From 15,000 Emails to a Clean Launch, Through Automation
Category
CX Operations
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With no official email channel and a backlog of more than 15,000 emails, Revolut set up a dedicated team to build email support properly, serving both users and non-users. I was on the team from day one, and together we designed the policies and processes, set up the CRM and verification flows, and built the automations that, using back-office tags and email body keywords, cleared the backlog ahead of launch.
The challenge
Launching an email channel without a plan would have multiplied risk, cost, and customer frustration, and several problems had to be solved at once. The support email address had been passed around informally online, so messages kept arriving at an address no one was formally staffing, building a backlog of more than 15,000. Clearing it was only the start, and alongside it we had to tackle several things in parallel:
A small seed team to start with, while agents were being hired and transitioned over from chat.
Compliance and privacy guardrails, working closely with compliance and legal to set up the correct processes and get Legal sign-off on templates, the verification approach, and the Power of Attorney flow.
A cross-functional channel strategy, defining with the chat and phone teams which queries email should resolve versus deflect, depending on the specifics of each request.
The approach
The plan was automation first, compliance ready, and knowledge driven.
Cleared the backlog with automation: we built automations on Atlassian Service Desk that read back-office tags and email keywords to infer each issue, then sent templated replies with FAQs and a prompt asking people to reply only if they still needed help, so just the genuinely live cases came back into the queue.
Routed queries to the right channel: working with the chat and phone teams, we sent simple or chat-friendly issues back to those channels to protect email capacity.
Built the team in parallel: we hired new agents and transitioned others from chat while the backlog was being cleared.
Set up the compliance and verification processes: alongside compliance and legal, we built the identity verification approach, the Power of Attorney flow, and the approved templates, with sensitive cases handled together with phone support, mainly users locked out of the Revolut app who could not reach the in-app chat.
Made knowledge the backbone: we created a knowledge base in Confluence with decision trees, response templates, and escalation playbooks to keep quality consistent as the team grew.
The impact
The channel launched clean, with the backlog cleared ahead of launch, a staffed team, a live knowledge base, and compliant processes approved in advance.
The backlog of more than 15,000 emails was cleared before the channel opened.
A fully compliant launch, with templates, verification, and the Power of Attorney flow approved ahead of time.
A dedicated team supported by a living knowledge base, with decision trees and clear escalation paths.
Email capacity protected by routing simple, high-volume issues to chat.
An official channel that made support accessible to both users and non-users.
A legacy backlog turned into a clean launch
An approach led by automation, ready for compliance, and built on solid knowledge turned a messy legacy backlog into a scalable support channel that launched with nothing pending, improving accessibility and protecting privacy.
