Usage scenarios

MailManager is useful whenever there is a team dealing with e-mail, particularly when there is a large volume of incoming mail or if it is important that mail has to be dealt with quickly.

• Help Desks
• Customer Service
• Public Sector
• Sales Teams

"MailManager is EXACTLY what we were looking for and has really solved our problem of managing e-mail from thousands of users and sharing the workload among our small, distributed staff."
- J. Bencken, ApartmentRatings.com

Help Desk Software

The most common use of MailManager is as helpdesk software, often by Internet Service Providers or IT Departments who are dealing with issues raised by their users.

Benefits for Help Desks

• Lower cost per inquiry
• Better quality responses
• Management reporting

Deployment

MailManager can either be configured to deal with e-mail going to an address such as support@example.com or to ensure that the full information on an issue is provided a web form can be used. A simple script can then be used to make sure that the form has been fully completed and then to mail the contents into MailManager.

Request Tracker or Ticketing System

All incoming requests are assigned a ticket number and an automatic reply can be generated to let the customer know the ticket number that their issue has been allocated. This is why this type of software is sometimes called a Request Tracker or a Ticketing System.

ITIL

The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is the most widely accepted approach to IT service management in the world. MailManager is ideal for running a help desk according to the ITIL guidance. More details on ITIL are at http://www.itil.co.uk/.

Customer Service Software

Improving E-mail Customer Service

88% of consumers surveyed by Jupiter Research expected a response to e-mail inquiries within 24 hours, however only 54% of companies meet that expectation. Some surveys have shown that e-mail customer service is worse now than it was in 2001.

MailManager allows you to set targets for responding to customer service e-mail and will then help your team to meet these targets by providing tools to deal with e-mail quickly and by providing reports to show where the problems are.

Reducing E-mail Customer Service Costs

E-mail management software such as MailManager will typically reduce the cost per contact from $5.82 to $3.95 at 10,000 contacts per month (Jupiter E-mail Automation Cost Forecast, 2003).

Public Sector

This article is mainly about the UK government and public sector however most other countries have similiar regulations and frameworks.

Accessibility

The Cabinet Office guidelines are that all government web systems should be accessible to users with disabilities or who are using non-standard equipment. The requirement is to be rated A under the Web Accessibility Initiative guidelines. MailManager 2.1 exceeds this standard and is rated Double A.

The US Government has law that applies to all Federal agencies requiring them to make their technology accessible to people with disabilities. More details are at http://www.section508.gov. MailManager 2.1 complies with Section 508.

e-GIF

It is mandatory that all new government systems involving communication between UK Government and citizens, business and other oraganisations comply with the e-Government Interoperability Framework (e-GIF) specifications and policies.

MailManager uses the e-Government Metadata Framework so that all of the e-mail in the system can be accessed by other systems. For example, an Enterprise Search Application would be able to search through e-mail using the same metadata as applies to all of the other compliant systems.

Freedom of Information Act (FOI)

The Freedom of Information Act (FOI) and the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) both allow Requests for Information (RFI) to be made through e-mail. MailManager is useful for dealing with these RFIs.

Additionally, when responding to RFIs the MailManager system can be useful for retrieving e-mail relating to a particular subject.

Evaluation

The National Computer Centre has a test lab which will evaluate Open Source software applications such as MailManager to assess their suitability for service delivery. The assessment service is free for UK Local Authorities and can be used by other parts of the public sector too. More details are available from the NCC.

E-mail for Sales Teams

If you have a sales team dealing with inbound e-mail going to an address such as sales@example.com or perhaps dealing with inquiries coming from a web form then MailManager will make sure that every inquiry is dealt with promptly.

A recent Benchmark survey showed that 26% of retailers failed to respond to e-mail inquiries from customers and 47% failed to respond within 24 hours. Of the companies surveyed 40% were web only businesses.

MailManager will allow you to see how well your sales team is doing, identify any problem areas and provides tools to help the team deal with inquiries more efficiently.

"MailManager has simplified management of our sales and support e-mail. We now spend less time fiddling with the technology and are able to respond more quickly to our clients. Searching and classifying our old e-mail is now effortless."
- Zettai.net