If someone gave you a hammer and said, “Build a house,” you could probably get it done. It wouldn’t be efficient, it would take longer and cost more, and you are likely to only discover issues that can’t be fixed quickly with just a hammer. But if the only tool you knew was a hammer, you might not even know how to start finding a better tool. What options exist? Where do I look? What are they called?

Your email situation in this metaphor is the house, and Microsoft Outlook is the hammer, and solving the problem is tough because there is no standard name for products like BoldMail that help you manage email in a team environment far more effectively.

Two Problems

Problem number 1: Despite the fact that poor email response impacts customer service negatively, many companies have accepted the problem and live with it – some even try designing complicated manual workarounds to help report on email activity. Microsoft Outlook just isn’t suited for managing email in a team environment, and it certainly wasn’t designed to help teams improve email performance.

So why do so many companies insist on building the house with the hammer?
Most just don’t realize they have other options. There are a small number of solutions for the small/medium business, and at the enterprise level there is the perception that it’s a time-consuming and expensive process.

Problem number 2: The “John Doe” solution. Email management software, email management solutions, group email tools, team based email, groupmail? How do you do a Google search for a problem with no name? How do service providers deliver information and optimize webpages to help you find the right email management software/solution/tool?

This is the trickier problem to solve. What would you call this problem?

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 at 9:23 am and is filed under Email Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.