Email Center Pro

Feeling chatty? Or maybe you’re ready to set out on a full email marketing campaign? Email Center Pro can keep you in the loop every step of the way, with integration of enterprise-level software right from within your Email Center Pro Dashboard.

Email Marketing Campaigns
Our partners at VerticalResponse help you grow your business with targeted email marketing campaigns. With a single click, you can now automatically create lists for your email marketing campaigns from any group of Email Center Pro Contacts. Then, track your lists and campaigns in a dedicated VerticalResponse Dashboard widget.

Live Chatting
With the growth of online interaction, more and more customers expect live online chat capabilities as part of the customer experience. In addition to real-time tracking of email conversations, users with a Velaro chat account can now see live online chat details in the new Velaro Dashboard widget. Log in and view chat transcripts, send customers a record of the chat from your Email Center Pro address for future reference, or even look up other email conversations with that customer, all with a single click!

Dazzle them with your speed!
Paid accounts can now add a Response Time Badge to their websites, announcing to the world how fast your customer response time is for any mailbox in your account. Whether you want to intimidate the competition or just applaud your customer service team, the Response Time Badge shows that you understand the value of your customers’ time.

Tags: ecp update
Posted on June 12th, 2009 | No Comments »

Here at Palo Alto Software, we were frustrated with customer emails that didn’t contain all the information we needed. We’d have to reply back with a request for more information, and wait for a response, all of which delayed our ability to help our customers as quickly and well as we could.

Our solution was an online form which prompts customers for each bit of information we need in order to solve their problem or meet their needs on THEIR timeframe – ASAP. Of course, as a software company, we have a full-time staff of Web-savvy programmers, but now this sort of innovation is available even for very small businesses.

This week, Email Center Pro has released an update which includes a new Dashboard widget for tracking results of your online forms from FormSpring. FormSpring allows businesses and organizations an easy way to build any type of online form, integrate it with their website and begin collecting data in digital format.

To see the new widget:

1. Open your Email Center Pro Dashboard
2. Click Add More Widgets at the top left of the screen
3. Scroll through the list and find the FormSpring widget
4. Click Add This Widget

If you already have a FormSpring account, just enter your API key to log in and see your responses. If you don’t have an account yet, you can sign up right in the widget. Isn’t it nice to get your customer interactions in their best form ever?

Tags: collaborative email, ecp update, Email Center Pro
Posted on April 21st, 2009 | 1 Comment »

To give your customers the best experience, you need to manage your email campaigns from building the list, to tracking clicks, to following up with one-on-one interactions with prospects and customers.

Palo Alto Software is pleased to announce that we are now one step closer to closing that email loop, with the integration of a new widget which lets Email Center Pro users access key data from their VerticalResponse email campaigns, right in the Email Center Pro Dashboard.

To see the new widget:

1. Open your Email Center Pro Dashboard
2. Click Add More Widgets at the top left of the screen
3. Scroll through the list and find the VerticalResponse widget
4. Click Add This Widget 

Once added, you will need to log in with your VerticalResponse email address to see summaries of your mailing lists and campaigns.

If you don’t yet have a VerticalResponse account, you can sign up directly from the widget, and get 250 free email credits and 50 free survey credits.

You can learn more about VerticalResponse and how they can help you manage your email campaigns at the VerticalResponse website.

Tags: ecp update
Posted on April 13th, 2009 | No Comments »

You can click on the column headers in any message listing to sort conversations by subject or date.

1. Open any mailbox or Saved Search
2. Click the Subject or Date column
3. You can click again to reverse the sort order
4. Scroll through the list to find a specific message
5. Click the message to open that conversation

Tags: ecp update
Posted on March 31st, 2009 | No Comments »

The things that are nice about the growth of Email Center Pro are somewhat obvious:

• More users
• A tad more recognition
• The chance to impact more businesses

The challenges in the face of all that positivity are things like performance optimization and growth management. And the sign of a product or service that’s coming of age is the opportunity to tackle these challenges and emerge from them stronger for it.

Email Center Pro began its first genuine stint of product maturation a few weeks ago when our capacity to serve butted up against the demands of our users.

Quite frankly, it was terrific. The situation allowed us to learn a couple of things:

• We operate very effectively under a bit of duress
• It’s nice to be a SaaS — Internet-hosted — product, as it allows for big buckets of agility
• Focusing on optimization does wonders for Email Center Pro

Email Center Pro undergoes regular performance tuning, but never before had we drilled down on optimization with such laser-like precision. And it’s the users who win as now the service is faster and more responsive then ever before.

Oh, and the last thing we learned is that Email Center Pro has a rocking, passionate team driving it. And that’s a reason to use it, if nothing else convinces you.

Jason Gallic
Product Marketing Manager

Tags: Email, Email Center Pro, emailcenterpro, optimization, performance
Posted on March 17th, 2009 | No Comments »

Jake Weatherly, Vice President of Customer Experience

Jake Weatherly, our Vice President of Customer Experience, has asked his team to share some of their experiences using Email Center Pro to improve customer service at Palo Alto Software. Here’s what they had to say:

Casi Deatherage: It’s about customer service

On a daily basis, Email Center Pro plays a huge role in boosting my level of customer service expertise. Our first duty is to answer each customer professionally and ensure they have a pleasant experience with our company. Read more…

Shawnie Gartman: Accountability and transparency built in

Email Center Pro certainly makes my job a lot easier. I arrive an hour before any of my coworkers. Because I am first in the office, I am the first to jump into ECP. My job is to equally distribute the incoming mail to my fellow team members. ECP makes this a seamless task. Read more…

Desiree Norton: Teamwork with a click of the mouse

The collaboration tools in Email Center Pro are what I appreciate and use the most. My team and I are in Email Center Pro every day answering inbound messages. We are able to easily collaborate with the features of Email Center Pro. Read more…

Steve Weersing: If only we’d had this before!

While Email Center Pro cannot solve all of the institutional challenges in such a textbook case of a company mired in its own indecision and lack of direction, it can help greatly to reduce many of the incremental delays that can accumulate at each step in the cycle of communication. This in itself can make a critical difference in nailing down pending deals that are “on the fence.” Read more…

Jay Snider: So easy to get started

The best thing about learning to use Email Center Pro was how easy it was. Not only was the training time really just a matter of minutes, but once up to speed in ECP, it made training for my job much easier. Our extensive collection of templates allowed me to start responding to customers much more quickly than I might have otherwise. With common questions coming in all the time, quick keyword searches of the templates allowed me to respond with confidence. And when I was ready to start answering the phones as well, I could handle those same questions because I was familiar with the answers from having used the templates. Read more…

Tags: collaborative email, ECP Power Users, ecp update, Email Center Pro
Posted on March 12th, 2009 | 1 Comment »

I’m living a frequently-interrupted, very distracted life, in which ideas and todo items come up and, unless I catch them, get lost, and way too quickly.

I’m enjoying my Email Center Pro solution, which gives me some email addresses I can use to load my lists and brainstorm ideas from whatever email address is most convenient. That includes my iPhone’s email, so I can get to it from almost wherever I am.

You can see that best from this screen shot:

So, for example,

• when it occurred to me — I was waiting for an appointment — that this would be a good blog post, I emailed it to my blog@sample.emailcenterpro.com address (and that’s a fake address, doh).
• And when I remembered, at lunch, that I need to get an appointment for getting the car fixed, I emailed a list to my email at todo@sample.emailcenterpro.com.
• And when I’m working at the computer, take a call, and need to remind myself to call somebody else, I send that one to the calls@ emailcenterpro address.

Each of these special emails is very easy to set up. I don’t have to ask our IT person for a new mailbox on the company server. I just do it in about one minute from the mailboxes tab of the account manager.

So when I want to refer back to these lists, they’re right there in the dashboard of my Email Center Pro email account.

Simple and easy.

– Tim

Tags: calls list, ECP Power Users, Email Center Pro, emailcenterpro, ideas list, tasks list, toto list
Posted on March 10th, 2009 | No Comments »

This post is about integrating Email Center Pro with your pre-existing administration system. You will learn how to create a URL that, when visited, creates a new email in Email Center Pro with a specific recipient, subject, template, and filled-in Input Fields.

I’ll warn you ahead of time, this post was written for programmers. If you’re an Email Center Pro end user, you probably don’t need to look at this. If you’ve never written a line of code in your life, you’re probably better off just skipping this article or handing it off to someone else.

If you’re the brave sort, keep reading.

(more…)

Tags: Email Center Pro, hosted software, shared email, technical, Tips and Tricks, web services
Posted on February 25th, 2009 | 1 Comment »

If you liked the idea of templates, but weren’t sure where to start, you’ll enjoy Email Center Pro’s newest feature pack, including a Template Gallery. New drag-and-drop functionality for tags and folders, and special fields to remind users to fill in important data before sending make Email Center Pro more user-friendly than ever.

1. Template Gallery: Templates save you time and create consistency in everything from order confirmations to FAQs. The new Template Gallery includes 10 templates you can use as a starting point for creating your own templates. To check them out, click the “Template Gallery” link on the Templates tab.
2. Template Input Fields: Using templates is a time saver, but you still want to personalize your customer correspondence. The template Input Fields are special codes you can add to a template that will prompt users to enter specific information every time they use that template to create an email. For example, prompt users to enter the customer name in the salutation, or order confirmation numbers.
3. Tag Editor: The updated tag editor lets you Rename and Delete tags. In the left-hand pane of any mailbox, click on the (Edit) button from your Tags list to open the dialog.
4. Drag and Drop: Click and drag a conversation to a tag in your Tags list and it’s automatically tagged. Click and drag a conversation and drop it into your Archive or Trash folders. Quick and easy.

We hope you enjoy using these features as much as we did creating them. You can find even more information in your help file.

Tags: ecp update, ECP Updates
Posted on February 24th, 2009 | No Comments »

The best thing about learning to use Email Center Pro was how easy it was. Not only was the training time really just a matter of minutes, but once up to speed in ECP, it made training for my job much easier. Our extensive collection of templates allowed me to start responding to customers much more quickly than I might have otherwise. With common questions coming in all the time, quick keyword searches of the templates allowed me to respond with confidence. And when I was ready to start answering the phones as well, I could handle those same questions because I was familiar with the answers from having used the templates.

When there was an email in our Sales Inbox that I didn’t know how to answer, I had several ways to learn the right responses. I could add a note to the email, asking a co-worker how it should be handled. Or I could check my coworkers’ responses through Saved Searches, Tags, or searching the Archive. Then I could follow the thread to see how the issue was resolved.

I continue to use the Saved Searches in this manner. For instance, sometimes emails come to the Customer Service Inbox that really should be routed to Technical Support. I could just assign those emails to a Tech Support person or move it to the Tech Support Inbox and know it will be taken care of. But often I follow it, to learn the correct answers. This way in the future, I can take care of similar emails myself. The end result is that we can respond to customers much faster.

Being able to quickly search for an email in ECP is invaluable. Customers frequently send an email and then call in right away, or follow up on an email conversation with a call a week or two later. Sometimes they even email several weeks after an initial email, and don’t provide enough information to assist them. By searching for other emails sent from that customer, we can see a whole history of communication with them, which allows us to provide the customer with a higher level of service than they expect.

Finally, I really like the way ECP automatically assigns emails once a conversation has been started. If I answer an email from a customer in the morning and they respond later in the day, that email is assigned to me. This lets the customer know that they are dealing with a real person who is following up on their needs, not an impersonal department where random people are responding to their emails. I like my customers to know that I’m here to help them and will continue to help them until their questions are answered.

Tags: collaborative email, ECP Power Users, Email Center Pro
Posted on February 1st, 2009 | No Comments »