Glenn,

Interesting, I just posted in my blog an entry on doing email well.

Also, John Ragsdale at SSPA posted an entry decrying the death of Support EMail ( his blog ).

My bottom line: when email is done properly, it can be a very powerful tool for communicating with customers and keeping them engaged and happy. The problems we have been having with it (mostly SPAM and other malware) is sufficiently understood not to be a major issue (I am not dismissing it, but if you are going to invest on email it won't hurt you to invest some time in reading how to improve the distribution ratio).

Any ways, very interesting article and well written.

My Blog
http://evergance.wordpress.com

John's Blog
http://jragsdale.wordpress.com ...

Thanks for the comments, Estaban. I wasn't proposing the death of e-mail, just that other media would eat into its market share.

If you can communicate via Facebook or Twitter, you can also use them to solve customer service problems. For example if a customer contacts you via Facebook, then reply via Facebook.

Regards,

Glenn ...

I agree that it is important for businesses to become adept at online communications, which include email, chat, social media and anything else that may be emerging. But, it seems that the report you mention excludes the fact that online interactions only make up a very small percentage of overall customer-company interactions.

According to this study -http://www.aspectindex.com/index_na/ - approximately three quarters of interactions are still conducted via telephone. That means that only one quarter of contacts are made using a multitude of online methods ? email, online chat, social media, etc. Of course as time goes on, that mix will begin to change.

Rather than focusing on one type of media or channel, perhaps the best strategy is for companies to focus on improve their communications-enabled business processes across the board.

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