Hotels.com signs with Eptica Email Management

New management solution to track world wide call centre operations

Hotels.com, the world's most visited hotel booking site*, has selected Eptica's Email Management solution to drive operational efficiency within contact centres in five locations worldwide.

The contact centres serve 32 Hotels.com points of sale across nine languages across a number of countries. Hotels.com will utilise Eptica Email Management to evaluate and track in-bound customer email enquiries and increase service levels.

This is the first time that Hotels.com has worked with an email management solution, and the new partnership with Eptica will enable more efficient reporting capabilities, tracking, queue management and visibility to contact centre activity. Reuben Goldsmith, call centre operations director at Hotels.com explained: “The new system has been specifically tailored to the need of Hotels.com and presents a scalable solution to grow with our business. It will ensure that we continue to deliver the high quality customer service to the enquiries we receive.”

Hotels.com selected Eptica following a thorough search of the market. Ursula Toulson, director of operations programme management at Hotels.com commented: “Our immediate requirement was the robust distribution and management of communication in a variety of different languages. We examined a number of vendors, but Eptica was most efficient at meeting our requirements.”

Eptica Email Management will provide Hotels.com with a solution to automate and manage electronic requests. Incoming emails are first analysed, and then routed to the most appropriate agent, according to their field of expertise, availability and also the email address and key words contained in the request. The solution automatically provides the agent with a detailed client history, enabling them to deliver fast and tailored responses.

The new solution from Eptica will bring consistent communications to Hotels.com customers. As Hotels.com works with agents that deal with both sales and support calls in outsourced contact centres, this new solution means Hotels.com can now monitor real-time activity globally. Average handling times, resolution rates and agent workload are all available through Eptica reporting allowing Hotels.com to set KPIs accordingly. Goldsmith concludes: “We can now track performance in real-time and create improvement plans to ensure we meet first contact resolution standards.”

Paul Barnes, Managing Director of Eptica UK: “Consumers are now more confident than ever in using the web to book holidays and accommodation. We are delighted to be able to support Hotels.com in their pursuit to provide customers with consistent, accurate and timely responses through online channels.”

*Hotels.com website is the most visited in the ‘Hotels/Accommodation provider' category, according to comScore Media Metrix.