Microsoft Outlook’s status as the world’s most popular business email platform is undisputed. The platform is used by millions of professionals daily to drive productivity, stay in touch with customers, and enable sales-focused activities.

However, customer service and sales teams looking for insights into their email productivity and performance will be left disappointed with Outlook’s native email analytics capabilities.

In fact, there is virtually no way to measure important sales and customer service-related metrics using Outlook’s built-in functionality. Data about how individual users and teams are using Outlook, how long teams are taking to respond to customer emails, the average time to reply to an incoming email, and other email-related KPIs are simply not forthcoming.

That’s why growing numbers of organisations are using an Outlook email analytics platform to keep track of important email analytics. With a good Outlook email analytics platform in place, companies can measure their average response times, track important emails to ensure nothing slips through the cracks, and use data insights to drive constant improvements in email productivity.

Companies that have an email analytics platform for Outlook gain access to daily, weekly and monthly reports that can reveal critical insights and trends into how well their teams are managing sales and customer service queries via email.

 

 

Real-time alerts can help teams avoid missing important emails, while the best email analytics tools for Outlook will also allow for custom SLA tracking to help meet critical internal and customer-facing benchmarks.

Add to that the integration with other third-party software tools and companies using the leading email analytics tools for Outlook to gain a healthy competitive advantage over peers that may not be taking their email analytics quite as seriously as they perhaps should.

In this blog, we’ll take a closer look at how you can unlock email analytics for Outlook, as well as some of the advantages to doing so.

 

A step-by-step guide to getting analytics on Outlook

 

Companies can make better decisions about where to invest time and money to ensure high levels of customer satisfaction and optimum sales conversion rates by tracking and measuring key email productivity metrics. Here’s how:

 

Step 1 – Choose the best Outlook email analytics platform for your business

 

There are several email analytics software tools available for teams working in Outlook. Choosing the best Outlook email analytics platform for your business depends on your specific needs.

Common features to look for in a great Outlook email analytics tool include:

☑️ Easy visibility over emails that have been handled and emails still awaiting a reply.

☑️ The ability to set and track custom SLAs based on the needs of your business or your customers.

☑️ The option to track shared mailboxes and individual team member stats to ensure all incoming emails receive a timely response.

☑️ Powerful reporting capabilities that deliver insights into email productivity on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

☑️ Real-time alerts to inform teams and individuals when an email is approaching a custom SLA threshold.

☑️ The ability to integrate with third-party applications.

 

Companies seeking a powerful and simple-to-deploy email analytics tool for Outlook have a market-leading solution in timetoreply. Our platform offers an unbeatable suite of functionality and benefits to help companies better measure their email performance and gain actionable intelligence into areas of improvement.

 

Step 2 – Integrate your chosen email analytics platform with Outlook

 

Once you’ve chosen your email analytics platform, it’s time to implement it for your teams. Many email analytics solutions require some change management or lengthy and sometimes complex integration processes to get them running at full speed.

The easiest email analytics tool to integrate with Outlook is timetoreply. Our email analytics platform quickly integrates with your Outlook email environment with no installation required to immediately start producing actionable insights into a broad range of email metrics.

 

Step 3 – Set and track custom SLAs

 

One of the great advantages of using an email analytics platform for Outlook is the ability to set and track custom SLAs based on the needs of your business or your customers.

Customer service and sales teams using timetoreply can easily set SLAs, with the platform constantly tracking group and individual mailboxes to ensure every team member is working optimally toward achieving those precious KPIs. And when an email is approaching a custom SLA threshold, our platform will notify the relevant team or individual to ensure each customer receives a timely and accurate response to their query.

This keeps teams operating at an optimum level and maintains the highest standards in customer service and sales efforts.

 

Step 4 – Uncover trends and insights with reports

 

Daily, weekly, and monthly reports can help track the performance of customer-facing and sales teams and highlight areas for improvement, while real-time alerts and notifications ensure no important emails are left unanswered.

With timetoreply, companies can gain critical insights into the performance of their customer-facing and sales teams, while monthly reports can reveal important longer-term trends that may inform sales and customer service strategies.

And with rich data export capabilities, companies wishing to interrogate their email productivity data further or dive deeper into the inner workings of their customer-facing teams can do so easily and conveniently.

 

Using timetoreply™  for Outlook email analytics

 

So what can companies that have chosen timetoreply for their Outlook email analytics expect from their new platform? Using timetoreply unlocks a broad range of benefits that include:

 

1. Supercharge your sales and customer service teams with actionable data insights

 

Studies have revealed that up to 62% of companies don’t even respond to every customer service email, and when they do, it can be very late. In fact, one study of a thousand companies found the average response time to handle a customer service request is over twelve hours.

One of the contributing factors to slow or insufficient responses to customer emails is a lack of visibility over key email metrics. When teams operate without the benefit of data insights, it’s hard to consistently drive improvements in how quickly – and how well – teams respond to incoming emails.

Timetoreply unlocks access to a broad range of email metrics that teams can use to identify areas of improvement and establish benchmarks for customer service and sales activities.

 

2. Never miss an important email again with real-time alerts

 

Leaving an important customer service request or sales query unanswered could lead to unhappy customers and lost revenue. When you neglect to answer an email, you risk creating the impression that the customer or prospect just isn’t that important to you.

Timetoreply features real-time alerts that notify teams and individuals when an email has been left unanswered for too long. How long is too long? That’s up to you – using our platform, you can set any custom deadline for email responses and ensure the relevant team members are informed when any email is nearing that deadline.

 

3. Track and measure individual and team mailboxes to keep your entire team working optimally

 

It’s really hard to manage something if you can’t measure it. That’s why the most successful sales and customer service teams rely on timetoreply to track and measure individual and team mailboxes.

Using the data-driven insights produced by our platform, customer service and sales teams can identify areas of improvement and implement policies to close gaps in sales and customer service strategies.

Using data generated by our platform, high-performance teams can ensure they close sales quicker and deliver a superior experience to every customer.

 

4. Keep data safe and compliant with privacy regulations

 

Privacy is being increasingly important as more services and daily activities move to the digital realm. Today, companies collect, store and process more customer data than ever before. This can create regulatory risks as most companies are subject to expansive privacy laws.

Timetoreply offers high levels of data security through its ISO27001 certification, while also ticking compliance boxes with a number of data privacy regulations, including GDPR.

This keeps your teams working optimally without the worry of losing precious customer data or falling on the wrong side of regulators.

 

Key takeaways

 

Outlook may be the world’s number one business email platform, but it falls short in its native ability to provide data insights into key email productivity metrics.

With no easy way to track and measure standard email response times, the average time to reply to emails, the time to resolve email queries, and other key email metrics, sales and customer service teams have to seek alternative solutions to their email analytics needs.

Enter timetoreply, an easy-to-use, and quick-to-deploy email analytics tool for Outlook that empowers customer service and sales teams with valuable insights into their email productivity.

 

If your team relies on Outlook to manage incoming customer and sales queries, timetoreply can unlock data-driven insights that make it easier to track and measure a broad range of email-related KPIs.

 

 

Get started with a free no-obligation 15-day trial to see how timetoreply can enhance your company’s email productivity through real-time data insights for Outlook.

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