Show HN: Mailflo – Customer support right from Gmail | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Mailflo – Customer support right from Gmail

mailflo.io

63 pointsnands18 comments

How does something like this work? What's it get access to? How much does it depend on official or unofficial API's that may be killed at a moment's notice by Google?

Is it free? If so, how are you planning on paying for developing it?

Does it work ok with multiple Gmail accounts? Can I install it in a work one and not have its tentacles in my personal Gmail?

I ask because it looks really, really awesome for small, bootstrapped startups like what I work on over at LiberWriter. Small and simple and easy to use is exactly what I want.

Hi, I'm Niraj, Founder, Mailflo. Answers to your questions below:

1. How it works is answered in detail here: https://mailflo.io/help#underthehood. Essentially, we use a browser extension to add labels in Gmail, and use our backend to sync labels across Gmail accounts over IMAP. Its based on what we built for our other product GrexIt (http://grexit.com), which is a very popular tool for Gmail.

It needs full IMAP access. And IMAP is enough for Mailflo to work. We do not use any unofficial or Google specific API.

2. Is it free: For now. And we'll always have a free plan. Very similar to what we have done for GrexIt.

3. It works great with multiple accounts (both with 'plain' Gmail and Google Apps accounts). The key motivation for us was to let teams collaborate on customer support by assigning tasks and looking at who is doing what.

Glad that you find it useful. Do try it out and let us know if you need any help.

This is a nice product! Congrats on making it. It really touches on some very important workflows for people and we are working in the same industry, but working on different problem areas. I think fresh out of the box thinking like this is what customer support needs.

I wanted to ask, how does the collaboration work? Does it share an email I get with my team or does it share the team email with me? I wasn't sure.

Also, your knowledge base is one really long page, any chance you would use an embedded widget for it? Let me know. We could exchange feedback too.

Glad that you like it.

Everyone continues working out of their own Gmail/Google Apps accounts. You just use the Mailflo side bar on the left of an email to assign it to a team-mate, and the email pops up in the team-mate's inbox. Its detailed here: https://mailflo.io/help#howtouse

Would love to try an embedded widget for Mailflo, and for our other product http://grexit.com.

This is a fantastic tool for early stage start ups and companies who don't want to invest in expensive and unnecessary support tools in the bootstrap phase.

It would be great to add some aggregation or reporting on the side so you can understand your queue and how it's growing as well as provide tags or keywords to search on. Keep up the awesome work!

Thanks. Reporting is coming very soon.

We use Mailflo for customer support at CallHub. Handling support and regular emails from within GMail is slick.

Hey.

You should consider changing your font color. The contrast is a little bit on the low side. Also the images you use on your help page are better than the ones on the landing page, maybe swap them around? Looks nice apart from that.

Thanks for the input. Do try it out - I'm sure you'll find it useful.

We took your advice and corrected both the contrast and the images. Many thanks for your inputs.

How is this different from Streak?

This is way simpler to use. With Mailflo, an email thread is a unit that you work around - by assigning it to a teammate, and by tracking its status. Thats how email customer support works in most cases.

We have been using Mailflo to do customer support for our other product GrexIt for a few weeks, and we know how effective this approach is. Do try it out.

Sounds good.

Will give it a shot and come back.

All the best!

Congrats on your launch!

As a founder of Streak, I'd love to know how we could be simpler/easier to use. If you have any suggestions or specific pain points, would love some feedback!

We love what you're doing with your product.

GrexIt was built to help teams collaborate around email threads for customer support. Overall, we make it very easy to assign/track an email thread and move it through a very light workflow. Our focus would be on building on this, and bringing in more functionality for the customer support use-case.

You guys are doing some awesome stuff on Streak!

How can I remove a project?

Yes - you'll need to login at mailflo.io. We haven't added that functionality to the browser extension. Do note that deleting a project would not delete the associated emails and labels.

Just email us at support@mailflo.io if you need help.

Thanks!

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