by cvoinescu » Thu Mar 07, 2013 10:00 pm
Thank you for the suggestions.
I have no problem sorting mail into folders by type of task myself. The volume is relatively low. Where I have trouble is, days or weeks later, gathering all emails that relate to one or several orders placed by the same customer, and quickly scanning them to see what needs to be done. It sort of works if people always email me from the same address, but it breaks down when they use work, home, gmail, forum PM... I almost want to have one folder for each customer, with all their emails there, and I want to be able to add my own notes, and their orders should be there too. So, instead of breaking them down by request type, I'd rather break them down by customer in the first instance. Still, structured emails help with this, if the search function is good enough.
The store software isn't terribly helpful either: it takes a good few clicks to locate an order, and there's no good way to see all the orders placed by the same person (it's there, but not easily accessible were you'd expect it). The store supports no queries besides the limited views it already has. For instance, it's impossible to ask "who ordered a stepper shield?", let alone "who ordered a stepper shield? Let's send them an email".
In addition, I would like all the emails, or "tasks", or "tickets", or "bugs", or whatever, as well as the follow-up conversation and notes, to be accessible to both Harry and I, although clearly assigned to one of us at a given time.
Finally, it would be great to be able to easily manage lists of customers who need to be notified about particular events. Or, more generally, to be able tag requests, orders and/or customers with tags that are related to expected events, so that when the event occurs, I know what I have to do. For instance, when I get the 18MXL 0.25" bore pulleys from the supplier, I want to email the half dozen people who asked about them specifically, and the ones who asked about NEMA23 upgrade kits, and send invoices to the three people who wanted to add those kits to their orders but couldn't because the weren't in stock yet. This could be as simple as creating a "When pulleys arrive" issue, and adding stuff to it as I get requests for them; but it could also be that I could tag an open issue "on pulley arrival" and then I could conveniently display all open issues with that tag.
I spent some time researching, and it seems that bug tracking software, or a ticket/issue tracking system, would most closely fit the bill. That, with a well-designed search function, a minimum of discipline, and some hooks into the ticket system from the store software, would fit the bill almost perfectly.