Customer Service Systems

[SillyJokes]

Here's the problem. We are grown so big we can't handle the customer service with just one person any more. We need to divide up the email queries between two or three people.

What I want is a central email pot from which each person can take a query and deal with it to conclusion.

Is there software available for this? I have been searching but am obviously not asking the right question so I'm turning to your infinite wisdom to at least help me ask the question in a way I can get an answer.

We don't get a huge amount of queries and do not necessarily need an online help desk type of question answerer. We already do this in a small way which works very well for most questions. I want to manage those emails that come through and must be handled individually.

[gary]

I think a support ticket system is probably the sort of thing you need. Customers can fill in an online form or email you direct and they are allocated a reference number automatically. One of your customer service people picks up the email and effectively allocates it to themself so that any of the other staff can see they are dealing with it. All actions are logged so the person dealing with the problem can see exactly what has been said previously.

Have a look at http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP/Scripts_and_Programs/Customer_Support/Help_Desk/index.html for some ideas using PHP. There are some that are online online and others that use your existing email system as well.

Gary

[vigo]

Some sort of ticketing system, where you can track queries and responses easily, like Kayako e-Supoort would be helpful. This is a full web-based help desk so could be a bit over-powerd for simply running a "streamed" service desk. Unfortunately it's not free (you'd probably need the $199/year option), but it's a great bit of software.

There's also PerlDesk ($70 / 6 months) and InverseFlow ($265 for life, with 18 months updates), but I haven't used either so can't comment.

Nath

Edit: Dang! Gary beat me to it. That'll teach me to go make a cup o' tea in the middle of posting!

[kyber]

A help desk type solution would work well although you would only need to use the system for the most basic of operations.

Take a look at the open source (i.e. free) eventum (http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/other/eventum/features.html)offering which is used to manage the support of MySQL. This would allow you to link in your email and other customer service systems in the future.

Stuart

[SillyJokes]

Thanks everyone for your extremely useful info. It's given us plenty to look at.