Handling Volumes of Sales@ Email Inbox
Discussion
Hi all, long time lurker first time poster here......
Not sure if this should go in the business section or the computers - please feel free to move if appropriate. At work we have a sales mailbox that received around 250 messages per day split between orders and enquiries. At present, 4 people share this inbox and manually and randomly decide who deals with each email, but this is inefficient and leaves open the possibility of either duplicating or missing emails - and as email gets more popular the amount of traffic will obviously increase. Is there a more efficient way these emails could be 'shared out' between the mailboxes automatically so we minimise the chance of human error when dealing with them?
I am not a computer person, so may not have explained this as clearly as I could have done but any input on this would be gratefully received.
Thanks in advance......
Not sure if this should go in the business section or the computers - please feel free to move if appropriate. At work we have a sales mailbox that received around 250 messages per day split between orders and enquiries. At present, 4 people share this inbox and manually and randomly decide who deals with each email, but this is inefficient and leaves open the possibility of either duplicating or missing emails - and as email gets more popular the amount of traffic will obviously increase. Is there a more efficient way these emails could be 'shared out' between the mailboxes automatically so we minimise the chance of human error when dealing with them?
I am not a computer person, so may not have explained this as clearly as I could have done but any input on this would be gratefully received.
Thanks in advance......
Not something I have had to deal with - but it sounds like you are after something like Email management / Customer relationship management
I worked in a company where all e-mails to the sales/enquiries/complaints address are automatically printed by a dedicated printer, the paperwork is worked on during the day, and then marked with what we done in red pen. The completed paperwork goes in a "Order pile", "Enquiry pile" or "Complaints pile" to be reviewed by management.
Here's the instructions that resided above the printer:
What happens when the e-mail comes through?
It's printed off and distributed amongst staff to work on. Staff are to try to collect the mail as soon as it's printed.
How does the e-mail get to the person responsible for dealing with it?
Staff are to collect any mail that comes from the printer and work on it. Or is distributed by assistant manager in high volume situations.
How do you know if the e-mail has been dealt with?
The printed e-mail is marked with what has been done (USE RED PEN!), put in the correct pile and the e-mail is moved to the "completed" folder.
My boss has a fetish for paperwork
Here's the instructions that resided above the printer:
What happens when the e-mail comes through?
It's printed off and distributed amongst staff to work on. Staff are to try to collect the mail as soon as it's printed.
How does the e-mail get to the person responsible for dealing with it?
Staff are to collect any mail that comes from the printer and work on it. Or is distributed by assistant manager in high volume situations.
How do you know if the e-mail has been dealt with?
The printed e-mail is marked with what has been done (USE RED PEN!), put in the correct pile and the e-mail is moved to the "completed" folder.
My boss has a fetish for paperwork
Edited by MethylatedSpirit on Sunday 1st February 17:50
A simple solution would be to create a folder within the Inbox (or mail box if unable to create folders directly under Inbox).
You could call this folder Done / Complete (or whatever) and as people process the email, they simple move said email to this 'Done' folder.
This way, the same email will not be responded to / dealt with twice, and you have a record of what's been done.
If you have a Microsoft Exchange Server (or use Office 365) this is even better done with public folders.
You could call this folder Done / Complete (or whatever) and as people process the email, they simple move said email to this 'Done' folder.
This way, the same email will not be responded to / dealt with twice, and you have a record of what's been done.
If you have a Microsoft Exchange Server (or use Office 365) this is even better done with public folders.
You possibly want to look at some kind of ticketing system - if you replace the word "sales" with "support" you typically find that when you fire in an email it gets sucked into a ticketing system where it's assigned a reference, and the ticketing system takes care of tracking that it's accepted, dealt with, closed etc.
TonyRPH said:
A simple solution would be to create a folder within the Inbox (or mail box if unable to create folders directly under Inbox).
You could call this folder Done / Complete (or whatever) and as people process the email, they simple move said email to this 'Done' folder.
This way, the same email will not be responded to / dealt with twice, and you have a record of what's been done.
If you have a Microsoft Exchange Server (or use Office 365) this is even better done with public folders.
Yeap, I'd go with this approach. Maybe even just have folders that are peoples names. When an email comes in they take "ownership" by moving it out of the inbox into their own folder. Person at the end of the week that has dealt with the most requests gets a free Parker pen or alarm clock.You could call this folder Done / Complete (or whatever) and as people process the email, they simple move said email to this 'Done' folder.
This way, the same email will not be responded to / dealt with twice, and you have a record of what's been done.
If you have a Microsoft Exchange Server (or use Office 365) this is even better done with public folders.
If you all use Outlook and Exchange then another option is to use the flags/categories facility and assign each person a colour.
If you are getting 250 per day and business is growing it sounds like you need to start thinking about a proper CRM solution as email will get out of hand, even with some organisation. CRM needn't be the big investment it once was, Microsoft even do it as part of Office 365 now with their Dynamics line. Others to look out of (all offer cloud solutions so you don't need big capex for on prem up front) include Oracle RightNow (being rebranded) and Salesforce. I've got quite a lot of involved in the first two in my job.
If you are getting 250 per day and business is growing it sounds like you need to start thinking about a proper CRM solution as email will get out of hand, even with some organisation. CRM needn't be the big investment it once was, Microsoft even do it as part of Office 365 now with their Dynamics line. Others to look out of (all offer cloud solutions so you don't need big capex for on prem up front) include Oracle RightNow (being rebranded) and Salesforce. I've got quite a lot of involved in the first two in my job.
Ston said:
Person at the end of the week that has dealt with the most requests gets a free Parker pen or alarm clock.
Only do this if you want the quality of replies to go downhill. The staff will just game the system - picking the easy emails and leaving the hard ones and/or rushing replies.If you want to monitor the team's performance then average time to first reply and average time to resolution. This will also give a good indication when your team isn't coping with the volume of email. Then you can look at either making the process more efficient or hiring new people.
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