Providing customer support via email
May 8, 2005 6:49 PM Subscribe
Email ticketing and CRM - out of about a billion solutions, which one's right for me?
My partner and I are receiving increasing numbers of queries via email. The current system is for emails to the role account to be forwarded to both our personal accounts. Easy, fast to set up, and it worked.
But as the business grows we're running into confusion about who's dealing with what, what stage queries are at, and occasionaly stuff just gets lost in the pile. I figure it's time to go to a ticketing system.
The things I think I need (and I'm happy to be told I'm wrong, or I've missed something vital) are:
a) Web-based, accessible anywhere, not just at our desktops
b) This email account gets a lot of unavoidable status messages. I need to filter them - simple keyword filtering on subject: and from: lines should do it.
c) We need to tag and sort conversations as (at least) Open, Assigned, Closed, Archived and Unimportant. User-defined folders or tags seem the way to go there.
d) Checkout - John is dealing with that, so the ticket is locked to everyone else.
e) (nice-to-have) - PHP-based.
So, I've never worked in a support role, I've never used a ticketing app, where should I start looking? What would you recommend?
My partner and I are receiving increasing numbers of queries via email. The current system is for emails to the role account to be forwarded to both our personal accounts. Easy, fast to set up, and it worked.
But as the business grows we're running into confusion about who's dealing with what, what stage queries are at, and occasionaly stuff just gets lost in the pile. I figure it's time to go to a ticketing system.
The things I think I need (and I'm happy to be told I'm wrong, or I've missed something vital) are:
a) Web-based, accessible anywhere, not just at our desktops
b) This email account gets a lot of unavoidable status messages. I need to filter them - simple keyword filtering on subject: and from: lines should do it.
c) We need to tag and sort conversations as (at least) Open, Assigned, Closed, Archived and Unimportant. User-defined folders or tags seem the way to go there.
d) Checkout - John is dealing with that, so the ticket is locked to everyone else.
e) (nice-to-have) - PHP-based.
So, I've never worked in a support role, I've never used a ticketing app, where should I start looking? What would you recommend?
At my office, we've thrived on FogBugz for managing various kinds of issues for about four years now. Beginning with version 3.0, email management features came along... and reportedly work quite well, although I personally haven't used them.
posted by skyboy at 8:47 PM on May 8, 2005
posted by skyboy at 8:47 PM on May 8, 2005
Response by poster: skyboy: I nearly mentioned FogBugz in my post - it's exactly the kind of UI I'm looking for. I'm not going for FogBugz itself because I don't fancy administering a world-facing IIS server, and the pricing structure irritates me no end.
But those email management features look perfect, don't they? If I can't find anything better, maybe I'll have to go that route.
posted by Leon at 9:04 PM on May 8, 2005
But those email management features look perfect, don't they? If I can't find anything better, maybe I'll have to go that route.
posted by Leon at 9:04 PM on May 8, 2005
FogBugz for Unix is available as well as a 3rd party hosted option.
posted by mmascolino at 9:40 PM on May 8, 2005
posted by mmascolino at 9:40 PM on May 8, 2005
I can't speak from personal experience, but a number of people I know have spoken fondly of OTRS (Open Ticket Request System).
posted by Caviar at 9:41 PM on May 8, 2005
posted by Caviar at 9:41 PM on May 8, 2005
Try Perldesk - works for me.
posted by bright77blue at 5:20 AM on May 9, 2005
posted by bright77blue at 5:20 AM on May 9, 2005
RT hits several of your bullets. I've used various incarnations, all eventually heavily modified, for years.
posted by togdon at 7:33 AM on May 9, 2005
posted by togdon at 7:33 AM on May 9, 2005
You get a, and the ability to do b and c easily, for free with Gmail; do you actually need a full blown ticketer?
posted by flabdablet at 8:05 AM on May 9, 2005
posted by flabdablet at 8:05 AM on May 9, 2005
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by cmonkey at 8:10 PM on May 8, 2005