Questions for developers: 100 subjects, 1 deal...

My question is for vendors: how do you deal with the situation, when your customer is writing you about the same task, but every 3..5 emails have another subject, so it goes to another thread? My practice shows that it's useless to ask them to write under the same subject. 99% doesn't hear that.

Some days I have up to 100+ emails coming from different customers, half of them split in different threads and coming from different email addresses from one customer, which makes finding previous threads a nightmare...

Perhaps try a ticket based system; there are several nice open source apps on this.

Thank you for reply.

In fact I have my own ticket system here just to register some data such as access credentials, technical requirements and status, but still need to track and remember all conversations. Even if to use some ticket system that will pack emails with the certain unique code inside to the same thread, it makes it also impossible, since they are writing not by using "reply" function, but "create new email" instead, which makes them marked as a "new customer", especially when writing from different email addresses.

We gonna have a custom ticket based support area too. It should help in managing clients ;)

Everything that will require to add customers manually is kind of useless.

When the same customer is writing you from different emails and with different subjects is just confusing.

Maybe some ticket system that will allow to hook multiple emails to the same thread, regardless of any "special" conversation identifiers inside?

We are working on a kind of integrated solution here so it shouldn't be an issue if we just give them an interface to ask for support instead of using [direct] email communication. Everything should be in one place, clean and simple.

That's my recommendation.

I try to request that my customers communicate with me here rather than use my email address. When i get a ticket system in place, then i will use that and it will become forced. I will refuse support via email so everything stays in the ticket system so it's all in one place.

Right now i have messages here, email(multiple threads so same problem as you), support forum here. It's a nightmare to keep track of it all, so yea, i will have to do something soon as well.

I'm asking my customers to communicate me via email preferably: I can't track conversations here and it's a nightmare to respond to them via mobile: you have to login from your mobile (and it will automatically logout you from PC session) and it become a nightmare if you have a permanent customer with 100+ emails per day talking about one feature, so your conversation is growing really fast, etc. etc. 

Email is still more comfortable, but this messages split is a headache.

You will not be able to control that. If your going to stick with email, your stuck dealing with that.

and so on, so on.... I just can't view this on small mobile device like a cellphone to reply to my customer whenever I am currently.  Oh, well...

Maybe BoonEx will setup a proper ticketing system ;-)

OK, I'm not exactly a developer; but I too did face the same issues with my clients until getting my own ticketing system in-place . I personally provide 20+ different services and products between all my businesses and was loosing track at times  ... Now things are indeed more tidy, easier to control and manage! I also think having a ticketing system has in-fact helped me to work a lot quicker.

Check out LiveZilla - I know you are trying to stay email based, but as deano said, if you stick with emails, you are going to have that problem.

For me >>> WHMCS ticketing system was like a dream come true not to mention all the other fantastic features and abilities ..

 RE:

 A ticketing system in the same place where products are sold?   Naw...... that makes way too much sense for Boonex to do.

Some of the ticket systems also includes emails; the person can start a ticket on the site, then get a response through email, and can reply through email back to the ticket system.  However, it is important that the clients know they have to reply to the emails and not try to send a new one.

Yeah, this the same with WHMCS actually ... but still; the ticketing system allows me to more easily control things compared to before and I can easily mark off completed jobs, resolved issues etc and move on to new tickets without hunting through thousands of emails and feeling overwhelmed.

Thats the plan i have in mind but i guess i will have to force all emails from a particular email address to one support ticket the client has opened.

I recommend http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/ 

esshh.......i can't believe you just posted that

 RE:

 There's probably an auto-installer for osTicket already on your server, so you may be a few mouse clicks away from a sensible solution,

 That's what I use with my team.

Works perfect and is easy for anyone to use.

http://www.ticket.boonexsupport.com/