CIOIN

Tradus.In

Ibibo

Executive summary

For only-online players, the customer care support team is the only real connect between customers and a company. One company figured that out and switched to a customized CRM integrated e-mail solution that significantly improved the shopping experience for its customers.

Organization: A bevy of e-commerce websites have exploded on the Indian scene in the last few years luring customers with attractive deals and converting some of the most prudent and cautious shoppers into online shopaholics. One of these sites is Tradus.in, an e-commerce website selling a range of products from electronic goods to fashion accessories. Part of the same company that runs Ibibo.com, Tradus.in started off an as auction site but now functions on a fixed-price model. 

 Business Case: Although e-commerce is gaining popularity, ask anyone at the customer care team at Tradus.in, and they’ll you most Indians continue to be wary of shopping online. On an average, Tradus.in receives 350 e-mail enquiries a day, all via a single customer care e-mail ID. These enquiries range from simple questions about using a credit card online to more complex issues regarding product dispatch.

Working with Microsoft Outlook, Tradus.in’s small, 10-member customer care team did a decent job, but there was room for more efficiency. One of the problems they faced was that e-mails from customers had to manually re-routed from the customer care ID to individual team members because on Microsoft Outlook one e-mail ID can be configured only on one machine.

“Outlook was not the best e-mail solution for us because it did not have the ability to logically assign transactions. This is crucial for customer care agents who are all responding to e-mails received on a single e-mail ID,” says Subhrajit Majumder, associate director-operations at Tradus.in.

“Also, it didn’t allow us to maintain a trail of transaction for customer e-mails. There was no mechanism to tag e-mails or assign them into buckets. For example, we couldn’t differentiate if an e-mail was a reply or a resolution,” he says.

Project: For an e-commerce site without a brick-and-mortar presence, customer care agents are the only real connect for shoppers. Majumdar knew Outlook slowed down their service. “We weren’t even able to measure how many queries we received a day and how many were resolved,” says Majumdar.

What the company needed was an intelligent e-mail server that could be customized to its unique needs. The answer came in the form of an integrated e-mail solution from CRM vendor Talisma.

With the new e-mail solution, Tradus.in can configure algorithms at the backend so that e-mails are assigned based on logic. For example, it allows Tradus.in to use a round-robin and load balancing logic. This means that each agent gets e-mails based how many they can manage a day (not, for example, by expertise, like a credit card specialist, although the software can also do this).

“This has tremendously improved the efficiency of the agents. Instead of grappling with multiple problems they can now tackle them one at a time,” says Majumdar.

 Benefits: The e-mail solution came with a bonus: it gave Majumdar the ability to generate reports on the basis of e-mail transactions. For example, Majumdar can now tell what percentage of their complaints are due to a specific problem like credit card payments. “These reports help us detect trends, on which we can draw inferences and make necessary corrections,” says Majumdar. “This is especially helped in resolving complaints; we are able to pinpoint and determine causes faster and take preventive measures.”

The e-mail server is also integrated with a Web panel which lists all the e-mails received and tracks the time its takes to resolve them. This helps supervisors evaluate their customer service performance in a measurable way.

To send this author feedback, write to varsha_chidambaram@cio.in