3 ms·
The problems the post describes are not really about email. They're actually about the difficulty of setting up a proper CRM system. All incoming and outgoing
by amirmc 15y ago
The problems the post describes are not really about email. They're actually about the difficulty of setting up a proper CRM system.
All incoming and outgoing email should be stored in a way that anyone can easily see the conversation history (and people should be checking it before they respond). As I see it, that's the problem the post is actually describing. Having one email address is a method of trying to achieve this but IMHO it's not how it should be done.
The problem with CRM systems as I see them is that most of them require users to click away from the email to read the full conversation history. Even worse than that, employees usually have to manually add a conversation to the CRM to begin with.
A better solution might be to automatically save incoming email to the company CRM and also append outgoing messages to the appropriate contact. That way, no-one has to remember to add records. The next step would be to expose that information directly in the email client so employees don't have to go hunting for info (if they can even be bothered).
I don't think most customers actually care where their reply comes from (e.g info@, sales@, bob@...) as long as they get a response and their issue is resolved.
Edit: I agree with the post that customers should not have to figure out which address to use from the website. Just give them one
- StavrosK 15y agoIsn't that what Zendesk and the CRM mentioned in the article do? I haven't tried them, but that's the impression I get, because it looks like people send emails from within Zendesk when replying to my support enquiries in various companies.
- amirmc 15y agoI haven't tried them either but from my first impressions there's still a wall between the conversations people are having via the support system and those that people remember to add to the CRM. e.g. the sales guy trying to up-sell someone to v2.0 may have no idea that the customer already has two open support tickets from the 2.0 beta program. The problem here is that these are fragmented systems, each trying to solve specific needs for the company (tracking sales/prospects, tracking support queries) rather than looking at the customer's perspective.
- ajessup 15y agoHaving a single e-mail address as a contact point is a great start, but you need more to solve the problem of fragmented communication, since customers inevitably end up having conversations directly with individuals in the company (and often prefer to, since they then know they're dealing with a real person). > A better solution might be to automatically save incoming email to the company CRM and also append outgoing messages to the appropriate contact. That way, no-one has to remember to add records. The next step would be to expose that information directly in the email client so employees don't have to go hunting for info (if they can even be bothered). We've been working on http://noosbox.com/ http://noosbox.com/ to solve exactly this problem. It integrates directly into GMail (on Google Apps) or outlook to allow you to save conversations against a specific contact.
- sleepyhead 15y agoMy previous company 24SevenOffice (http://24sevenoffice.com http://24sevenoffice.com) automatically links email sent and received to/from a contact in the CRM.
- vetler 15y agoHow? Does it require Outlook?
- sleepyhead 15y agoNo. It has an email module as well. Which can use any IMAP or POP3 server. It is a complete web-based business suite (I don't like to call it ERP as it is not meant for enterprises), but it has CRM, accounting, invoicing, project management, email, file/document management ++