Concepts

To effectively handle emails in Syntelate XA, it’s important to understand some key concepts. This section introduces you to the key concepts that support the way email works in Syntelate XA.

Email Interaction Records and Emails

In Syntelate XA, every contact between a customer and an agent, regardless of the communication channel, is associated with an interaction record. When a customer starts a web chat, this creates a web chat interaction record. When a customer calls the contact center, this creates an inbound interaction record.

In much the same way, an email interaction record relates to email contact between a customer and the contact center. In the case of email, a single interaction record can be associated with multiple emails, as the following scenarios show.

Customer Emails the Contact Center Once

Let’s start with a simple scenario. The customer sends an email to the contact center. In Syntelate XA, this creates an email interaction record which is passed to an agent to work on. From this email interaction record, the agent can view the customer’s email, compose a reply, and then complete the email interaction record, which sends the reply to the customer.

If the customer later replies to the agent’s reply, this creates a brand new email interaction record.

In this first scenario, then, the email interaction record is associated with two emails: one inbound email from the customer and one outbound email to the customer.

Customer Emails the Contact Center Multiple Times

Now, let’s say a customer sends an email to the contact center and then, before Syntelate XA passes the email interaction record to an agent, sends another email with the same subject. Perhaps the customer forgot to add an attachment to the first email.

In this case, when the email interaction record is passed to an agent in Syntelate XA, the agent is able to view both of the customer’s emails from the one record. The agent can choose to reply to just one or both of these emails.

In this scenario, the email interaction record is associated with either three or four emails: two inbound emails and one or two outbound emails.

Customer’s Email Needs to Be Forwarded to Department That Doesn’t Reply to Customers Directly

Let’s move on to a more complicated scenario. The customer emails the contact center with a question that requires input from a department that does not reply to customers’ emails directly (for example, this might be the company’s finance department). From the email interaction record, the agent composes a reply to the customer, explaining that they need to liaise with the finance department and will get back to them soon. The agent also forwards the customer’s email to the finance department.

In this case, when the agent completes the record, both emails are sent. However, when the finance department replies to the agent’s email, this automatically marks the email interaction record as incomplete again. What this means is that Syntelate XA reopens the email interaction record and will pass it back to an agent.

The agent can then read the finance department’s reply and compose a reply to the customer, copying any pertinent information from the finance team’s email into the reply. When the agent sends the reply to the customer, the email interaction record is marked as complete.

In this scenario, the email interaction record is associated with a number of emails:

• The original inbound email from the customer
• The initial outbound “holding” reply from the agent
• The forward to the finance department
• The reply from the finance department
• The outbound email to the customer with the answer to their question

Send an “Unsolicited” Email to a Customer

What if the agent wants to send an unsolicited email to a customer? (By “unsolicited”, we mean an email that an agent initiates, rather than a reply to something initiated by the customer).

To send an unsolicited email, an agent must create a new email interaction record. This is easily done from the Menu element.

In this scenario, the email interaction record is associated with a single email: an outbound email from the agent to the customer.

Parking and Transferring

You can park and transfer an “email”. In both cases, it is actually the email interaction record — not an individual email — that is parked or transferred.

Parking an email lets you close the email interaction record until a specified date and time. At this time, Syntelate XA will pass the email interaction record back to you (or, if you are unavailable, to another agent).

Transfer lets you transfer the email interaction record to another agent (you can select which) or to any team leader.

Before parking or transferring, you can type notes in the Notes box. These will be shown to the agent who handles the parked/transferred record.

Sending/Saving Emails when Parking/Transferring

You can compose an email to the customer before parking or transferring the record. If you do, you’ll have two options:

• You can select for this to be sent when you park/transfer the record.
• You can select for it not to be sent but instead saved as a draft. The agent who handles the parked/transferred record will then be able to view, edit, and send your draft email.

In fact, you can do both of these things on a single record. For example, you could compose an email to the customer saying something like, “I’ll need to look into that for you. I’ll get back to you tomorrow.” You could select for this email to be sent On close (including park/transfer).

You could then compose another email to the customer with the reply to their question, minus the detail that you need to check. You could select for this email to be sent Only on “Email Complete”.

If you then parked the record for one day, this would send the first email to the customer and save the draft of the second email. When the email interaction record was passed back to you the next day, your draft would be there for you. You could then edit this and complete the record, which would send this email.

Completing an Email Interaction Record

Parking or transferring an email interaction record closes it but marks it as “incomplete”. It will be passed back to an agent at some point for further work.

To close a record and mark it as complete, there are three completion buttons:

• SEND: Sends any unsent emails that have been composed and closes the record.
• SPAM: Closes the record without sending any unsent emails. Use if the email is spam (i.e. not a genuine email from a customer).
• NO REPLY REQUIRED: Closes the record without sending any unsent emails. Use where the customer’s email doesn’t require a reply (say because they have just replied to say “Thanks!”).

Escalating Emails to Supervisors

You can escalate an email to a supervisor, using the ESCALATE button. When you escalate an email, your supervisor has the option of editing the customer’s email using tracked changes. Then, the supervisor can return the email interaction record back to you, and you’ll see the recommended changes. You will then be responsible for replying to the customer and completing the interaction record.

Email Info and Customer History

The Email info tab shows the history of the current email interaction record. From it, you can see which agents have previously worked on this record, when they worked on it, and whether they parked or transferred the record, and so on.

The Customer history tab shows the full contact history with this customer across channels. In other words, it shows all previous interaction records with this customer, for emails, inbound calls, outbound calls, and web chats.

Blending

Syntelate XA supports “blending” of channels. As such, while working on an email, you may be interrupted by an inbound call. Similarly, while working on an email, it is possible to manually make an outbound call by clicking Dial in the telephony toolbar.

After completing the inbound/outbound interaction record as usual, you will be able to return to the email interaction record.

Read Receipts

Read receipts are an optional feature of Syntelate XA for Microsoft Exchange mailboxes.

If your company has provided your agent desktop with a read receipt option, you will see a check box by your outbound email editor. To request a read receipt for each of your outbound emails, select the Read receipt check box.

In Training?

Where you are in training, the emails you write may not be sent directly to the customer but instead routed to a supervisor for approval before sending.

If you are in training, you will not be able to park emails.