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Author Topic: Common group e-mail reply address  (Read 5338 times)

bill

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Common group e-mail reply address
« on: July 01, 2016, 08:30:19 AM »
I was asked to make an e-mail address on a new domain, like:  info@example.com

This e-mail address would forward to a bunch of customer service agents. However, none of these customer service agents are members of this domain. They want the ability to reply FROM info@example.com to the customers. (The customer would only see info@example.com when receiving replies from the agents.)

I can't add this address to the domain that the customer service agents use. (Long story)

My first idea was to put the domain on Google Apps. They have a new thing called Collaborative Inbox. It's a fancy Google Groups interface that looked like it would work... but to work correctly these customer service agents would need to be members of this Google Apps account. The company didn't want to pay for multiple Google Apps accounts for this purpose, so I'm looking for another solution.

Any relatively cheap solutions you could suggest?

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Rupert

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Re: Common group e-mail reply address
« Reply #1 on: July 01, 2016, 09:04:48 AM »
Bill, I will chip in here, not because I have a full answer, but it will prod someone else to give more info :)

Have you tried any of the crm softwares available? I would have thought one of them would be able to do this, but having played with a couple for a while, I never implimented, as it did not really help. 
but somthing like Zoho or Kayako?  or even Relenta?

They might well be too expensive.
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JasonD

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Re: Common group e-mail reply address
« Reply #2 on: July 01, 2016, 09:12:51 AM »
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ergophobe

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Re: Common group e-mail reply address
« Reply #3 on: July 01, 2016, 05:24:32 PM »
Streak is made for this (well, more sales actually, but we use it for customer service and managing reservations for our little vacation rental), but it costs more than Google Apps. http://streak.com

You can also do this with free Gmail accounts. The main thing is being certain you get the SPF records set up correctly or your mail won't get through. I have some notes on the settings for Google servers.
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Rooftop

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Re: Common group e-mail reply address
« Reply #4 on: July 02, 2016, 12:57:32 PM »
We use streak but found that teamwork.Com desk was better for collaborative inbox.  Very generous free level too.
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ergophobe

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Re: Common group e-mail reply address
« Reply #5 on: July 04, 2016, 08:42:05 AM »
>>teamwork.Com desk

Nice find. I have never heard of it (or I think I may have heard of it in the context of comparative reviews with Asana and Basecamp for Teamwork Project, but never went to their website).
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bill

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Re: Common group e-mail reply address
« Reply #6 on: July 05, 2016, 02:25:54 AM »
Quote from: Rupert on July 01, 2016, 09:04:48 AM
but somthing like Zoho or Kayako?  or even Relenta?
Zoho might be the cheapest out out that collection. They still let you setup free accounts ala Google Apps.

Quote from: JasonD on July 01, 2016, 09:12:51 AM
http://www.softpanorama.org/Mail/pipes_in_dot_forward_file.shtml
Need to ask the mail server geeks about this option. However, not dealing with the mail server overlords was one reason for looking at a 3rd party option...

Quote from: ergophobe on July 01, 2016, 05:24:32 PM
Streak is made for this (well, more sales actually, but we use it for customer service and managing reservations for our little vacation rental), but it costs more than Google Apps. http://streak.com
How much could I do with the free Streak account? I'm just sharing one e-mail address among 5 or so people to begin with, although that number will increase.

Quote from: ergophobe on July 01, 2016, 05:24:32 PM
You can also do this with free Gmail accounts. The main thing is being certain you get the SPF records set up correctly or your mail won't get through. I have some notes on the settings for Google servers.
I know how to do the SPF and DKIM for the Google Apps settings. I think this also applies to mail sent from Gmail accounts as well.
Code: [Select]
v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ~allThat refers to the Google master SPF record, which I believe covers Gmail(?). Even though it's a soft-fail, it comes through valid and works. Are there other DNS setting tricks I'm missing?

Recently Gmail made it tougher to send mail as a different address. I guess there is a lot of abuse. I'll have to look more closely at this as it would be the easiest (as they have Japanese language settings.)

Quote from: Rooftop on July 02, 2016, 12:57:32 PM
We use streak but found that teamwork.Com desk was better for collaborative inbox.  Very generous free level too.
Ooh. Teamwork Desk looks really good too. that lower end pricing of $0.10 per ticket could work. May need to run the trial of that to check.
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ergophobe

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Re: Common group e-mail reply address
« Reply #7 on: July 06, 2016, 02:46:36 AM »
Yeah, I just meant SPF and DKIM and yes, that looks right. You can only do so many DNS lookups in an SPF record, so you have to use the Google alias like you're doing. Simple as that.

>>Recently Gmail made it tougher to send mail as a different address.

Ah. that's news to me. So I guess I'm behind the times.

>>How much could I do with the free Streak account?

So we use it with a shared email account, so we don't have the issue of sharing "boxes"** across accounts. In that use case, we really haven't run up against any limitations with the free account. If you are sharing boxes it could get pricey fast.

**a box is basically a customer record. So when we get an initial inquiry, that inquiry gets a "box" which we put in a Prospects "pipeline" which includes several "stages" and "box" gets moved from stage to stage as the customer moves down the pipeline.

So you only get 50 shared boxes (I think) on the free account. If you have only a small number of customers at once, you could possibly make that work, but I would think you would need unlimited, which then brings you into the paid account. For us the paid account is still fine because we need so few seats, but if you have a lot agents all with their own account and you need a seat for each one, it's going to start to cost.
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Rooftop

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Re: Common group e-mail reply address
« Reply #8 on: July 06, 2016, 07:32:34 AM »
Re Teamwork

The company are great.  We've used their projects package for years now and so many of our feedback items are now in the product. They're the complete opposite of basecamp to deal with.  We now use teamwork projects, chat and desk.

Desk works well for us.  It could do with some documentation, but support usually respond in under 5 minutes.   The "per ticket" pricing is only for those that you answer.  We assumed that we would need to pay, but by the time we clear out spam and tickets that just get created as tasks it turns out that we don't pay.
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bill

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Re: Common group e-mail reply address
« Reply #9 on: July 08, 2016, 02:50:59 AM »
I was told the Japanese language support is going to be a primary deciding factor for this. That's going to eliminate the Teamwork and Streak I think. Too bad. I liked the functionality of those.

Right now I'm checking out Zoho. Who knew that they picked up the free Google Apps gauntlet and ran with it? You can use the free account, attach your MX Records to it, and run with 25 free accounts. It's only 5GB storage, but you can add up to 50 free clients with referrals. Not bad. Their Groups functionality appears to be able to do what google Apps was going to charge me for...at least from the help docs I read. Now to give it a proper test...
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