Among all the widgets available on your Email Center Pro dashboard, there’s one that’s very near and dear to my heart. It’s the ECP Updates widget, which will let you know every time I write another scintillating blog post. If you were looking at it right now, you’d be seeing this whole paragraph in the preview! It would look like this:

Since I haven’t actually been taking advantage of the connection between this blog and the ECP dashboard until now, I thought it might be a good time to link back to some recent posts you might have missed.

First, let’s talk about managing contacts. Most email programs have some version of contact management, but they don’t usually cross over to functions outside of email. Check out 3,2,1 Contact… How Do You Keep Track to find out how much more Email Center Pro has to offer.

Learning how to control your email is a common thread on this blog. The recent Who’s the Boss post addressed some outdated ways to gain the upper hand, and suggests alternatives to the same-old same-old approach.

Finally, we see the frequent articles and blog posts about the demise of email at the hands  social media and we just don’t agree. Don’t Believe the Hype offers a counter argument to the currently popular “email is dead” chorus.

Tags: ecp update, news
Posted on November 10th, 2009 | No Comments »

Have you noticed that your Email Center Pro account is running faster and more smoothly? Our developers have.

Meet Alex and Evan, two of the dedicated ECP programmers who used to get woken up at 2:00 in the morning with alerts that the servers were struggling to handle all of your mail. These days, they’re a lot more rested.

The most recent improvements to Email Center Pro are largely behind-the-scenes upgrades that help you serve your customers faster and more reliably.

More helpful Search results

One change you can actually see is in the Search function. We noticed that a lot of our users were using search for “names@domain”, rather than opening the Contacts tab to look specifically for people.

You’ll see that the Search box on the top right of your Email Center Pro screen now contains an arrow. Click the arrow next time you’re using the search, and use the drop-down menu to focus your search results on emails, contacts, templates, or tagged conversations.

Tags: collaborative email, ecp update, Email Center Pro, team, Tips and Tricks
Posted on August 21st, 2009 | 2 Comments »

From time to time, Email Center Pro users will ask us if it is possible to set Email Center Pro as the default handler for mailto links in the browser, so that clicking on the link prompts for a new message in Email Center Pro instead of a traditional desktop client such as Outlook.  Luckily, if you’re using Firefox 3, the answer is YES!  Follow the step by step guide below to configure your browser to use ECP to handle mailto links. (more…)

Tags: ecp update, integration, technical
Posted on July 7th, 2009 | 1 Comment »

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 | 1 Comment »

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 »

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 »

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 »

Administrators of Standard and Premium Email Center Pro accounts can now customize access to specific mailboxes. Now you can collaborate with your users with no worries about people reading or responding to sensitive conversations.

With a simple click, you can implement permissions to a mailbox:

1. Locate the Logged in as… area along the top
2. Click Account
3. Click the Mailboxes tab
4. Click to select a specific mailbox, then look at the Permissions section on the right
5. Click to check the box for users who should have access to the selected mailbox*
6. Click Save at the top of the Account Settings dialog

NOTE: You can also set permissions by user on the People tab.

Users who do not have access to a given mailbox will not see any information about that mailbox, and cannot be assigned a conversation residing within it. You can change user/mailbox permissions at any time.

*Names of Administrators will show in bold; Administrators have access to all mailboxes.

Tags: access, ecp update, permissions, security
Posted on January 19th, 2009 | 2 Comments »