First and foremost is a knowledge base-a large and growing FAQ database. Customers can also post questions that don't necessarily require an immediate answer, and get responses from other customers, experts, and company personnel. Unanswered questions can then be directed to the carrier's support reps-the answers are rated by the customer and then added to the knowledge base.

While most Web sites have a section devoted to frequently asked questions, Fung believes Centerwheel has taken an additional step by allowing customers to discuss among themselves certain problems that might need more detail than FAQs offer-monitored, of course, by the customer service department, where reps can access both user-generated comments and company documents to provide the best information to customers. “You don't know if all the information [posted by other customers] is helpful or if it helped solve the problem, so this allows the administrator to find outstanding unresolved problems,” Fung said.

The system works because most support questions answered by CSRs are either general in nature or customer specific. “Services are unsolved, they want to know how to operate the product, or they want comparisons to other products,” Fung said. “The system allows interaction with the customer, plus it allows you to gain an insight into that customer,” Fung said.

If your company gets a lot of repeat questions, Centerwheel may be the answer. It is currently offered as an ASP, but will be available as a software package next year.

Cyrusoft: Spreading the Word

A problem being addressed by Cyrusoft International is what to do with the mass of e-mail coming in to your company-mail from the same source (which might include your own home office) or mail on the same subject (be it “MAKE $$$$” or “I want to file a claim”). That may not be a problem when it's an occasional first notice of loss or basic question for your customer service reps, but we all know e-mail is not entirely about business. Many employees subscribe to different types of services, whether industry related or not, that provide several updates a day via e-mail.

How many people in your office were receiving updates from CNN on the attacks last month in New York and Washington? Large companies receive literally thousands of copies of the same messages every day, each directed at an individual user. The result of this can be a logjam-an unnecessary one, to Cyrusoft-on your e-mail server.

Cyrusoft is an administrative tool that allows your IT department to pre-configure all the users on the system and allow similar messages to be stored in a “global mailbox,” according to CEO John Degory. “It allows you to bring in one [copy of the] message and, with global access, anyone can click on it without downloading,” said Degory. “It stays on the server for anyone to use. The ability to share information is there that may not have been there before.”

Cyrusoft was originally designed for the education field where it helped professors keep in contact with large classes, allowing for sharing of materials from outside organizations by teachers and other staff. But now “we are moving into new areas,” Degory said. One such area is the health care field and all that goes with it. “Messaging seems to be more critical there,” he said. Cyrusoft can run on Windows, Linux, or Macintosh operating systems.

Degory said that most e-mail servers are robust. “But,” he pointed out, “traffic grows quicker than you think as people get more used to using it and all that it can do.” Research firm IDC predicts that e-mail messages will triple over the next four years to 25 billion messages per year.

Large corporations will also find it a better way to contact employees. “Instead of doing a blast to 30,000 users, you put it on the site where everyone knows to check things regularly,” Degory said.

Cyrusoft is not designed to check on every e-mail account in the company. If an individual user in a large company subscribes to a service, Cyrusoft will not intercept the messages. But if employees know that many of the services they receive via e-mail can be shared, the ease of the system will make participation worthwhile.

“E-mail traffic can bog down a server, but there are new ways to administer the traffic, especially the bulk stuff that some of your people subscribe to,” Degory said. “This is just one way to handle the large bulk traffic that comes into your company.”

KnowledgeMail: What Do You Know?

Is there anything more frustrating for a customer or a call center rep than to get a request for information and have no idea where to get the correct answer?

Tacit Knowledge System's KnowledgeMail can direct company personnel to employees with expertise in a particular subject without combing through employee profiles. Each e-mail that an employee sends is examined for phrases that are used to build a profile of that employee, according to Carol Curry, chief marketing officer for Tacit.

If an employee has used phrases such as “specialty lines” or “BOP coverage” in e-mail, he'll be 'tagged' by the system as someone who likely knows something about these specific lines of insurance. When another employee needs an answer to a BOP question, that employee's name will come up as a likely source of information.

Of course, some of the e-mail employees send might be about personal subjects-goldfish or golf. Although these are also included in the profile, each employee has access to his own profile and can delete certain references.

“[KnowledgeMail] is useful for a bigger company or one with several locations,” Curry said. “The way companies change today, you might not know who the experts are within your own company.”

Such profiles are also helpful for communication within the company. A query could be made on which employees would be interested in certain information-for example, those who have asked HR about the 401(k) plan-and e-mail will be directed to those individuals. “Instead of sending an e-mail to everyone in the company, you can be more selective about who needs this information,” Curry said.

The increased usage of e-mail makes such software tools important for companies. “If you can get a handle on your e-mail, you'll be a step ahead of other companies,” Curry said.

Sendmail: E-Mail Traffic Cop

Has your e-mail server collapsed under the weight of too many messages? Greg Olson, chairman and executive vice president of business practices for Sendmail, said the role of e-mail in the business community has changed from “fun to do” to a critical business function.

The response to this problem is simpler than you might expect. “Architecture and tools,” Olson said. “There are ways to organize your mail infrastructure that are more efficient. And you can cut your administrative cost burden to 10 percent of what it currently is.”

Sendmail offers an enterprise mail backbone that can manage the flow of e-mail in the network routing layer. By metering the e-mail, Sendmail ensures that your server is not overloaded or that messages aren't coming in too fast. “The backbone feeds it as fast as it can handle the mail, but not faster,” he said. From a single console, an e-mail administrator can adjust bottlenecks and keep the system online.

Beefed up security is another advantage of the backbone. “With our virus detection, the system simply won't accept a message if there is a virus attached,” Olson said. The virus detection works for outbound as well as inbound e-mail. “The last thing you want to do is call a customer and tell him, 'Don't open that message,'” he said. The software also finds and intercepts messages that contain harassment, vulgarity, and company secrets.

Olson believes most companies are clueless about e-mail architecture. “It is hard to solve problems when you don't understand them,” he said. Sendmail helps customers solve their problems, but the process is slower if it means examining the architecture.

What companies often end up doing is adding to administrative costs by attaching more servers and administrators instead of finding a way to deal with the overloads. “One company we were dealing with had one e-mail administrator for every 127 employees,” Olson said. “That's an incredible expense. Typically there should be just one administrator for the entire company.” He said another company had 22 e-mail servers using seven different technologies.

The good news for companies experiencing problems? “You don't have to invest in a whole new system,” Olson said. “You can layer the backbone behind the current system. It allows you to solve your problems on a day-to-day basis. You can save money immediately.”

Advancements in e-mail technology are coming quickly. Olson said UCLA has developed technology to conceptually understand text and route it to the best place. “It can understand what the mail means, but the truth is that's probably overkill for most people,” he said.

What is handy, though, are filtering systems that can direct the e-mail to the correct location. They don't need to understand the text; they simply look for keywords such as “claim” or “change.” Such “content directed routing” can send e-mail requests to the right location on the first try.

E-mail is too precious a resource for your business to have it down for long. Count how many telephone calls you receive a day and how many e-mail messages you receive. The volume of e-mail is only going to grow and if your company is not ready to handle the expanded needs of your customers and associates, company losses are going to be substantial. Bulletin boards or filtering technology may not be the answer at this moment, but these and other services are going to keep your e-mail system cranking. We may even have to come up with an e-mail creed: Neither spam, nor viruses, nor denial of service will keep this e-mail server from its appointed rounds.