CRM system ?

[Burgundy]

Hi all, we are 10 persons in my company, sharing in-boxes looked great at
start, but now we have confusion when one person replies to an incoming mail,
and another user in my office does the same thing, as both mail shows up as
unread in their respective mailbox. We use outlook 2007 and exchange server.
Any suggestions as how we can solve this easily ? Kind of embarrassing when a
client gets a reply from one person and 2 hours later, same reply from person
no 2.

BR Olof (Sweden)

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Sounds like you are not sharing a mailbox but sending a copy to each
person's personal mailbox. Create a separate mailbox in which you collect
the general email and then configure both users to connect to that mailbox.
Then changes will reflect immediately.

Additionally you could consider directly assigning a color category to the
item to see who is responding to the email.

 

[Burgundy]

Thanks, I haven't started using it the right way obviously. But is it
possiblöe to use Outlook or Outlook BCM as a simple incident and customer
response handling system, with automated tracking of e-mail going to group
address such as (e-mail address removed) ? SHould I try some other package such
as ACT, Maximuzer or similar mentioned in this forum ?

BR

Olof (Sweden)

 

[Roady [MVP]]

It would depend on your needs, the size of your team and the amount of
emails that you need to process. Of course a real CRM or incident management
system would be better but that doesn't mean you can't use Outlook as a low
budget replacement. Of course the flexibility and options wouldn't be there
as it was never designed to be used this way.

Instead of using a distribution list assigned with the address
(e-mail address removed), assign it to a mailbox instead. Then set permissions
on that mailbox so that the correct people can access it.
See http://www.howto-outlook.com/howto/permissions.htm

Using color categories, Follow Up Flags, Search Folders and custom views
should bring you quite far already.