We do the same thing, with a simple label system ("Follow Up", "Request for Feature X", "Request for Feature Y") to give us a little more overview visibility.
I'd certainly recommend this approach, especially if your workflow is well defined (we answer, then archive - Follow Up and start a ticket in Lighthouse if it needs to fixed. Unread == unanswered).
Have looked at ZenDesk and Tender, but we feel like they force people to jump through too many hoops in order to ask a question. For a logged-in user, it should really just be a "what do you want to ask us?" field, and for a logged out user just email/question. In my humble opinion, of course. ;)
That's something we definitely need to market better in Tender then or talk with user about. I hope that's not the under understand most people have. One of our main focuses was to allow for anonymous submissions of issues and implement a straight forward email option so people do not have to register for accounts. Implementing a Single Sign On system was our very first priority to avoid all need when coming from another web applications, so you can go straight to the form and ask what you need to without any hassle.
This is what we use - haven't found a need to go with anything else. I've heard of some people using this up to large volumes of email, but I guess it could become a problem once you get to multiple support people working at the same time (as opposed to multiple working shifts) just because you could both start writing an email at the same time. But until you reach that point this solution works great.
I don’t think Marco is really making a point here. He’s just sharing what he’s been thinking about. But I don’t think he is saying that a “hot” interface is neccessarily good or bad.
