There are a number of ways in which you can respond to emails that are allocated to you.
Click Email > Email Handling.
To respond to an email:
Procedure #
Step 1:
Either take an email from one of your assigned queues or select an email from those displayed in your My Emails list.
The email becomes your currently active email and its details are displayed in the Current Email area.
Step 2:
To reply to the email:
a. Click in the email text editor of the Your Response area and then either type in your response or select a pre-defined response text to insert from the Text Block dropdown list. (You may find that a template text block is automatically inserted into your response, if your company administrator has defined one.) The text block is inserted at the position of the cursor, so you can insert it anywhere in the email body, and may contain placeholders for you to fill in, such as your name and/or identification number. Use the rich text editor to format your text as required. Multiple text blocks can be inserted and the same text block can be inserted more than once. If no text blocks have been defined by your company administrator, the dropdown list of text blocks is not shown.
Note: When you are composing an email response, it is automatically saved as the work-in-progress draft at regular intervals. An indicator shows when autosaving is in progress. You can also choose to save the current draft response manually, in which case the published version is updated and the work-in-progress draft is deleted. Work-in-progress drafts can only be viewed by the allocated agent; your supervisor can only see published drafts.
b. If required, modify the Headers of your email response as appropriate. You can modify the Subject, To, Cc and Bcc headers.
The Subject and To headers already display the existing email details. You can modify these or add email addresses to them.
To add or edit Cc and Bcc headers, click in the field and either enter an email address or select one from the dropdown list, which contains contacts from your company’s address book.
c. If required, select a file from the Attachments dropdown list to attach to your email response. You can search the list of attachments, for example, for a particular label. Multiple file attachments can be added to each email response.
Any selected file attachments are displayed beneath the response input. If you hover your mouse over any of these, you can see a description of the file attachment. If you click on a listed file attachment, it is downloaded, so you can view the content to ensure that it is relevant.
To delete a file attachment that may have been added to your email response in error, untick the appropriate checkbox in the list.
d. Select a classification from the Classification dropdown list.
Once you have responded to the email, the classification is displayed in the customer’s Contact History.
e. In the Notes area, if deemed necessary, add any remarks for the benefit of the person who is reviewing the email response.
Note: If the email is assigned back to the original agent or to another agent, or is put back onto an email queue, any notes are saved for the next agent to see. Notes are discarded when the email is resolved.
f. Click Send or Submit For Review and then select one of the following:
- Final Response – Send the response and resolve the email, removing the email from your inbox. If you are allowed to send email responses directly, the final response is sent to the customer. If your supervisor needs to review your email response before it is sent out, a draft is submitted to them.
- Intermediate Response – Send the response and either keep the email “active” (assigned to you and marked as a work in progress) or keep the email assigned to you but not active. A typical intermediate response might be “I’ll find out about that and get back to you”. If you are allowed to send email responses directly, the intermediate response is sent to the customer. If your supervisor needs to review your email response before it is sent out, a draft is submitted to them.
Step 3:
To retain ownership of the email without being considered to be actively working on it, click Park. You may want to do this if you are switching between emails and want to handle this email at a later time.
If you are currently composing a response email, choose whether to save or discard the partial or complete draft response. Any agent that views this email will see the saved draft response text. If all of your emails are in the parked state, the system may automatically present a new email to you.
Step 4:
To return the email to a queue and remove it from your inbox:
a. Click Place On Queue
b. Select one of the following:
- The original queue
- Other queue – one of the other queues to which you are assigned.
c. If you are currently composing a response email, choose whether to save or discard the partial or complete draft response. Any agent that views this email will see the saved draft response text.
Step 5:
To allocate the email to an agent, click Assign To Agent and select the agent from the dropdown list. This might be either the currently assigned agent, such that they can make further changes to the email, or a different agent. If you are currently composing a response email, choose whether to save or discard the partial or complete draft response. Any agent that views this email will see the saved draft response text.
The email is removed from your My Emails inbox and is added to the list of emails that are currently allocated to agents (Allocated tab).
Step 6:
To mark the email as completed with no further action to take, click Resolve.
The email is removed from your inbox.
Parent topic: Email management
Related reference
My Emails tab
Current Email
Your Response
Notes