Ellen Beldner

UPDATE: I have found where the nerds have discussed such things: StackOverflow which I <3.

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Which is why at work I'm taking on the (currently not-unmanageable) job of responding to customer support requests.

However, I'm finding that gmail (we use google apps) is not really a good interface for doing this quickly. I want to be able to do things like bulk respond to a set of emails with the same message... Gmail has the canned responses plugin, but that doesn't cut it -- it's too slow to use.

So I just hooked Thunderbird into our support queue, and now I'm trying to figure out how to configure or optimize it for processing customer support emails. I'd also love it if it automatically kept stats or some how output to a CSV file on the number of emails processed through canned responses.

Or maybe I just need some lightweight CRM software. Hmm... I wonder what the best CRM solutions are for a small business? and how much can I expect to pay? If only there were a website with some reviews and a listing of top providers that would give me a sense of what to expect... (Okay, this is a shameless plug, since that's what ChoiceVendor does.)

• Office Interactive: "All you need to run your business using one system". That scares me; I don't want to run my whole business on this. NEXT.
• BatchBook: "Your Social CRM". I don't really want my CRM to be social. I want it to be efficient. This seems to be about within-company contact management, not CRM (remember, that would be CUSTOMER relationship management).
• Relenta: "Can your email do this?" Again, seems more salesforce / lead tracking-focused.

Let's try investigating "Customer Support Software for small business".

• Business.com -- ooh, that looks promising, they have a result in Google for "Small Business CRM Software: Customer Service Solutions | Business.com" (and I'm not going to link to it because I don't want to make them even more credible for their stupid site). Oh right. Business.com is a crappy AdWords linkfarm.
• WorkEtc: Okay, again they want to manage my entire company. First, dont' want that, second, not authorized to make that decision, third, we're generally pretty happy with Google Apps. (Most of us worked at Google after all, and we're pretty used to their stuff.) However, maybe their Help Desk Software is what I want.

Why are there SO MANY crappy sites for small businesses, by the way?

Okay, now I'm back to Salesforce Service Cloud 2. I can't really see if it does what I need since I have to register to walk through their product demo. Annoying. I'm pretty sure I even have an account with them already, but I'm not going to bother to look it up just to see if they even remotely have what I need.

Open source help ticket system:

Kill me now. I don't want this attached to our bug tracking and I care about the interface and how fast it'll let me get through the emails in our queue. I don't want to have to install anything anywhere, either. Back to paid / hosted services....

Searching through the Thunderbird extensions for business, CRM, helpdesk, and related keywords yielded no results.

Okay, I'm hosed; I've now spent about 2 hours researching this and haven't come up with a satisfactory discussion or solution, so it's time for me to ditch the effort and just process the emails manually.

Le sigh.