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Email… just say no

By Peter Fearey | Posted on June 26th, 2006

Full title… "Just say no to email that contains information that you then have to parse into relevant bits and manage and assign and track… all via a medium (email) not made for parsing, managing, assigning and tracking." Now, there’s a catchy title!

We often get asked, "Can QuickBase accept incoming emails?" The answer is "Yes and no, and what are you trying to do?" For example, one of our customers was looking to have emails that came to investor_relations@example.com go directly into QuickBase. We asked where the email address was used, and they said on their Website. We suggested that instead of an email address on their website, they build a simple form and have that post directly to QuickBase.

What are the advantages to this approach?

You can control what information people add via the forms versus free-formed email.
The information is automatically parsed into the appropriate fields, like what type of inquiry it is, urgency, where it came from, date and time entered, etc. No one has to manually enter or track this.
Based on what you want, you could easily auto-assign inquiries based on the information provided, which means faster response.
You’ll have one place to track the information and manage the workflow around these inquiries versus the emails being spread out across several people’s email boxes.
NO MORE SPAM! These public email addresses always get picked up by the spammers, and generate even more work for you. No more email address = no more spam.

You can put this form on your Website very quickly and easily. If you don’t want to learn the API calls yourself, we even have a form wizard to help you. You can read about it here: https://www.quickbase.com/db/6mztyxu8?a=dr&r=4

I know of many clients and internal Intuit folks that have converted to Website forms versus an email address on a Website and the results have been a terrific increase in productivity and responsiveness based on the above advantages. Have you done this yourself? If so, tell us about it, so we can learn from you.

And, this won’t work in all situations. Some folks need QuickBase to accept incoming emails from customers or prospects, when they are in an on-going exchange, like in a sales or support situation. We are looking at options for this. If you have any suggestions on how you’ve seen this work with other products, or want to make sure we know the specifics of your situation, please share them. We are always happy to hear from you, so we can get to the right solution for the largest number of folks!

Thanks!

About Peter Fearey

Anonymous

This has been a great time saver for our company. We use it for so many things:
1. Support requests – We manage all the internal and external websites for our company. Request were done all by email and no one could monitor who requested what and status. Quickbase now provides the requester (after they complete the online form) with an auto email of the request ticket number and each time status changes they get an email alert.

2. Project Request – Requests for a project number use an online form, which feeds our project database, we assign it a number, and provide the requestor access to update the profile and status reports monthly

3. In a past life I used it on radio station websites to track song requests, contests, contact us pages, and other things.

This feature increases customer satisfaction and makes tracking current and historical info very easy.

[Reply]
Anonymous

This has been a great time saver for our company. We use it for so many things:
1. Support requests – We manage all the internal and external websites for our company. Request were done all by email and no one could monitor who requested what and status. Quickbase now provides the requester (after they complete the online form) with an auto email of the request ticket number and each time status changes they get an email alert.

2. Project Request – Requests for a project number use an online form, which feeds our project database, we assign it a number, and provide the requestor access to update the profile and status reports monthly

3. In a past life I used it on radio station websites to track song requests, contests, contact us pages, and other things.

This feature increases customer satisfaction and makes tracking current and historical info very easy.

[Reply]
Anonymous

I couldn’t agree more, Jana. I have a client that wishes to create “Services Quote” form that will be available on the Internet. A prospective customer picks all the services they want, the number of hours they want to budget for each task, and etc. They complete this form and hit save. Boom! An email goes to the interested party (and my client) with a quote based on predetermined rates (stored as custom variables ). The whole painful RFP process has been greatly simplified. My client knows their rates are competitive, so eliminating this kind of overhead, helps keeps it that way.

[Reply]
Anonymous

I couldn’t agree more, Jana. I have a client that wishes to create “Services Quote” form that will be available on the Internet. A prospective customer picks all the services they want, the number of hours they want to budget for each task, and etc. They complete this form and hit save. Boom! An email goes to the interested party (and my client) with a quote based on predetermined rates (stored as custom variables ). The whole painful RFP process has been greatly simplified. My client knows their rates are competitive, so eliminating this kind of overhead, helps keeps it that way.

[Reply]
http://www.quickbase.com/ Jana

Thanks for sharing your ideas and experience!!! The point about keeping overhead low is a great one. I hadn’t been explicit about tracking it back that way, but what a better way of saying it. And the examples of exactly what to track (support, projects, contests, quotes, etc.) are all great.

[Reply]
http://www.quickbase.com Jana

Thanks for sharing your ideas and experience!!! The point about keeping overhead low is a great one. I hadn’t been explicit about tracking it back that way, but what a better way of saying it. And the examples of exactly what to track (support, projects, contests, quotes, etc.) are all great.

[Reply]
http://www.patracorp.com/ John Simpson

Hi,

We currently use a tracking software called Magnoware that allows for incoming emails to create a record. Who the email is from goes into a field called Requestor, the Subject goes into a field called Summary, the body of the email goes into a field called Description (text box). Any attachements are attached to the record as attachments.

It works quite well, but your product looks like it is a lot more custamizable then their product. We would like to switch to your product for all our tracking (assuming all the rules can be handled), but this feature is a must have for us, as requests come in through emails that come from all different sources (even faxes that are turned into emails by a fax server).

Finally it would be important to be able to read multiple pop accounts and assign rules (i.e. which database to put the record in for example different customers trackings) based on the pop account from which the email came.

I would be happy to discuss this with someone if you would like to call my cell at 650-906-2266.

John Simpson

[Reply]
http://www.patracorp.com John Simpson

Hi,

We currently use a tracking software called Magnoware that allows for incoming emails to create a record. Who the email is from goes into a field called Requestor, the Subject goes into a field called Summary, the body of the email goes into a field called Description (text box). Any attachements are attached to the record as attachments.

It works quite well, but your product looks like it is a lot more custamizable then their product. We would like to switch to your product for all our tracking (assuming all the rules can be handled), but this feature is a must have for us, as requests come in through emails that come from all different sources (even faxes that are turned into emails by a fax server).

Finally it would be important to be able to read multiple pop accounts and assign rules (i.e. which database to put the record in for example different customers trackings) based on the pop account from which the email came.

I would be happy to discuss this with someone if you would like to call my cell at 650-906-2266.

John Simpson

[Reply]

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