Through use of the EchoMail product suite, Senators have an accurate assessment of constituent views, saving both time and money and maintaining high approval levels. Client Since: September 1999 Products used: EchoMail® Business IntelligenceTM EchoMail® Customer CareTM EchoMail® Direct MarketingTM EchoMail® Data WarehousingTM Number of E-Mails Processed Over 40,000 a month per Senator Service Solutions Business Intelligence Support Workflow Analysis Direct Mail and Strategic Planning Data Mining Training and Consulting Network Architecture   Senators Frist and Graham sort E-Mails Success Story: United States Legislative Branch Company Overview: The U.S. Senate, one of the two portions of the U.S. Congress, is part of the legislative branch of the government. Comprised of 100 senators, two from each state, the Senate ensures that each state has equal representation in the crafting of legislation. Before EchoMail: Senators who were using E-Mail often received up to 500 messages a day, more when there were issue-related spikes. These messages would be assigned to interns, who would read and craft a response. These responses would be sent back to the constituent via postal mail. Responses often took weeks to send and often were untimely or inappropriate. The EchoMail Deployment: EchoMail provided a six-month pilot of the Customer Care product, starting with Senators Frist and Graham. Within six months, specific issues related to the nature and volume of senatorial E-Mail were addressed, with additional modifications and processes put into place to enhance the functionality of the system to meet the Senators' requirements. After EchoMail: Currently there are 25 Senators using EchoMail Customer Care with Business Intelligence. With BI accuracy levels between 85 and 95 percent and the use of pre-filtering technology, senatorial staffs have experienced E-Mail volume reductions of as much as 70 percent. The average office manually handles less than 12,000 E-Mails a month, down from the 40,000 or more handled previously. In addition to the automatic routing and response library functions, EchoMail significantly reduces the time and effort senatorial staffs need to track inbound and outbound messages. Senators typically start using EchoMail by sorting and identifying duplicate or erroneous E-Mail. As they become more familiar with the software, they use EchoMail to analyze constituent correspondence in order to develop profiles of constituent views on the various issues each Senator handles. Through use of E-Mail and reducing the volume of E-Mails requiring manual handling, EchoMail saves the Senate over $1 million a year per Senator via the reduction of staff hours spent answering constituent E-Mail and lowered usage of the franking privilege. Types of Inquiries Handled: Press and information requests Complaints Issue-specific constituent opinion