In many service teams support requests arrive in a shared mailbox (e.g. [email protected]). As the mailbox grows, two people answer the same email, some emails are never answered and nobody knows the average response time. The fix is to turn every email into a numbered support case.
1. Use one support address
When customers write to personal addresses, tracking becomes impossible. Use a single support address on invoices, the website and email signatures, and forward requests that reach personal mailboxes to it.
2. Every email is a case, every reply goes to the same case
When an email becomes a case, the case number (e.g. CASE-1024) is added to the subject of the reply. When the customer answers that reply, no new case is opened; the message is added to the history of the same case, so the whole conversation about one problem stays in one record.
3. Match the sender to the customer record
If the sender’s address matches a known contact, the case should be linked to that contact and their company. The support team then sees past cases, contracts and sales records on the same screen.
4. Start priority and SLA from the first minute
A case created from email opens with a default priority, and the SLA clock starts once the priority is known. We explained how to set first-response and resolution times in How to set SLAs for service teams.
5. Make assignment rule-based
Don’t ask “who will handle this?” for every email. Use assignment rules by product, region or priority, or round-robin distribution.
6. Reply from inside the case
A reply sent from a personal mail client never reaches the case history. Replying from the case screen records the answer and stops the SLA first-response timer.
Check before you set it up
- Is IMAP access enabled on the support mailbox, and is an app password required?
- How will auto-replies and newsletters be filtered out?
- What should the default priority and status be?
In CRModular
The Email → Email-to-Case setting (E-posta → Email-to-Case) connects your support mailbox; incoming emails are read every few minutes and turned into cases (alternatively via email forwarding to a secret-protected webhook). If the sender is a known contact, the case is linked to the contact and their account; replies whose subject contains the case number are added to the existing case and a closed case is reopened. An email sent with Reply to Customer from the case screen is stored in the history and stops the first-response timer. Setup steps: Email and Email-to-Case setup; feature overview: Support Ticketing and SLA Management. The application interface is currently in Turkish.