ListServ Snap Shot Survey: Email Handling

By David Schmidt
  

Twenty-five years ago, when I co-authored “Power Collecting: Automation for Effective Asset Management,” collections were handled via fax and phone. Even so, there was still a considerable amount of paper going through the mail, especially invoices and statements while emails were still in the early adoption phase. Today, the primary mode of communication for most of the business world is email, as well as the phone if you can get somebody to answer. I suspect texting will begin playing a bigger role in the not-too-distant future, especially when you are communicating with a small business owner.

It is within this context, that we thought it would be useful to get a better understanding of the impact email handling is having on credit organizations. Back in my day as a credit manager, it was easy to get distracted by pushing paper. The question now becomes: has email become more of a facilitator or a disruptor? As our survey illustrates, the answer depends on how well you manage your email environment.

Observations:
•    The median is 3-4 hours per day and the mean (average) is roughly 3.67 hours per day
•    Over 60 percent of participants are spending more the 3 hours per day handling emails
•    Nearly one-third spend over half their day responding to emails

Observations:
•    Despite the significant amount of time spent handling emails, 56 percent don’t see it as a problem
•    Even so, a large minority admit to struggling with email handling

Observations:
•    The reason for a department email is to provide customers a single point of contact
•    Only 44 percent of the respondents have a department email

Observations:
•    With intelligent OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and RPA (Robot Process Automation), replies to common customer queries (I need a copy of Invoice #1234?) can be programmed to be handled automatically. Of course, the same can be done with Natural Language AI (Artificial Intelligence) and ML (Machine Learning).
•    There’s a big opportunity here for organizations to gain efficiency.

Observations:
•    RPA as well as Natural Language AI/ML can be used to automate emails to the correct party
•    Significantly more organizations (31 percent) employ automated routing in compared to those with automated replies (12 percent)

Observations:
•    If you have collection software, it is extremely likely you have automated email dunning capabilities
•    A similar number of organizations have automated email dunning as have automated email routing.
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Observations:
•    This question was posed to only those who had automated email dunning capabilities, so the response pool is quite small
•    Only 1 out of 5 can review and edit automated emails prior to transmission

Observations:
•    Having a variety of email templates to address different topics and having those templates automatically populate the email with various account details such as account number, address, contact person email and name, as well as invoice numbers and amounts will have a very positive impact on efficiency
•    This was the most popular type of email automation uncovered by this survey, but even so, less than half of the respondents had this capability

Question: Please share with us some of the things you do to make email handling as productive as possible. Are there any email-related challenges you have overcome, and how did you accomplish that? Are there any issues related to emails that continue to be problematic?
•    No real issues. Priority response is given to internal employee emails but all emails receive a reply no later than EOD. -- Terri Boyette, Credit & Receivables Manager, Michelman, Inc.
•    Emails are churned according to time received and importance of email. I almost exclusively communicate via email as it affords me the ability to manage both internal and external staff and sales personal. I can also look back at the last communication on any given subject or issue, it also affords me the ability to flag important emails to follow-up in the future. -- Lupe Maki, Credit Manager, Indianhead Foodservice Distributor
•    Having the correct email address is the biggest challenge. -- Keith Buggs, Senior Manager, Henry Schein
•    I have a separate folder for everything I get from CreditRiskMonitor. -- Dave Zahller, CCE, Credit Manager, Tubular Steel, Inc.
•    As our business is 90% international in nature, emails are the main source of communication for us. (1) Providing details in subject line, ie customer name and invoice number or type of topic -- application, past due invoice, statement, etc. (2) Filing of emails right away, (at least daily) either automatically or manually so they can be located easily at a later date if needed.  This is critical to not feeling overwhelmed or just plain wasting time trying to locate a particular email. (3)  Also using the "search" function is very helpful to find a specific email. (4) I'm not afraid to delete emails that don't pertain to my specific function.  Usually if needed they can be found by another person in the organization for which it was intended. (5) requesting others in the organization to remove my name from emails that don't pertain to my function or I just delete them. -- J.  Coen, Credit Manager, Summit Almonds 
•    Emails come into ar@companyname and the person assigned to that customer will handle the issue/request. -- Donna Stock, Credit Manager, Symmons Industries, Inc.
•    All AR-related tasks and inquiries are sent to the general AR mailbox, including things from internal sources.  With multiple department members monitoring the same inbox, it was a little tough to keep track of who was doing what. Internal relationship problems erupted with my team because one felt another was "cherry-picking easy stuff and leaving the hard stuff for me."  I devised a rotating calendar of duties, assigned per AR rep, based around the common tasks.  The duties rotate on a weekly basis.  This plan also ensured all reps are equally competent to handle the variety. -- Brenda Erickson, Credit Manager, Lohmiller and Company, DBA Carrier West
•    Group by category in central email. -- Jerry Drake, Director, Credit & Collections, Apogee Enterprises Inc.
•    We delegate emails to various members of the department which assist in training and developing more well-rounded associates. This also lessens everyone's burden as the tasks are shared. -- Carlos Anderson, Credit Manager, Kravet Inc.
•    We do have a separate email between Credit and Accounts Receivable to better direct some emails. Also, it's not what we do and it causes a lot of grief for us but Manaus [sic] customers only have the capability of one company email contact for us so we have to decide if it goes to Customer Service, AR, or Credit resulting in a lot of forwarding of emails and lost time as a result. Even some large companies have this issue. -- Chris Finch, Retired, Formerly with Sumitomo Electric LIGHTWAVE Co.

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Survey Demographics

Number of Participants: 16
Question: How many people are involved in credit, collections, and accounts receivable in your organization? 
•    Mean: 4
•    Average: 12.9
•    Range: 1-120