Mountain View, California -- (August 26, 2004) – In the first of its State-of-eService Benchmarking Series ™, BenchmarkPortal, a leading source of CRM best practices for contact centers, found that the majority of even the largest companies in the US and Canada are failing to respond to emails with high-value purchase intent, and are missing out on revenue opportunities. Conducted in July 2004, this research is the first of a series of eService benchmarking studies, sponsored by eGain Communications Corporation (Company
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Studies) (OTCBB: EGAN), a leading provider of customer service and contact center software available for in-house or on-demand hosted deployment.
BenchmarkPortal included 300 U.S. and Canadian companies with over $250M in annual revenue in the evaluation. Among the companies assessed were leading corporations across retail, travel and hospitality, financial services, e-business, telecom, and hi-tech/consumer electronics manufacturing sectors. Posing as customers, survey researchers made targeted email inquiries that demonstrated a clear intent to buy a high-value product or service. Both the timeliness and the quality of the responses were measured.
Among key cross-industry findings:
· A shocking 41% of the companies did not respond
· Only 39% of the overall sample sent an answer within 24 hours
· Only 15% of companies sent any form of acknowledgement, a very simple tool used to set customer expectations and maintain interest
· Only 17% of the companies in the overall sample responded with an accurate and complete answer
· 6% did not offer any form of email contact
Among sector-specific findings:
Responsiveness:
· Retail sector performed the best in responsiveness with 53% responding within 24 hours
· Surprisingly, the financial services and telecom companies were the least responsive, with 59% and 40% of the companies not sending any response at all.
Quality of response:
· Here again, retail sector performed the best with 35% of the companies providing an accurate and complete answer
· Telecom and hi-technology manufacturing performed the worst with only 9% and 10% of the companies in the respective samples, providing an accurate and complete answer
“The fact that 41% of large North American companies are simply ignoring emails from high-value buyers is shocking,” said Dr. Jon Anton, reputed contact center thought leader and director of research for BenchmarkPortal. “”Our study serves as a wakeup call to a majority of US businesses, some of the most respected brands in their categories, who are losing business due to poor online service.”
“As customers increasingly turn to the web to conduct business, companies cannot afford to drop the ball on eService,” said Ashu Roy, CEO of eGain. “eGain’s email management solution is used by market-leading companies and it’s no surprise that they did well in this study.”
To request a briefing on the findings of the study or to have your own customer service operation benchmarked, send an email to info@egain.com or information@benchmarkportal.com with information about your firm. The findings will also be presented at a webinar by Dr. Jon Anton of BenchmarkPortal, to be held on October 19, 2004. The URL for webinar registration:
http://www.egain.com/pages/WebinarRegForm.asp
About BenchmarkPortal
BenchmarkPortal is the source for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) best practices information for call centers. Founded as a joint venture with Purdue University, the original benchmarking of call centers began at Purdue’s Center for Customer-Driven Quality (CCDQ) in 1993 under the direction of Dr. Jon Anton, noted authority in all aspects of the customer contact/service industry sectors. BenchmarkPortal is continually growing their database, already the world's largest, for call center metrics and is extending both its national and international reach. Through BenchmarkPortal reports and its leading edge research, the company aims to contribute to the continual improvement processes of individual customer call centers, and ultimately to improve the performance of this vital sector as a whole, worldwide. For more information about BenchmarkPortal, call 805.614.0123, or visit their Web site at www.BenchmarkPortal.com.
About eGain Communications Corporation
eGain (OTC: EGAN.OB) is a leading provider of customer service and contact center software for in-house or on-demand hosted deployment. Trusted by prominent companies worldwide, eGain has been helping organizations achieve and sustain customer service excellence for over a decade. 24 of the 50 largest global companies rely on eGain to transform their traditional call centers into profit centers, and extend their service-based competitive advantage. eGain Service 6™, the company's software suite includes integrated, best-in-class applications for customer email management, knowledge management, web self-service, live web collaboration via chat and co-browsing, automation of fax and paper-based service interactions, and service fulfillment. These robust applications are built on the eGain Service Management Platform™(eGain SMP™), a scalable next-generation framework that includes end-to-end service process management, multi-channel, multi-site contact center management, a flexible integration approach, and certified out-of-the-box integrations with leading call center, content and business systems.
Headquartered in Mountain View, California, eGain has an operating presence in 18 countries and serves over 800 enterprise customers worldwide. To learn more about eGain, visit http://www.eGain.com or call the company's offices-United States: (888) 603-4246 ext. 9; London: +44 (0) 1753-464646; Tokyo: 81-3-5778-7590.
eGain, the eGain logo, and all other eGain product names and slogans are trademarks or registered trademarks of eGain Communications Corp. in the United States and/or other countries. All other company names and products mentioned in this release may be trademarks or registered trademarks of the respective companies.
Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-looking Statements: All statements in this release that involve eGain's plans, beliefs, projections, expectations, strategies and intentions are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The words and expressions "look forward to," "will," "expect," "plan," "believe," "seek," "strive for," "anticipate," hope," "estimate" and similar expressions are intended to identify the Company's forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements, which are based on information available to eGain at the time of this release, are not guarantees of future results; rather, they are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those set forth in this release. These risks include, but are not limited to, the challenging economic environment; the uncertainty of demand for eGain products; the anticipated customer benefits from eGain products; increased competition and technological changes in the markets in which eGain competes; eGain's ability to manage its expenditures; the performance of eGain’s management in achieving strategic goals and other risks detailed from time to time in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the company's annual report on Form 10-K filed on September 29, 2003, and the company's quarterly reports on Form 10-Q as may be amended and in effect from time to time. eGain assumes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements.
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