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CLOSER LOOK MAILTANK > HARNESSING THE POWER OF EMAIL WORDS BY LARISA REDINS Established in 1999, 877-MacTank.com originated as an alternative tech support company for Apple products. The company, being ahead of its time, recognized the power of a virtual workforce. For instance, the company hired independent contractors such as customer service agents and technical support staff in home office locations throughout the United States. As the contractors were located in different areas, it was essential that they have access to a software system that can track consumer inquiries internally. As a direct result, the company built a system entirely in-house (which would eventually become known as MailTank). "That same year, Apple took notice of the company's efficiency and soon afterwards, 877-MacTank.com began offering support to Apple app developers," noted Christian Winters, the CEO of MailTank. MailTank's Origins At MacWorld Expo in 2004, the company featured actual people providing virtual support to its customers. Consequently, it naturally attracted the attention of a number of other business attendees. In addition, these businesses expressed an interest in the application the company was using to manage their customers. "We took the hint and immediately began reworking our portal to apply to a much broader market. We threw the switch on MailTank back in 2005," stated Winters. MailTank caught the attention of quite a few clients as it was a unique product that allowed businesses to send better replies to customers in a more rapid manner. In turn, companies could also send better and more personalized replies to their customer base – and develop a better relationship with these customers. "Simply put - MailTank's reply toolkit does the heavy lifting so you blaze through customer questions," explained Winters. Some of the specific features of MailTank include: •The ability to forward your customer email to MailTank so that all employees can see that it is waiting for an answer. When someone replies to a customer, everyone working can see that the customer has been helped and can focus on helping another. •MailTank organizes messages sent to different email addresses with ease, so teams can tell with a glance which customers have been waiting and for how long. •MailTank builds a secure, searchable archive of every email coming in to and going out of your business. Mail Tank offers employees templates that can answer FAQs – these templates do 80 percent of the work for you. Thus, the rest of the time can be better spent personalizing the message and building relationships. In turn, customers will feel cared for and become repeat customers in the future. Email offers true one-on-one communication that social media cannot match as the company believes that social media does not offer a "personal touch" like email. "Working with email is the key to generating revenue for every business," stated Winters. "It's why we built Mail Tank to help our own customers, but we never want to forget that every email represents the thoughts and concerns of a real person." As a result, your business can exceed the expectations of customers as you will be able to reply to email faster than ever and track customer interactions pre and post sales. In turn, these factors can sharpen your business's message and prevent other customers from falling though the cracks. "MailTank is dedicated to small businesses and in turn, these businesses win over customers via their email to these customers," stated Winters. "We simply love email here – we have been helping our clients for seven years and in that time, we have assisted 10 million email conversations. That is quite a significant amount of customer relationships." With respect to the future, the company wishes to continue to help our clients create meaningful customer relationships – all via email of course. Visit for more information. 84 MacDirectory

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