While email is a cheaper form of customer service, it presents its own set of challenges. Having previously worked for the world's largest e-tailer (that place where you can aquire anything from one end of the alphabet to the other), there are some great lessons which can be passed on to every business using email to interact with their customers. First, remember you are "speaking" to your customer! Your most important asset. Even implied tone is crucial to consider. What are your most frequent contacts about? Develop pre-formed responses to those and insist that those replies be used, (modified as necessary). Have an email Queen or Goddess. This person should constantly monitor everything; why customers are contacting you, the reply they recieve, reasons for escalation, how supervisors handled that escalation, company policy, everything. Nothing, including the CEO should be out of bounds for her. She should be the greatest resource for your email teams. Use your email queue to make your company better. This is a huge resource for your Marketing, Policy, Distribution and Management teams and every contact should be scrupulously tracked as a means to improve every aspect of your operation. English, not jargon! Be vigilant about any acronyms or popular slang that can easily creep into an email reply. Just as with phone queues, measure everything! Finally, it is not about being right. It is too easy to get into a ping pong of emails with a customer over a policy or decision with which they disagree. Consider whether being right is a good enough reason to lose your customer's trust. -- Bob Brown, Clear Choice Health Plans

I agree that pre-hire screening is the best way to mitigate this issue. The grammar classes and speech therapy required to fix basic language problems is outside the scope of what most business want to handle. Students can spend years improving language during their formative years; how can a business reasonably handle that? "How to screen for writing?" is a fantastic point to the overall question.

One of my favorite screening projects is a simple, instructional essay. Namely: "Please write a succinct letter to a client, explaining how to make a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich."

From this example, you can gauge not only writing skills, but also capture a prospective employee's attention to detail, completeness, and structure. Does the agent include important information like "Required Supplies" and "Project Time"? Does the agent instruct the client to "Open the Jar," or simply "Apply Jelly"? How much might an agent assume about their audience's knowledge? An agent probably shouldn't explain that round thing is a "plate."

It might sound like a trite example, and probably could be switched out for a different subject, but a general-knowledge topic lets you concentrate on the writing skill itself. I'd recommend everyone try this simple test, though. It can tell you leagues very quickly.

It'd help to conduct some portion of an interview by online instant communication - chat or IM, for example. You'll want to keep an eye out for web-speak like 'lol' or 'plz,' as that can indicate laxity in writing.

All that being said, though, written communication needs the same attention given to oral communication. Ongoing training, monitoring, and improvement is just as important in the print or email world as the phone one. -- Michael Gray, VetCentric

For monitoring, we take two pieces of written work from each agent per month for assessment purposes; more if the agent is new to the company. Each email is given a rating based on five criteria:

1. Language. This includes spelling, grammatical errors and the agents' language resources - their ability to draw upon their vocabulary to express themselves.
2. Tone. In the world of customer service, tone is everything. We look for a tone that provides acknowledgement to the customers importance, tone which demonstrates respect and tone that builds trust.
3. Organization & Format. The letter or email has to look pretty and invite customers to read it. In the case of complaints, we have a strategy for justified and unjustified responses and we want to see that. For simple informational responses, we like to see the answer clearly given, along with either a selling attempt or a helpful hint that will have a positive impact on our customer. The information provided has to be presented logically so the overall message has a flow to it.
4. Correctness. Did the agent answer all the questions and was the information given accurate.
5. Overall Effect. This is a subjective measurement of how the customer would feel after reading the agent's message; highly positive, positive, depends on the reader, negative or highly negative. This score is the one the agent actually gets and it may not be a reflection on the other four criteria.

Each letter or message receives comments on what was done right and what was done wrong. If all agents are doing something that the manager doesn't like, then a briefing is held. If an agent's grammar is poor, for example "I would like to let you know that we has many different..." then perhaps that agent shouldn't be writing emails. When it comes to training for writing English correctly, you're probably further ahead to transfer them out and get someone who can write...you haven't got the time nor money to teach someone English. -- Peter G. Belfry, PCCW, Hong Kong

While it sounds as if you are referring to agents who are already handling email, don't forget the role of hiring. Careful screening of agents for writing skills (grammar, spelling) before they are hired (or transferred) on your email team) is essential. Basic writing courses are great, but it can get expensive to provide remedial training to all your agents this way, when you can very effectively build these skills into your selection process. Recruiting and screening by email, simulations and written tests can all be used to screen candidates ahead of time for the writing skills you are looking for. Writing skills are much more effectively hired for than trained.

Melissa's previous comment about the skill level of supervisors is a great one. Trainers, supervisors, team leads - everyone involved in handling and supporting the email channel should go through screening or testing to ensure they can provide the right support and coaching to this team. I've conducted train-the-trainer classes for email training staff and, through exercises and role plays, found that too many assumptions had been made about their writing skills!

To fairly measure both new and experienced call center agents, I grade tickets based on four questions. Each question is worth 25 points.

1. Does the summary line identify the problem and the status? For example, "Server down" or "Monitor dead" is sufficient but "problem with monitor" is not.
2. Does the text of the ticket clearly describe the problem?
3. Does the text of the ticket clearly describe what you did to fix the problem?
4. Is it clear what the status of the problem is at the time the ticket was closed or escalated?

While the definition of "clearly" may be up for discussion, I go through examples with people if points are taken off, describing why. Finally, if the ticket is closed it must say that the person was able to login successfully or the monitor is now working satisfactorily. Or, if the ticket was escalated they must state that it is not working and that there is more investigation needed by level 2. -- Jan Stordahl

I have two suggestions, both of which I am currently using:

1. Design templates for standard recurring types of correspondence. The call center agent then chooses the appropriate form of correspondence to fit the situation. The only thing required is to change the salutation, name, date and address.
2. You could offer a basic writing skills course and/or back it up with an intranet resource center to offer writing tips and information on grammar, spelling, proofreading, etc.

Good luck! -- Elizabeth Rattray, DDS Distribution Services, Ltd.

Make sure every call center agent goes through a "Basic Business Communication" type of class. Contact your local colleges/ technical schools to check for courses on writing/grammar. The class should include a final written test to check for spelling, etc. Begin to design standard responses for agents to use when emailing/faxing/writing. After class, have supervisors spot check agent responses for problems. Make sure your supervisors understand how to coach these skills. -- Melissa Hagye, CommPlan Associates