e-Messaging Solution Delivers Improved Customer Communications for Thomas Cook

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Successful integration of Pitney Bowes Business Insight e-Messaging solution delivers unprecedented customer communications management capability to the world’s best known travel company

Windsor, 28 July 2009 – Pitney Bowes Business Insight (PBBI), a global provider of location and communication intelligence software, data and services, today announces that Thomas Cook is its first customer to fully integrate e-Messaging into its existing Customer Communications Management (CCM) suite.

Thomas Cook UK & Ireland has been working with Pitney Bowes Business Insight to develop a truly integrated CCM system across the company’s multiple brands. The integration of e-Messaging has enabled the organisation to harness email to unprecedented effect, equipping its call centres to communicate with customers for important travel information by personal email for the first time.

Around 200,000 emails were recorded in the first early months since initial deployment. This figure is expected to rise exponentially to over one million in 12 month’s time.

“The ability to use email for our call centres and for Thomas Cook’s order processing overall is producing immediate and tangible benefits through the delivery of seamless customer service,” said Marian Manson, Programme Manager at Thomas Cook. “In this first phase of the roll-out, we’ve enabled our network of call centres to notify customers on critical communications such as flight and holiday changes. With e-Messaging now integrated into our CCM suite, we can handle large email volumes across the different Thomas Cook brands. The system enables us to deliver personalised communication and quickly pick up bounce-backs to maintain a keen audit on customer data.”

With the integration of e-Messaging, the Pitney Bowes Business Insight CCM suite gives organisations a definitive capability to harness the power of personalised email for effective inbound and outbound customer communications, across the enterprise. The system manages message delivery, reporting, responses and other data for assessing and analysing communication effectiveness and critically, archives all communications – print and electronic – enabling a comprehensive view of customer contact for improving customer service, enhancing call centre operations and meeting regulatory compliance.

Electronic delivery of documents cuts overheads. An early indication of the significant return on investment forecasted by Thomas Cook can be seen by savings in postage alone. As Manson points out: “e-Messaging is not only working to help us deliver high levels of customer satisfaction, which will translate into increased revenues, but will quickly deliver a compelling return on the investment with significant savings already realised on postal and administration costs per customer communication. This will rise substantially as we deploy across our ticketing capability.”

Over the next 12 months, it is hoped that the system will be fully deployed to handle ticket bookings and invoicing through its central website, Book cheap holidays and holiday deals at thomascook.com and across the four systems handling the family of Thomas Cook brands including some 150 users based at the company’s three main call centres in Peterborough, Bradford and Falkirk.

With the addition of e-Messaging, Thomas Cook now has a seamless, closed-loop system to create a truly integrated CCM capability. The system embraces data integration, document composition, archiving, print stream, high-speed mail insertion and now email delivery technology.

“Pitney Bowes Business Insight e-Messaging solution enables businesses to use email and SMS technology as an effective two-way, managed communications channel,” explains Simon Boundy, CCM Product Marketing Manager for EMEA, Pitney Bowes Business Insight.

“Email integration delivers a truly holistic CCM solution which eliminates the need for outsourcing email marketing campaigns, turns call centres into multi-channel customer contact centres and controls the complete customer communications process.
“The success of the e-Messaging roll-out with Thomas Cook is immensely gratifying; working closely with such a progressive, organisation on this important business technology landmark is testament to the vast benefits to be gained from harnessing the power of personalised, two-way electronic communication.”