group, number 3 worldwide in home shopping
Dealing with thousands of online contacts every day

Eptica results:
Eptica built online self–service customer portal
Increased agent productivity by 40%
Reduced post sales contacts by 30%

Fortis
Fortis selected Eptica's self-learning Email Management technology to improve online service and the efficiency of its customer and partner communication

Eptica provides multi-channel customer interaction solutions for more than 200 customers and is ranked on the 2007 Deloitte Technology Fast500

5. Technology Partners

webmaster — 2009-02-24T00:04:27Z

Back

Sinequa is a software publisher specialized in intuitive, semantic-based search and navigation engines. We're leaders in France in these sectors :
press (Le Monde, Ouest-France, etc.)
e-administration (The French Senate, The Court of Accounts of France, etc.)
e-commerce (the 3 Suisses, Leroy Merlin, etc.) Sinequa's objective to extend its leadership to corporate intranets across France and Europe - where Sinequa already has some strong references (Saint-Gobain, SNCF - the National French Railways, etc.). The core of Sinequa's products is its patented technology. With over 100 satisfied clients and important research activity, Sinequa mission is to become, and remain, a major European player in Information Technology. Sinequa is a publisher, meaning we turn our technological excellence into products. Our clients consider Sinequa as a partner, with a track record of long-term client satisfaction. Extensive competence in information technology, linguistics, research and project management make up our core values.
http://www.sinequa.com

A2iA (Artificial Intelligence & Image Analysis), founded in 1991, headquartered in New York and Paris, is known as the worldwide leading developer of Intelligent Word Recognition (IWR), Classification & Data Extraction (IDR) technologies for extracting information from natural freeform and cursive handwriting on paper documents. The company's technology has been helping paper-intensive industries reduce data entry costs and improve business process automation for over 15 years. A2iA's recognition engines harmonize their OCR, ICR, IWR and IDR technologies with their image analysis, artificial intelligence and neural network systems to enhance solutions from the world's leading systems integrators and other independent software vendors.
http://www.a2ia.com

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision — The Network Is The Computer[tm] — has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW), to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that power the Internet and allow companies worldwide to dot-com their businesses. With $17.6 billion in annual revenues, Sun can be found in more than 170 countries.
http://www.sun.com

Oracle Corporation (Nasdaq:ORCL) is the world's leading supplier of software for information management, and the world's second largest independent software company. With annual revenues of more than $10.9 billion, the company offers its database, tools and application products, along with related consulting, education, and support services, in more than 145 countries around the world.
http://www.oracle.com

IBM is a leader in creating, developing and manufacturing the industry's most advanced information technologies, including computer systems, software, networking systems, storage devices and microelectronics. The company translates these advanced technologies into value for customers through our professional solutions and services businesses worldwide.
http://www.ibm.com

4. Outsourcers

webmaster — 2009-02-23T23:59:40Z

Back

With more than 260 subsidiaries worldwide, arvato is one of the world's biggest internationally networked media service providers. In fiscal year 2004, the group that is part of Bertelsmann AG generated sales of 3.76 bn. arvato's global subsidiaries currently employ more than 41,000 people. arvato AG includes the companies arvato print (e.g. MOHN Media and numerous printing houses in Europe and America), the divisions arvato direct services (e.g. customer retention systems and service center services), arvato logistics services (logistics/supply chain management), arvato storage media (e.g. production of CD-ROMs, DVDs and audio CDs) and arvato systems (international provider of qualified and tailor-made IT services) and empolis, a leading provider of company-wide content and knowledge management solutions as well as the mobile entertainment provider arvato mobile with the brands handy.de and TJ.net.
http://www.arvato.com

beCogent offer a diverse range of contact centre solutions, including fully outsourced partnerships, services to complement and support an in-house operation, short and long-term consultancy and project work.

Experts in the call centre services industry, beCogent focus entirely on what they do best, adding value to clients' service by delivering creative solutions to meet all of their contact centre needs. beCogent has won a number of prestigious industry awards, including Employer of the Year at the Orange National Business Awards for the UK and Employer of the Year and Business of The Year at the Orange National Business Awards For Scotland.
http://www.becogent.com

Callmedia is a UK technology leader in contact centre and CTI software development with relationships with some of the largest organisations in the industry. Based in Fareham in Hampshire in the UK, but with offices throughout the UK and customers throughout the globe, Callmedia offers products and services that deal with a range of applications from predictive dialling to multi-channel contact centres, and from mission critical conferencing applications to web-based scripting, from protocol conversion to host-based routing and from simple screen-popping to complex call handling systems.

Callmedia is in use extensively in the outsourced call centre industry, financial services, manufacturing, local government, travel and distribution and is recognised for its flexibility, reliability, solid engineering and comprehensive integration capabilities. As a switch independent, platform independent offering across the spectrum of call centre activity it is the contact centre system of choice.
http://www.callmedia.co.uk

SITEL is a leading global provider of outsourced customer support services. On behalf of many of the world's leading organizations, SITEL designs and improves customer contact models across its clients' customer acquisition, retention and development cycles. SITEL manages approximately two million customer interactions per day via the telephone, e-mail, Internet and traditional mail. SITEL has over 39,000 employees in 91 global contact centers, utilizing more than 32 languages and dialects to serve customers in 56 countries SITEL is a leader in the contact center industry.
http://www.sitel.com

3. Hosting & ASP

webmaster — 2009-02-23T23:56:49Z

Back

At Abilis Solutions, we are passionate about solving business problems with technology and uncovering new ways to add value to IT infrastructures. Our expertise include:

Identity management and highly secure environments
Migration of legacy systems
Intranet, extranet and content management systems
Consumer web portals
Wireless applications and e-commerce platforms
Flexible, high-performance SaaS (Software as a Service)

www.abilis.ca

Jet Multimedia is the European leader in interactive multimedia online services. It combines a very strong technological expertise in value-added hosting, enabling him to cover all the networks, voice and data, fixed and mobile, with a reknown marketing approach.
www.jetmultimedia.com

Atos Worldline, an Atos Origin company
Atos Worldline is a major European player in the processing of large-volume electronic exchanges, specialising in electronic payment services, CRM and e-services (internet, voice and mobile services). With the focus on technological innovation, Atos Worldline implements its solutions in processing or integration mode. Atos Worldline has 2,600 employees in Europe and has an annual turnover of €400 million.
http://www.atosworldline.com

2. Integrators & Consultants

webmaster — 2009-02-23T23:50:03Z

Back

At Abilis Solutions, we are passionate about solving business problems with technology and uncovering new ways to add value to IT infrastructures. Our expertise include:

Identity management and highly secure environments
Migration of legacy systems
Intranet, extranet and content management systems
Consumer web portals
Wireless applications and e-commerce platforms
Flexible, high-performance SaaS (Software as a Service)

www.abilis.ca

HELP-LINE is a specialist in help-desk, outsourcing and consulting, created in 1994 within NEURONES group. It is a IT Services Management company employing 650 people.

As the leader in the service-desk market since its creation HELP-LINE has been concentrating on IT system user's support and offers a wide and complete range of workstation support services. With the backing of its subsidiary DEODIS, HELP-LINE is also a major player in the market of consulting services, asset management and implementation of service support management tool.

HELP-LINE is ISO 9001v2000 certified. HELP-LINE has gained its client's loyalty through its high level of expertise, tailored solutions and best practices in projects and ITIL. More than 150 companies, among which 20 are quoted in the french CAC40 index, and public administrations such as VEOLIA Environnement, CALYON, L'OREAL, JOHNSON & JOHNSON, SAINT-GOBIN have placed their confidence in HELP-LINE.
http://web.helpline.fr/

Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company. Committed to delivering innovation, Accenture collaborates with its clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. With deep industry and business process expertise, broad global resources and a proven track record, Accenture can mobilize the right people, skills and technologies to help clients improve their performance. With more than 133,000 people in 48 countries, the company generated net revenues of US$15.55 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2005.
http://www.accenture.com/

Sopra Newell & Budge is the UK and Ireland arm of Sopra Group, a leader in the European consulting and IT services market. We have a workforce of over 900 across the UK, Ireland and India and as part of the Sopra Group have access to a total workforce of over 9,000 based throughout Europe.

Sopra Newell & Budge, part of the Sopra Group, provides a complete range of consultancy, delivery and support services. This allows us to offer clients specific areas of expertise or full end to end solutions. By applying both technical skills and consulting techniques we work with organisations to streamline their business and improve their operational effectiveness.
http://www.sopranewellandbudge.com/

Steria in the UK combines expertise in e-consultancy, applications, secure e-business solutions, intrusion protection technology, managed hosting services, network management and infrastructure management, with a focus on major business sectors: public sector, finance, manufacturing and utilities. Steria employs 1,800 people in the UK.
http://www.steria.co.uk

Capgemini is one of the world's largest providers of Consulting, Technology and Outsourcing services. The company helps businesses implement growth strategies and leverage technology. The organization employs approximately 50,000 people worldwide and reported 2002 global revenues of 7.047 billion euros. More information about individual service lines, offices and research is available at
www.capgemini.com/

Business & Decision is a consulting and engineering firm that focuses exclusively on Business Intelligence, the Internet, and Customer Relationship Management.
http://www.businessdecision.com

3. Awards

webmaster — 2009-02-23T23:36:39Z

Confused.com and Eptica shortlisted for Financial Sector Technology award, Best use of IT in Insurance:

Using online customer service technology from Eptica has enabled Confused.com, to manage a significant increase in transactions, drive down costs and increase the quality and speed of customer response. A 50 per cent increase in quotations has been achieved, raising the opportunities for profits as the site receives a fee for each completed transaction from its 100 insurance partners.

Eptica has once again been placed on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 EMEA 2008, a ranking of the 500 fastest growing technology companies in EMEA. Rankings are based on percentage revenue growth over five years.

This is Eptica's second consecutive appearance in the Fast 500 and shows Eptica as one of only two software companies in the Multichannel and Online Customer Interaction category. Eptica is regarded as demonstrating continuous growth and European dimension, growing by more than 440 percent during this period.

Deloitte Eptica ranked on the 2007 Deloitte Technology Fast 500 EMEA

4. WorldWide

webmaster — 2009-02-23T23:17:07Z

Eptica Worldwide

Please find your nearest location here:

Europe - UK

Eptica UK Ltd
200 Brook Drive
Reading, Berkshire
UNITED KINGDOM
RG2 6UB
Tel: + 44 (0)118 949 7072 Fax: + 44 (0)118 949 7073
Email us here

Europe - France

Eptica SA
95 bis rue de Bellevue
92100 Boulogne-Billancourt
FRANCE
Tel:+ 33 (0)1 47 12 68 88 Fax:+ 33 (0)1 47 12 68 89
Contactez nous

Europe - Spain

Eptica España
Camino Cerro de los Gamos, 1, Edif. 1
28224, Pozuelo de Alarcón,
Madrid
ESPAÑA
Tel: +34 91 790 11 66 Fax: +34 91 790 11 12
Contacte con Eptica Online

North America - Canada

Eptica Ottawa
140 Montauk Private,
Ottawa, H2C 2B4
Canada
Tel: 613 228 1326
Mob.: 613 407 6887 Fax: 613 228 1326
Contact us in North America

North America - USA

Eptica New York
59 Franklin Street, suite 306
New York, NY10013
USA
Mob.: 613 407 6887
Contact us in North America

South America - Brazil

Altran
Alameda Rio Negro, 585 – 4º andar - Bloco C
Alphaville - Barueri/SP -
Brasil
http://www.altran.com.br
Contact us in Brazil

Asia Pacific - Singapour

Eptica Singapour
44B Club Street, (3rd Floor)
Singapore, 069421

Mob.: + 65 96834923 Fax: + 65 62211427
Email us here
Contact us in Singapore

Asia Pacific - Korea

BISPRO Consulting Co. Ltd
#DongGoong-Town 5F
91-2, Cheongdam-Dong
GangNam-Gu
Seoul
Korea
http://www.bispro.co.kr
Contact us in Korea

Asia Pacific - China

Asia Pacific - Hong Kong

3. Careers

webmaster — 2009-02-23T23:16:42Z

Careers

Looking for new challenges and opportunities?

Come and join a fast-growing software company where your talent and commitment will be recognized at its true value. We're constantly on the lookout for outgoing and highly motivated individuals who would like to benefit from working in a dynamic and international team environment.

Whether you are from a marketing, sales or engineering background, we stress technical excellence, good client interaction skills and teamwork. Experience in the software industry is a must.

The right candidates will be rewarded with competitive salaries and benefits, as well as exciting opportunities for professional development.

To apply for the following positions:

- Sales Account Executive
- Sales Assistant
- Pre or Post-Sales Consultants
- Project Manager
- Software Engineer
- Marketing Assistant
- Trainees

To apply for one of these jobs, please contact us!

2. Team

webmaster — 2009-02-23T23:15:12Z

Team

Olivier Njamfa - President & CEO

Olivier Njamfa, President and CEO of Eptica, co-founded the company in 2001 with Thierry Gandilhon. Previously, he was Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer of Com6, a leading European e-CRM software company. From 1999 through to 2001, Mr. Njamfa managed the International Indirect Operations of Showcase, a leading software provider of Business Intelligence and Datamining solutions. From 1995 through to 1999, Mr. Njamfa was first Director of the Finance and Banking Department of Comshare (provider of Business Intelligence and Analytical Application) and then moved on to becoming the Managing Director of their French subsidiary. Between 1987 and 1995, Mr. Njamfa served as Sales Manager and then as Regional Director of Saari, the French leader in accounting software. Olivier Njamfa is a graduate of ESC Rouen, and holds an MBA from the ESCP in Paris, France.

Thierry Gandilhon - Vice President & CTO

Thierry Gandilhon, Vice President & CTO of Eptica co-founded the company in 2001 with Olivier Njamfa. From 1998 through to 2001, Mr. Gandilhon was R&D Vice President of MATRAnet, a software company specialized in providing secured e-commerce solutions. From 1995 through to 1998, Mr. Gandilhon was R&D Vice President of Step One, a French start-up. As R&D Director of Business Objects from 1990 through to 1995, Mr. Gandilhon was responsible for setting-up and developing the R&D Department. From 1986 through to 1990, Mr. Gandilhon was Project Manager of Bull after starting his career as an Object Oriented & Logic Programming Research Engineer. Mr.Gandilhon holds a DEA (Post Graduate course) from University PARIS VII.

1. Company

webmaster — 2009-02-23T23:12:58Z

Company

Created in 2001 as a spin-out of EADS, the manufacturer of Airbus, Eptica is a leading provider of online customer service software. Our belief is that we are currently in a period of fundamental channel shift as more and more customers choose to engage with organisations using the internet. Eptica solutions enable these interactions to be optimised to improve both customer experience and business effectiveness.

Eptica's solutions, based on the Eptica Enterprise Suite, can be deployed either on-site or used as a service by accessing hosted applications.

Eptica has offices in the UK, France and Spain and operates worldwide through its network of partners.

Eptica has over 200 clients.