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 The recent Who’s the Boss post addressed some outdated ways to gain the upper hand, and suggests alternatives to the same-old same-old approach.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.

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.

1. Open Firefox 3.x.
2. Log into your Email Center Pro account.
3. Paste the following code snippet into the address bar (NOTE: you should replace “paloalto.emailcenterpro.com” with your actual Email Center Pro account domain name. Also, if you have SSL enabled, the protocol should be https instead of simply http): javascript:window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler("mailto","http://paloalto.emailcenterpro.com/Client#%s","Email Center Pro") and hit Enter.
4. Click the “Add Application” button on the info bar that shows up just above the browser viewport to allow Email Center Pro to handle the mailto links.
5. The next time you click on a mailto link in the browser, it will prompt you to make a choice.  Select Email Center Pro and choose “Remember my choice for mailto links” if you would like to skip this step next time.  These settings can be updated at any time by viewing Tools > Options > Applications and searching for the Content Type of “mailto”.

That’s it!  If you’ve made it this far, you’ll now be able to spawn a new ECP message by clicking on the mailto link in your browser.  Another thing to note is that the ECP message will open in the same window, so it may be useful to right-click on the mailto link and choose “Open link in new tab”.  Go ahead and send us a message and let us know how it worked!

Alex Boone
ECP Developer

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.

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?

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.

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

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…

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.

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.