Do away with emails! Tools for more effective customer support

1. Email as a communication channel is a huge waste of time
2. Why ticket systems are no alternative
3. Project management tools that make your life easier
4. Our choice: Asana
5. More effort less mails - our progress by using Asana

We're going to go out on a limb and throw this into the room:

1. E-MAIL AS A COMMUNICATION CHANNEL IS AN ENORMOUS WASTE OF TIME.

Too much spam, too much trivial stuff and often too many mails that complicate rather than simplify.

Traditional e-mail now takes too much time and effort to forward a relatively simple piece of information. This slows down communication in most companies and in contact with customers. In addition, e-mails and their attachments are often not found later in the company network, disappear or are forgotten. You wait for days to hear back from the customer - whose email inbox is probably about to burst - which in the worst case drags out the current project.

The email complicates a lot of things and with the search for the right salutation, the formulation of the concise but still understandable request and the appropriate closing formula, often a lot of time goes down the drain. Whether you're in a small office with five employees or a large company with hundreds of colleagues, you'll be familiar with the fact that communication is often complicated by e-mail. Yet improving business and customer communications isn't that complicated. You just have to find the right appointment tool and adapt it to your individual needs. We at EXWE are here to help you with any questions you may have.

2. WHY TICKET SYSTEMS DON'T OFFER AN ALTERNATIVE EITHER

Now there will be people who will suggest ticket systems for customer service as an alternative. However, these tools are similar to email communication, often focused on linear communication only. This is fine for a single to-do, for which there is little context to consider within a project. Here, however, the project reference is missing and not everyone from the team or company sees all the information - this remains fully visible only to the ticket creator, which means that transparency falls by the wayside. Since the issued ticket is usually only visible to the people involved, it also becomes difficult to hand over a ticket to another team member in case of an incident. In short - there is a lack of visibility into the entire project.

3. PROJECT MANAGEMENT TOOLS THAT MAKE YOUR LIFE EASIER

Tools that make your project management life easier are now plentiful. From Monday.com, ClickUp and Basecamp to Asana and Wrike - the offer is diverse and therefore confusing. You can find out which app is the right one for your company by comparing them directly. It is important that you compare your requirements with the given functions right from the start. For example, Asana is the cheaper alternative (starting at 10.99 € per month or in the free version with limited features) to Monday.com (starting at 39.00 € per month for 5 users). Both tools have very similar features, with Asana shining with archiving, retention & automatic backup and Monday.com in contrast having request, attendance and content management. No matter which app you end up choosing, using it will make you and your teammates' day-to-day life and communication with your clients easier.

4. OUR CHOICE : ASANA

We chose ASANA and have been using the tool since 2016 - with success. The web and mobile application helps to support teams and groups in organizing and managing their work - direct feedback through comments, embedding documents, images and links included. Asana provides companies with mechanisms that present the workday in a structured way, linking daily tasks to company goals and simplifying communication during a project.

Instead of sending an email to your client or chatting with a colleague, Asana creates a task. One or more people are assigned this task and it appears with the responsible person under "My tasks". The creator of the task is automatically added as a follower. Within this task, feedback can be given, work progress can be documented, due dates can be changed or marked as completed.

In Asana you have the possibility to assign a priority to tasks. This allows you to indicate to your employees or the customer which tasks need to be completed immediately and which are further down the priority list. In the best case, after implementing Asana, your clients and your team will rely less on email and plan and communicate via the tool - whether in the office or on the go with the mobile version. Projects can be planned more effectively and the current status can be easily monitored.

5. MORE EFFORT LESS MAILS - OUR PROGRESS BY USING ASANA

By using Asana, we have been able to save a lot of time and work more effectively over the last few years. We can better organize, overview and prioritize our tasks and get direct and quick customer feedback, to which we can in turn respond quickly and effectively. In addition, all important information, photos and documents related to a project are stored in one place and visible to everyone involved. Thanks to the tool, we no longer have to send e-mails back and forth, forward content, and put participants in CC.

Exactly this experience convinced us that email communication in today's world, where tools like Asana, Monday.com, Basecamp and others exist, is a waste of time and in many cases hinders rather than helps. We can only recommend to any company - no matter how big or small - get informed and switch to a project management tool. If you need help choosing the right project management tool or if you want us to help you with the implementation - feel free to contact us.

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