John Lem's dashboard

I think the main point is that our system will slow down the amount of email you receive in the first place, especially if you prioritize it over email for your customers (a great example is http://timbuk2.com, it's right on the home page). If you're torn between the sets of benefits you might think about using both systems for now. Systems that try and make communication binary (open closed for example) tend to cause just as many problems that they solve, and definitely take away from the rich open discussions that we try to foster on Get Satisfaction. We'll be pushing a new 'Status' feature for our topic pages in the near future. Companies will be able to state the status of questions (ex. 'working on finding the answer', 'answered') problems (ex. 'solved', 'not going to fix', 'working on solving') and ideas. They'll also be able to fill in their own status states, and we're mulling over how to give customers some say in the status as well. This solves a slightly more complex problem then the straight forward "has then been replied to" issue. What are the other systems you're looking at? Is part of your problem that someone is opening the email and then forwarding it? It seems like a simple solution is to just not open emails until they can be replied to, or staring emails that needs a reply. I'm not sure how your email is set up, but there are a number of hacks for the reply issue.

Right now we have one support email address that several of us receive (there's no strict customer service team yet as we're still in beta as well). The current process is basically that there isn't a process, right now we just yell across the room at eachother to check and make sure everyone has been replied to and nobody is responded to twice. I've come across several other sites that offer systems similar to what I asked about originally, but they're mostly simple email systems that don't offer the benefits your system offers. Ideally we're looking for a system that offers both the public question and answer system you've created with the check and balance email system I described, so i'm looking forward to seeing what new features you end up pushing.

This is definitely something I've been thinking about for a while. Sites like I Want Sandy are great examples of email-based apps.

First off it's important to realize that Get Satisfaction works when you treat email as the last resort. Using Get Satisfaction as the public and primary channel of communication works...we know, we've done it. ;)

So, theoretically with our new, soon to be out, API you could route emails into our system. The challenge with this is two fold. First there is not a private system in Get Satisfaction...yet. We will be adding features that let companies and customers exchange some private info (such as transaction details, phone numbers etc.), but we don't want to compromise the value of GS and fall behind the curtain. If any of the emails are not part of a private system this brings up the second issue. Nobody sending an email expects it to then become a public issue.

Ok, so all of that said, there are a couple of great reasons to bring emails, or meta information about emails, into the Get Satisfaction system. You mention one, which is trying to create a system that tracks what emails have been responded to. I'm going to talk more about that in a moment. The other case is going to bloom once we've got our analytics and other company tools up and running (like Cam mentions above). These tools will let you map out the patterns of your customer's needs and behaviors over time. It's going to provide uber amounts of value for companies and customers. At that point you're really going to want to pull in as many of your customer contact points into our system as possible. So we'll definitely get more requests for email importing/routing at that time. It's definitely a problem we'll work to solving.

Being able to track what emails have been responded is actually a couple of different problems wrapped in one. I'm curious if you can tell me more about what issues you're trying to solve. Do all of your emails current get an auto reply? How many people are working on your customer service team, is the issue that it's hard to tell if the right person has been routed the correct email. Is the issue more about the customer's satisfaction with the reply (did it solve the problem for them?)?

Thanks for the great question!

-L

Currently you can't, but that's an interesting feature request that I don't think we've gotten yet. We are really trying to stay away from creating a "ticket" system, but at the same time, we understand the importance of being able to track activity and make sure that your customers haven't accidentally fallen through the cracks.

Our next major development push is around creating more value through tools that allow companies to better get their support work accomplished inside Get Satisfaction. We're all ears towards requests for features, so if you've got ideas, keep speaking up!