Multiple cust service people answering emails, how?

which crm?

[cgchris99]

Ok, my business is growing to the point that we need more than 1 person answering incoming email messages.

I have looked at sugarcrm for this but it's too much overhead for what I need.
I need to have multiple people be able to answer emails coming in to accounts like [e-mail]

I also need a record of messages sent in case another customer service person checks the messages.

Any thoughts? Of course there's not a lot of budget for this project.

thanks for any advice on software, prefer open source?

[shri]

At the very minimum you can use an IMAP based email account and save the replied on the server.

Next step would be to use a support ticket system.

[grandmf]

Easiest way to do this is to set up outlook express or what ever mail client you use to keep the mail on the server for a couple of days. This way more than one person can grab the mail from your [e-mail] address and still keep it POP3 and not IMAP. And the peice of mail gets deleted off the mail server after a couple of days. Then when one person responds to an email, they CC [e-mail] with the response. So everyone will know that that peice of mail has been answered. Its what we do here and it works for the most part. Every once in a while we send a person 2 emails from 2 different people, but its an acceptable cost for the easy solution.

[cgchris99]

I'm looking into support ticket software. It seems more professional and you get a threaded list of reponses sent to the client.

Any recommendations on support ticket software.

[powerchuter]

I am very happy with kayako, we have set it up so that our onsite & offsite staff can easily handle a large volume of requests.

Their customer service leaves a bit to be desired but I pay $29 month for a hosted solution that works great for us.

[shazer7]

if you are using Cpanel there a few Helpdesk you can install for free like.

OneOrZeroHelpDesk

SupportLogic

SupportServicesManager

osTicket

phpSupportTickets

You could try those tell you find Helpdesk script you would like to invest into.

[mattb]

Request Tracker works great for us. The software is open source but you will need a Linux server to run it on.

[derekwong28]

At the moment, we are redirecting all e-mails to a paid 2GB hotmail account. This account can be accessed by all parties on outlook express. Once an e-mail has been answered, it is moved to a filing folder.

[curlykarl]

mattb,

can you sticky me the url for the request tracker you use, just had a quick look and there seems to be a few different versions.

Thanks, Karl