Email Software & Help Desk Software Selecting The Best Product For Your Business.

Most businesses in the 21st Century rely upon email for their business communications.  Yet most businesses are still using the free email software that came pre-installed on their PC's when they bought them.  How many of these businesses would still be solvent if they were still using the free telephone their telecoms company provided when their business lines were installed?

Your email software could be doing so much more for your business, but because your machine came with something pre configured that got you by for your email needs you've assumed that's all email is.

Quite the contrary.  There is a considerable amount of other email software on the market that could do things for you that could really help to streamline your business.

Having multiple folders for storing your email in is a must.  Most email software can perform this, but not many can allow you to provide a different type of response depending on the folder, and automatically filter incoming email to the correct place.  Look at the following folder tree example.

This is a folder tree from a fictional used vehicle dealership.  This particular user has many folders where he moves messages depending on their source to various different folders and sub folders.  Nothing amazing about that, but the email software he is using moves the messages to these folders automatically as they arrive. His Inbox folder is a catch all for messages that can't be sent elsewhere.  But he has filters set up in the email software to move information from the various mailing lists he belongs to into the correct folders.  He also has a special filter set up to detect email from his wife and children and move it into the From Family folder. The email software he is using politely makes the folder names bold for any folders that have new, unseen messages.  This allows the user to locate new messages at a simple glance of his folders tree. He has an additional filter setup in the email software on the From Family folder to detect email from his wife.  When this filter notices email arriving it activates the text to speech module on his computer and says "You have email from your beloved", so even if this salesman is working on something else on his computer he is instantly informed by his email software of the very important email coming in. Sales queries starting at his company website are automatically directed by his email software to the Sales Queries\Web subfolder, and this business uses a different email address for advertising in AutoTrader magazine. The real magic to all this filtering and folders is that this salesman can use different personas when responding to email from these different folders.  He has things set up so that responding to a message in the AutoTrader sub folder will use his AutoTrader email address, will add his AutoTrader dealer number to the bottom of his email, and link to his sub-page on the AutoTrader Website. When responding to general Sales Queries the email software is configured to add his full business title on to the bottom of the email. However as this salesman is really a little softy, when replying to his mail in the From Family sub folder he has his email software sign all his mail "Your loving Farther". Notice how once configured all this automation in his email software speeds up his email responses and allows the businessman to get on with his job of selling vehicles without having to worry if the email that just arrived was important, or if he remembered to use the drop down menu on the compose message window to set the correct reply address for his AutoTrader email, or if he accidentally replied to his wife as "AutoTrader Super Salesman", which always upsets her as she thinks he doesn't care.

Help Desk Software

Now consider a different type of business.  Fictional business AllGreatSoftware.com sells every piece of computer software under the sun.  They also provide frontline support for all their customers.  They employ 15 people just to respond to email, all arriving at one single address, support@allgreatsoftware.com.

Prior to discovering some great help desk software they had to employ 1 person just to redirect all the incoming mail to the next available operator.  His job was to look down the line of cubicles and forward the incoming messages to support1@, support2@, etc.

Then they found this page.  They found out that there is email software out there that can fully automate their process.  Imagine having email software installed on all your 16 machines.  1 machine is responsible for retrieving and filtering the email.  Again several folders are setup so that support email for Adobe software can be sent to the adobe folder, email for Symantec software can be sent to a symantec folder etc.  Now all 16 machines running the same email software can see the email arriving on their own terminals.  As soon as the next support agent is available he clicks on the oldest unseen message.  The message instantly changes from bold to normal text to indicate that it is being read.  But not only does this happen on this support agents terminal, it happens on all 15 other terminals too.  All 15 support agents now know this email is being dealt with and they can concentrate on the next important message.

Having their email software automatically distribute email in this way allowed AllGreatSoftware.com to utilize 1 extra person they were paying just as a distributor.  It allowed them to filter mail to relevant folders, as some support agents don't know Adobe software they don't need to monitor that folder.  With their previous email software the distributor wasn't sure which support agent was an expert on which particular software so often messages would bounce around for hours before they got to the right person.  Now the right person is monitoring the right folders, all the time.

How much would your business pay for automation software like this?  AllGreatSoftware.com paid less than $200 for their email software which save them many thousands of dollars a year.

So where can you get email software that does all this?  We recommend the MailCOPA email software & Help Desk Software, developed by InterVations, a multi-national software development business with over 25 years of communications experience.