The GDI Group of Companies is formed of GDI Integrated Facility Services, Ainsworth Inc., Superior Sany Solutions, and Modern Canada. Together these four companies have created a one-call destination for not just facility maintenance, but multi-trade technical services, franchising, and manufacturing. When you partner with GDIGC, they have the capability to solve any problems that might exist with your facility; you won’t need a separate contractor to get the job done. They’re stronger together as one provider, one solution, one company, and one culture. Email is a critical tool for GDI's National Operations Support Centre (NOSC), and they use several shared mailboxes to communicate with individual clients and handle support and billing inquiries.
Challenges
Email backlog
Before implementing Emailgistics, GDI was trying to manage an overwhelming amount of incoming emails sent to their team inboxes. This email backlog would often put a strain on their staff. They were looking for a solution that would improve their email processes to reduce bottlenecks and improve their team's day-to-day. Michel L, Manager of National Operations Support Centre at GDI, says, “If I looked at the one [inbox], we would always have emails.”
Cluttered inbox
In Microsoft Outlook, it can be tedious to sort messages in the shared mailbox. The team relied on agents to manually assign a colored category to indicate the email owner. According to Michel, visibility was a challenge, “in the past, because it was a shared [inbox] and people were just flagging stuff, we never really saw what people were doing day in and day out.” As a result, this led to confusion over email ownership and delayed response times.
No analytics
GDI also wanted to quantify its team's performance, but Outlook did not provide the tools needed. The team had little to no data on their agents and relied on a monthly report that was generated manually. “We would have to wait till the end of the month, make a pivot table, [to] get the reports.” This process made it difficult for management to make timely changes based on user performance or spikes in email volume.
Complicated workflow
GDI had previously tried another email management tool without success. The tool was too complicated for managers to implement and confusing for users. It was complicated to create simple workflows, and users had a tough time navigating between Outlook for their personal inbox and learning to use another application for the team inbox.
Getting started
The first change GDI made to their email process was to automate email routing to team members using Emailgistics round-robin assignment. Messages are automatically assigned to team members' folders in Outlook based on their work schedule and workload.
Replacing the manual triage process of color-coding messages with Outlook categories has made each user more efficient and eliminated email cherry-picking. The intelligent assignment options have been beneficial for mailboxes with teams working extended hours on different shifts.
Since GDI's users were already familiar with Outlook, Emailgistics user training was quick and straightforward, taking just 30 minutes.
“Emailgistics integration with Outlook is so seamless that at times users don't even realize they are using another software.”
Alerts and Snooze features ensure no message falls through the cracks
Using the full suite of Emailgistics features, GDI implemented a 1-hour SLA goal to set the standard to measure response times.
Emailgistics' alert tool notifies team inbox managers of unanswered emails before they surpass their 1-hour SLA goal to take action. This has allowed GDI's teams to achieve a 98% response success rate to emails within their SLA.
Previously, collaboration amongst team members on different shifts was complex as there was no indication and no way to know what actions had or had not been taken on an email. Now with message statuses and notes in Emailgistics, teams can quickly identify messages that still need to be handled so they can be passed off from the morning to the afternoon shift.
“This way, we know that 10-15 emails aren't going to transpire over to the next [day]… Now, [agents] know that by the end of your shift, you need to make sure your Emailgistics folder is empty,” says Michel. The GDI team also utilizes the message snooze feature to better manage their team inbox for inquiries that require more time or subsequent follow-ups. This feature ensures that the original owner receives the email again in their folder after the allotted snooze time. Moreover, the Emailgistics add-in for Outlook allows supervisors to add and view internal notes pertaining to the snoozed message.
Real-time reporting
Michel values the analytics tools Emailgistics provides for his team. Michel's favourite Emailgistics report is the User Performance report. This report includes dynamic charting of email volumes, reply times, and other metrics, which gives Michel a handle on what is getting done. Because users used to flag messages, that process was frustrating for managers as they couldn't tell what was going on. This report has allowed them to see where struggles lie, address them, and make the team members much more successful.
Emailgistics reports are available at the manager's fingertips and can be run at any time, which means Michel no longer has to wait to see how GDI's team inboxes are performing. “Now, if I wanted to, I could pull it up right now and ask What are our successes today? Any challenges we are facing? Where do I see my ups and downs? Who's my champion for the day?” Michel also monitors the team's dashboard, “I'm a visual person [who likes] to see everything right there. Having the dashboards is fantastic because I can have them up and make sure that things are done properly.” The Emailgistics reports provide insight into the team's performance and allow Michel to make decisions based on these metrics quickly.
Emailgistics analytics has given GDI more flexibility to provide its clients with SLA response time measurements they couldn't deliver before. “For anyone using a shared mailbox in Outlook, I would definitely recommend Emailgistics.”
